RAM - double sided or not?

[The549]

Is the ram with the memory on both sides better or not? Ie a 32megs x 16 (little plastic thingies) on both sides vs 64 megs x 8 plastic things on only one side? They both say 64 bit, and both have cas 2.5.
Is there a compatiblility problem or any other issues?

 

[JBark]

Supposedly double sided is faster, but I'm not sure how real world noticable it is.. Some motherboards can't handle double sided memory in every slot (last slot can only take single sided). At least that used to be true, I'm not sure if it matters these days. You'd have to check the motherboard manual to be sure.

Here's an anandtech article that does a few comparisions between SS and DS.
http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.html?i=1839

 

[Vortigern_red]

Early A64s had problems with Double sided RAM (at DDR400) if in more than one slot IIRC. I think most of the RAM problems were sorted out though with the newer stepping shortly after launch. So I would think that it is not a problem now unless, like me, you have an early A64! Some motherboards were better than others as well.

 

[Guden Oden]

Some doublesided sticks are dual-banked, and this can theoretically increase performance with bank interleaving. However, some single-sided sticks are dual-banked too, so it's no guarantee.