Dual Channel Mode?

Specs
Dell Optiplex GX280
3.40GHz Pentium 4
512 MB RAM
Windows XP Professional SP3

A coworker asked me to clean up his computer because it was slow. I took a look at it, and informed him that his real problem was that it needed more memory. He just purchased 2 1GB PC2-5300 sticks of memory for it.

His computer supports Dual Channel mode for its memory. Should he put in the two new sticks in required slots (1 and 3 or 2 and 4, in this case) and also leave in the 512MB stick? Or will leaving the 512MB stick in cause problems?

:-o
Sorry, I'm not too smart with hardware. Thanks!

 

While all the sockets do not have to be filled, they have to be added in
matched pairs to retain 'dual channel' function.

 

Put the 1GB sticks in slots 1 and 3. Leave the 512MB stick out, unless you can find another of the same size and speed.
If mis-matched speeds, machine will operate at the speed of the slowest stick.

 

No, it won't. It will turn off the dual channel mode though, so leave it out, and run on the two 1GB sticks in dual channel.

 

Would you give the same advice about leaving the third stick out if the computer had two 512 MB sticks and the third stick was 256 MB?

I would not think having an extra 512 MB over the 2 GB would make much of a difference and might be worse since the memory would not be running in dual channel. But, for lesser amounts like the above, would it be better to have 1 GB RAM running in dual channel or 1.2 GB not?

 

Yes.