Which would be better?

[-Thomas-Rickets-]

I have 1.5 gigs single channel ram now. I can either get another 2 gigs of single channel for 3.5 total or get 2 gigs of dual channel.

I want to know which would make my system faster.

2 gigs dual channel pc3200

or

3.5 gigs single channel

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Which would be better?

First of all, what are your complete comp specs?

[-Thomas-Rickets-]

Re: Which would be better?

Pro - athlon 64 3200
MB - evga 133-K8-NF41 SLI
SC - Audigy 2 zs
VC - evga 7600gt co
PS - ultra x-finity 500w
RAM - 1.5 gig single channel

[Sir. MatDef]

Re: Which would be better?

Get the 2gb kit, dual channel will give you a much greater speed boost that 3.5gb of mismatched sticks.

[LoD]

Re: Which would be better?

Anything over 2GB is overkill. Dual channel doesnt help a s939 CPU very much, but the combination of 1T timings, and dual channel will probably make it worth your while. 3.5GB is pushing the usability limits of 32bit windows, and isnt worth the hassel IMO.

[-Thomas-Rickets-]

Re: Which would be better?

I have 64bit Windows. I heard it can handle up to 8 gigs?

[LoD]

Re: Which would be better?

I have 64bit Windows. I heard it can handle up to 8 gigs?

A 64bit OS can be programmed to handle an almost infinte amount of ram. I'm not sure is XP x64 has a 8GB limit or not, but right now there are hardware limitations that make that impossible. Namely no chipsets/CPUs support that much ram on the desktop, most motherboards have a limit of 4 memory slots, and its hard to impossible to buy ram with more than 1GB per stick.

Overtime a 64bit OS will be the future because of its higher ram support, but right now there is no need to run a 64bit OS on the desktop.