2gb dual channel vs. 3gb single channel

OK, I've managed to upgrade my dv9000t to 3gb by replacing one of the 1gb sticks with a Corsair Value 2gb stick. Boots and works fine, although I haven't really put it through its paces yet. So here's my question: Am I sacrificing any performance by losing the matched pairs and hence dual channel capability? I don't play any games, but do a lot of video editing, photo editing, and 3D modeling. Am I right in assuming that having more RAM available to my applications is going to trump the speed gained by having two matched pairs? Would going to 4gb with another 2gb stick give me my dual channel back, even though Windows XP 32-bit can only address 3.5gb of it? Does it matter? Opinions please ...

 

The effective-ness of dual channel has always been insignificant for the vast majority of users. Yeah in some cases when programs are memory bandwidth intensive you will notice a difference but for most applications the amount of memory matters most than dual channel.

 

You can still run dual channel even if the modules aren't matched, check with CPU-Z. My nx9420 runs HP 512 MB + Kingston 1024 MB in dual channel mode.

There are many threads about running in dual channel mode, use the search function.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=156017
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=153948
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=91315
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=87135
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=80241

 

OK -- CPU-Z does indeed indicate that I'm running in dual channel mode, so thanks for that.

(Incidentally, I do grasp the complexities of using the search feature, I just limited my search to this forum, and to my HP model.)