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Originally Posted by Wxman
Most current mobos support dual-channel these days. Mobo's that may not are those that don't have an even number of memory slots, i.e., three slots, although in that case they still may if two sticks populate the slots. Moreover, if the memory slots are color coded (with two slots being blue), this is an indicator that the mobo supports dual-channel. If single sticks populate two different color coded memory slots, then dual-channel will not be implemented.
The best way to determine dual-channel memory implementation/support is to look in the BIOS itself. Press DEL at boot-up, and then look in the memory configuration page. It should have an option to enable dual-channel. If its set to auto, then it'll be enabled if and when appropriate memory is found by SPD at boot time. The safest way to exit BIOS is to chose the "exit discarding changes" option (even if you don't think you changed anything).
Furthermore, it is never a good idea to mix memory timings of one's RAM. ALWAYS populate the board with identical timings. And in the case of dual channel, even pairs of similar timing & speed RAM in the appropriate slots. Memory speed is important, but even more important are the timings, e.g. 2-2-2-5, etc., you don't want to be populating the board with similar speed (but different timing) sticks of RAM. Not many BIOS have timing setups for each stick.
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He has an Athlon 3200. He only has 3 motherboard chipsets for his CPU in the day when that CPU was popular that supports dual channel. Nforce 1 and 2 and maybe a Crossfire based board.
By the way, I have yet to see a BIOS that allows you to enable or disable dual channel (though they probably exist on cheaper motherboards since most motherboards will auto-detect it). ALso, I've only seen one motherboard that only has 2 RAM slots that supports dual channel. almost all of them have 3 or 4 ram slots, with the majority being 3. It depends on the memory configuration or not as to whether or not it is enabled. slot 2 & 3, if used alone, will enable dual channel for example (its almost always backwards on 3 slot configurations), and using slot 1 & 2 is not dual channel enabled. However if all 3 slots are used, it will also disable dual channel. On later 4 slot motherboards, you were able to use 2 seperate sets of dual chaneel enabled memory.
Anyway, to figure out how to enable dual channel, or for proper memory configurations, this is why you need the manual.
Dual channel is not as big a deal as more memory however. The speed improvements for the faster ram are not really noticeable, but it is probably measurable. If this was video card RAM however, that might be a different story.