Dual Channel Ram benefit

[cr2sh]

This thread may not prove of much worth around here but I've been wanting to increase the amount of ram I have in my pc... and I have a few questions. If anyone can answer them quantitatively.. I'd be thrilled.

When I built my pc 6months ago I stocked it with corsair some value-select dual channel 512 chips. Priced around $90, it got me a gig and I was happy. Right now though, I've got two more slots... and I'm not quite ready to sink the $220 into a dual channel set of 1GB sticks.

Can anyone point me towards benchmarks that actually show the performance benefit of dual channel memory? If I just grab a single 1GB stick and return the two 512's to single channel mode... will I be pissing away a performance opportunity?

Also, I'll probably be purchasing an x800 for good measure. Top it all off and it should be a lean machine until I get the itching for a dual core chip.

Please, no "this is a mac forum" comments, because in a year we'll all be PC users... the only difference is the OS.

Thanks guys.

 

[Bear]

...
Please, no "this is a mac forum" comments, because in a year we'll all be PC users... the only difference is the OS.

Not necessarily. Apple will be building Intel based Macs and not just shipping generic PCs.

I would go look on a memory vendors website - say Crucial's to find out what the difference types of memory do for you.

Or maybe look it up in the Wikipedia - they have a lot of technical entries.