In order for you to run RAM in dual channel, you need 2 seperate sticks. IIRC the -x series of a7n8x's only have 3 ram slots. While it's completely possible to fill in those 3 slots with 1gb sticks of memory, the higher cas latency's, along with the fact that I don't think you'll ever need more than 1.5gb of ram (unless your an avid video editor, or audio editor... even then you'd probably be on a mac), the price of *good* 1gb ram sticks are extreemly high. That really didnt answer your question, but just a basic answer from what I skimmed through.
As for being able to "run 3gigs and not be in dual channel mode", the answer is yes. Having 2x 128mb sticks of ram in his system will run at 256mb system memory, dual channel works very similiar to Raid-0 on a HDD, in simple terms, it uses the memory of both sticks as if it is one, this cuts off on some loading time, and retrieving chunks of cache from dual channel sticks can result in a faster manner.
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Dual channel memory works just like RAID on a HDD. Basically the two memory controllers stripe the data accross/between both sticks of RAM to allow faster access. Functionally in single channel memory the one memory controller just assigns address to the RAM and realistaically sees one 'chunk' of RAM being the sum of all the sticks. In dual channel each controller address its stick of RAM independently and allows each stick to be access simultaniously.
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