RAM, Again

[IanRMartin]

Some motherboards run dual channel memory so by only putting 1 stick of ram in your not getting the best performance but once you have a pair in (As long as it is a stick in each channel not a pair in one channel) then you get full memory bandwidth.
Ian

EDIT there are no furthur BANDWIDTH advantages to be gained by having a pair of sticks in each channel, whether there is any performance drop or gain not sure.
You could do some bench tests if you have enough sticks of ram to play with.

[Smiling Dragon]

It sounds like you need to find how many channels your MB has then. I'm used to higher end kit where each memory dimm socket represents a channel. It sounds like there are some (/all?) PC boards out there that can't access all the DIMMS simultaineously. I remember doing something like this back in my Uni days to avoid having to create a wider system bus but sort of assumed that was a lazy hack rather than mainstream design

[IanRMartin]

Originally Posted by Smiling Dragon

It sounds like you need to find how many channels your MB has then. I'm used to higher end kit where each memory dimm socket represents a channel. It sounds like there are some (/all?) PC boards out there that can't access all the DIMMS simultaineously. I remember doing something like this back in my Uni days to avoid having to create a wider system bus but sort of assumed that was a lazy hack rather than mainstream design

Yes the best you will get from a mainstream desktop board currently is dual memory channels. There may be some highend boards with more but i havn't heard of any and would dought it on a any desktop board really.
To get more You would have to look at PROPER Server boards where as you say there is a channel for each DIMM slot.
Ian