Does dual channel ram really matter for gaming performance?

I have 2x2GB Ram but I only have 2 ram slots so I am maxed out at 4GB.

I was thinking if I should sell it and get a single 4GB stick for now? My Ram is still fairly new so I can sell it for a good price. If I wait till I actually need 8GB Ram I might not be able to sell it that well.

So do you think I will see a decrease in performance going from 2x2GB to 1x4GB?

If you do see a decrease in performance it will be small. I don't think that games are very taxing on RAM bandwidth...

Just buy 2 4 gig sticks, they can be had for like 100 bucks.

I think its quite unnecessary.

Well RAM is cheap now a days, I would reocmmend you buy two 4 gig sticks instead of 1. I don't think that games woultax memory bandwidth much, but a lot of OS background functions, and productivity software that you might use, probably will.

But be absolutley sure that your motherboard supports 4 gigabyte RAM modules.

Well RAM is cheap now a days, I would reocmmend you buy two 4 gig sticks instead of 1. I don't think that games woultax memory bandwidth much, but a lot of OS background functions, and productivity software that you might use, probably will.

But be absolutley sure that your motherboard supports 4 gigabyte RAM modules.

Kinthalis

why not just buy 8gb if and when you need it? by then i would assume you will need to build a new system anyway, so your current RAM will more than likely be obsolete. buying more RAM that you don't need now just in case in the future you might not be able to get a good resale price for the current RAM is not a very good reason to replace your current RAM. metacritical

But I doubt DDR3 1333 will get obsolete anytime soon. And in case I upgrade motherboard and CPU, so I will be able to accomodate the 2 sticks very well on a 4 slot board.

I wish motherboards were backwards compatible, I'll buy a sandy bridge board as I dont like my mATX board, it was just a cheap replacement for a dead motherboard and I kinda regret it.

[QUOTE="metacritical"]why not just buy 8gb if and when you need it? by then i would assume you will need to build a new system anyway, so your current RAM will more than likely be obsolete. buying more RAM that you don't need now just in case in the future you might not be able to get a good resale price for the current RAM is not a very good reason to replace your current RAM. Gambler_3

But I doubt DDR3 1333 will get obsolete anytime soon. And in case I upgrade motherboard and CPU, so I will be able to accomodate the 2 sticks very well on a 4 slot board.

I wish motherboards were backwards compatible, I'll buy a sandy bridge board as I dont like my mATX board, it was just a cheap replacement for a dead motherboard and I kinda regret it.

Both AMD and Intel are moving past DDR3 1333.

Ok I guess I wont bother with this. If DDR3 becomes obsolete then it would only increase it's resale value and I dont think 4GB modules would have good resale.

I also plan on buying a 2GB card sometime this year so that would mean none of the system ram would ever be used for video memory so I guess I would be good with 4GB for a while.

Do remember you can still play games with DDR2. Keep that in mind when saying that DDR3 will become obsolete.

DDR3 becoming obsolete? I'm still gaming fine on DDR2 :P