Difference Between 1GB or 1GB(2x512MB)

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What's the difference between:

a single 1GB DDR800 RAM card or,

1GB (2x512MB) DDR800 cards running in dual channel?

At first, I think that having 2 512 MB would run smoother, but then I want to eventually have 4GB of memory. Perhaps I should get a 1GB stick and wait until next paycheck to get another 1GB stick? Then again, money is very tight, so i'm stuck.

I think that my best bet would be 2GB (2x1GB) RAM is best, but that's only my opinion.
 
Dual channel configuration allows RAM to utilize both the upper and lower sidebands of the voltage signal thereby increasing your RAM speed by about 50% over a single stick of the same size. It is always preferable to run RAM in Dual channel when possible. There are also multi-channel boards or asychronous motherboards that allow ODD counts of RAM sticks. This however, is uncommon.

In your case 2 x 1GB (for a total of 2 GB) ran in Dual channel would be fine. You won't see much of a difference in performance above 1 GB expect with a few select games.
 
Tyvm

Exactly, I am very into gaming. I own Battlefield 2, 2142, WoW, Oblivion, and a slew of others. I'll probably go with 2GB(2x1GB)
 
What you're describing is the functioning of DDR Ram, you could have a system with a single channel DDR/DDR-II memory controller & it would still use the rising & lowering edge of each clock to transfer data.

A dual channel memory configuration is an easy way to double the system's memory bandwidth by having pairs of memory modules accessed at the same time in a parallel manner rather then in a "serial" manner.
 
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