[chip]

I'm looking to upgrade the RAM in my recently bought unit and have discovered that if an identical RAM stick is incorporated the unit will run in 'dual channel mode'.

The current stick is DDR2 SDRAM PC-5300 1GB and I'm led to believe the manufacturer is Kingston, although the stick itself does not have a reference/part number that refers to anything on the Kingston website. The part number I can see on the stick is 1GBUMURZXXBA.

My queries are:
a. What benefit will dual channel mode give me?
b. Is it a Kingston stick, and if not, who manufactures it?
c. Should I just stick in another 1GB stick and stop whittling?

[cyberspacegenie]

dual channel mode is basically just a more efficient way for the memory to run. If you imagine that the paths to and from the memory are roads then dual channel is like having more roads so less chance of congestion and traffic jams. You should get better performance with dual channel.

If you run something like pc wizard or cpu-z (both free) they should be able to give you a little more information about your ram. there may be other programs that can give you more detail, if there is then I'm sure someone on here will tell you.

hope this helps.

[cyberspacegenie]

just one more thing, if you do get more memory make sure you put the it into the correct slot. the memory slots are generally colour coded so put the other strip of RAM into a slot of the corresponding colour. If you are not sure then check the motherboard/computer manual and it should tell you which slots are matched.