Dual Channel DDR on non-dual channel board.

I am upgrading the RAM on my AMD 2800+ and currently have an M7NCD motherboard that does not support DUAL CHANNEL DDR. I was wondering if anyone knows if the RAM would still work, but just act like regular DDR memory.

I know I could just buy regular DDR memory, but i plan on upgrading my motherboard and CPU within the next year or so and it would be nice if I could just re-use the RAM then. Also, newegg has some dual channel DDR cheaper than regular DDR, so its a win-win, as long as the motherboard will recognize the RAM.

Your help would be appreciated!

"Dual Channel" kits are in no way different from 2 standard sticks of DDR, except that they've been tested together to make sure that they perform roughly equally (because this is essential in dual channel). If you're asking about buying a kit, it should work perfectly fine.

I am an idiot then. I was under the impression that dual channel was a different, (and faster) type of DDR that had to be supported by the motherboard.

Or let me ask the question this way....

would there be any difference b/w me buying a dual channel kit (pc3200, 2x512) or buying 2 regular 512 pc3200 dimms seperately from the same manufacturer? i know i may not see a difference now, but would i see one when i get a motherboard that supports dual channel RAM?

Or is Dual Channel just a gimick?

It's mostly a gimmick... you won't see more than 10% performance difference bet'n single and dual channel... As long as the specs are the same...

At one point, I even had two different brand 256 MB PC2700 CAS 2.5 memory in it and they worked fine in dual channel mode. :)

You may be confusing DDR2 with dual channel. DDR2 is a different type of memory, and currently supported only on newer Intel chipsets.

Dual channel memory, as noted, is simply two sticks of memory tested to work together properly. At this point you may even find DDR2 in dual channel kits.