Dual Channel DDR benifits?

andy

As new mobos are appearing with dual channel ddr memory (266 currently, 333 shortly) I was looking for some feedback/reviews on these boards.  From the limited reviews available, using the standard battery of tests the performance is only marginally better than your stock standard mobo using ddr memory.

My questions is what short of benifit would/could you expect from dual channel ddr boards?

From what I've read and seen, it really depends on how much you have to rely on system RAM versus subsystem RAM.  That is, if you have a top-flight Radeon or very powerful video card with a lot of memory already on it, you won't see much difference in speed, especially with games or other software that's heavily video-dependent.

If you have a less powerful card and the system RAM is more involved, you can realize 15-20% speed improvements by having so much more bandwidth for the RAM.

One review I read of an nForce2 DDR board looked at benchmarks that weren't just 3D games, but also things like file compression (ACE compression) and conversion of music.  Other quot;real-lifequot; things besides games in other words.  It found between 10 and 20% increases in speed depending on which benchmark for those, and only 2-5% increases for 3D games (least benefit at higher video resolution).