Here's my original RAM bank setup on my AX4SPE-N board: Bank 1 Slot 1 = colored blue <------ 512 stick Slot 2 = colored purple <------512 stick Bank 2 Slot 3 = colored blue <------(empty) Slot 4 = colored purple <------(empty) I have two sticks of Crucial CL=3 DDR400 512MB on my mobo, 1024MB total. I placed both of them in Bank 1, in Slot 1 and Slot 2. Did the SiSoft Sandra Memory Bandwidth Benchmark and noted the results. Then I took the second stick, previously occupying Slot 2, and placed it in Bank 2, Slot 3. Did the same Sandra test and my Benchmark numbers jumped SIGNIFICANTLY, nearly double! Here's the second, much better performing setup: Bank 1 Slot 1 = blue <------512 stick Slot 2 = purple <------(empty) Bank 2 Slot 3 = blue <------512 stick Slot 4 = purple <------(empty) See the attached image files. The first one shows the layout & colors of the banks. The second image shows the results after making the switch and compares it with the previous results. Some of you gurus out there probably knew to do this, but this being my first time using 128-bit DDR Dual Channel. I got the idea to try this when I was cruising the AOpen web site and saw, in a picture in one of their performance trials, one stick in each bank, not two sticks in one bank. TD Basic system information: P4 2.4c, hardware RAID 1 array, Win2kPro. I'm everywhere you want to be.
I got the idea to try this when I was cruising the AOpen web site and Yes, dual channel DDR works much better when you actually use it.
