Alright, for once I'm starting a thread. I was recently thinking about the dual-channel memory configuration I have. Also, I noticed that on older motherboards that supported dual channel memory, one set of the banks was controlled by one memory controller, and the other set was controlled by the other memory controller--so you had one piece of RAM in bank 1 (or slot 1) and one piece of RAM in bank 2 (or slot 3). This has changed on new motherboards where bank 1 slot 1 is channel 1, bank 1 slot 2 is channel 2, and the same is true for bank 2, probably because people were getting confused and just sticking the two pieces of ram they had in the first two slots...

Anyway, my question is this--I have a socket 939 motherboard (dual-channel RAM) with an AMD dual-core 4400+ processor, and was curious about my RAM performance. Initially, it was in dual-channel mode, 2x1 GB. It is confirmed in CPU-Z that it's in dual-channel configuration, and a memory benchmarking program gave the bandwidth in dual-channel configuration to be 9351 MB/s. I switched one of the pieces of RAM to the second RAM bank, and CPU-Z then confirms that it is in single-channel mode. However, memory benchmarks I ran are almost exactly the same in terms of memory bandwidth--only 90 MB/s less at 9261 MB/s. Why isn't it twice as fast (or at least substantially faster) in dual-channel mode?

I heard it's a fundamental aspect of dual core machines that they are able to max out the bandwidth of the memory (since it can be accessed faster) regardless of whether it's operating in single channel or dual channel mode. This didn't make any sense to me about why, but that's what I read online. Does anyone else have a good reason why?

I mean, I might as well put the ram in single-channel mode because they're farther away from each other and overclock the RAM to get a higher bandwidth--so they'll cool off more efficiently, and the speed will be faster than stock dual-channel mode.
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So I have talked to multiple sources, and they all confirm that dual channel memory has no advantage over single channel memory for a dual core system as far as memory bandwidth goes (but perhaps some other applications would benefit from DC over SC?). So that said, why not just separate the pieces of RAM as far apart as possible to dissipate as much heat as possible--say put them in slots 1 and 4, and overclock the hell out of them as much as possible before they overheat? (OCZ is a great brand for overlclocking, and my OCZ DDR Special Ops can take up to 3.1 volts and still be under warranty--currently it's only running at 2.6v) This would yield a much higher bandwidth than even a dual channel setup (assuming the RAM doesn't crap out or require too slow of timings). Especially on an AMD platform. Aside from not having the correct motherboard for this, does anyone think this is a bad idea?

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AMD Athlon 64 X2 4400+ (@2.6 GHz)
2x1GB OCZ Spec. Ops. PC3200
ASRock Dual939-SATA2
Antec TruePower 550 watt PSU
80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
300 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA 7200 rpm
120 GB Maxtor ATA/133 7200 rpm
ATI Radeon x1950 Pro