thinking about upgrading from 1gb of ram to 2gb ddr400 is what i need
my ? is what brand names to avoid

Apacer :?

Any brand that doesn't have a website...

I avoid Kingston, but that's a personal grudge... hehe nothing really to do with their RAM, just their marketing.

Corsair (Im dead serious!)

OCZ. For sure!

And I'm dead serious youre not not dead serious 8O

I'm using CMX1024-3200 (dual channel ,pair total 2GB)
and I havent got any problems with em' , they are rated at cas 3.0 but I run them at cas 2.5 and o/c to around 220 rock stable.
PS dont laugh at me for having cas3.0 mem , at the time I bought my A64 3500 (Newcastle) , I didnt really find much faster ram for a reasonable price.

Why :?:

I personally am very happy with the Corsair modules I have (2x1GB 3500LL Pro running at 220MHz with 2-3-2-6 1T timings on my main pc & another 4x512MB PC3200 in my other pc). Certainly better than the Kingston I used to have.

However, you're not the 1st person on this forum to advise against Corsair. As I'm no expert in this area, I'd be interested in understanding more about why you think this brand should be avoided.

I wouldn't bother asking these sorts of questions - one person gets a bad stick of Corsair once and Corsair are the sons of satan, another gets a bad stick of Kingston once and suddenly Kingston are campaigning for bigger African debt and are pro world hunger.

OCZ, Corsair, Kingston, Crucial (?)....I don't really think you're going to see a difference unless you overclock. This is from someone who has almost exclusively used generic RAM and has never had a bad stick (that I can remember)

I agree. There really isn't a big difference in performance between brands, since for the most part, they're just rebadged Samsung chips. Crucial does for the most part use Micron chps, which tend to be more reliable, but it's really a non sequitor.

Just out of curiosity, are you planning to use your already installed RAM or are you going to buy completely new?

LOL!. I laughed so hard you made milk come out my nose!

it will be totally new i have 2x512 in it now i know what the good brands are but some of the brands im unsure of like patriot,gskill,and a couple others ive seen got lucky on the ram i have now 2 sticks of rosewill <i know but they are matched the name on the little chips and they do bench well and pass memtest but im lookin to go to 2 gigs because ive read here and other places that for games 2gb is better

Hopefully you read that 2GB for games is better when running at the highest settings. If your CPU and video card will not allow you to run at the highest settings, you aren't going to see a noticeable improvement going from 1GB to 2GB of memory.
I've seen benchmarks for games like Battlefield 2, and adding another 1GB of memory didn't add a noticeable jump in average framerate. However, it may have improved the minimum framerate, which would mean a smoother playing experience.
Anyway, post your CPU and video card and tell us what games you play and then see what everyone else thinks about an upgrade from 1GB to 2GB.

Look at your MB manual and see what they recommend, as per slots. Then avoid what not on the list.

every manufacturer has hadi ts great memory and its bad memory. Are you running DDR or DDR2. If you are running DDR you will be much better off bandwith and latency wise to get an identical pair of 2x512 if you are running the very best quality DDR. That would be something like Winbond original BH-5 or the newer UTTin Mushkin or Gskil or OCZ. If you have Samsung TCCD and maybe TCC5 memory you are also better off using 4x512 and living with the 2t command line. Samsung UCCC which is about the best modules in the 1gb+ per stick range is decidedly inferior to any quality 512 memory module in latency and timing. . Don't let anyone tell you that the good stuff isn't out there it is , you just have to 1. know what you are looking for and 2 be persistent. I just bought 2x512 of OCZ433512ELGEGX last month for $124 for the pair from newegg. It is UTT BH-5.

Avoid:

ULTRA = Generic RAM (usually seen at Tigerdirect.com with a rebate that you will never recieve).

Anything with a name you have never heard of before, unless it's for nothing more then a web/word processing box.

Under Rated:

G-Skill, usually better then middle of the road preformance at a great price for quality RAM. Good Bang for the buck.

Safe Bet:

Major name brands (sometimes you are paying more for just the name though).