Questions b4 getting more ram

[phoenixrevival]

Hi all, I haven't built the system yet, but the parts are waiting for me when I get home in a week so I haven't tested the 2g of Gskill 800 (link) yet, but the price at newegg now is only $82.99 and can't help but think I might as well order another set. I know on Vista 32 bit it will only read up to like 3.2 of this ram, but I want to know a few other things to see if I should get more while it's so damn cheap...

1. When I decide to overclock (up to 3-3.2), how will 4 gigs affect that if only 3.2 are recognized? at all?

2. Will they ever fix the issue of recognizing all of the ram through a service pack in the future or will 32bit always be like this?

3. Would I see a big difference between 2 and 4 gigs if my purposes will be gaming (WoW, Halo 2, Quake 4, Crysis?), light video work, and HTPC to a 1440x900 monitor and 32" hi-def tv (does ram even affect this or solely gpu?)?

4. Ready Boost - they also offer a 1gb flash drive combo for $3 more or a 2gb for $10...they say you should have an equal ratio so should I opt to get either one of those two or would I not even notice anything since the ram will be "maxed out" anyway?

 

[Mondoman]

...
1. When I decide to overclock (up to 3-3.2), how will 4 gigs affect that if only 3.2 are recognized? at all?

No effect.

...2. Will they ever fix the issue of recognizing all of the ram through a service pack in the future or will 32bit always be like this?

Nope, you'll need to (a) have a MB with the "memory remapping" feature in the BIOS AND (b) use 64-bit Windows.

...3. Would I see a big difference between 2 and 4 gigs if my purposes will be gaming (WoW, Halo 2, Quake 4, Crysis?), light video work, and HTPC to a 1440x900 monitor and 32" hi-def tv (does ram even affect this or solely gpu?)?

Nope. As you suggest, graphics card performance is by far the biggest factor here. As for RAM, you just need enough to prevent the software from being swapped in and out to the hard disk; with XP, most will probably be fine for now with even 1GB.

...4. Ready Boost - they also offer a 1gb flash drive combo for $3 more or a 2gb for $10...they say you should have an equal ratio so should I opt to get either one of those two or would I not even notice anything since the ram will be "maxed out" anyway?

I haven't seen a noticeable difference with ReadyBoost (4GB) on my Vista system, but then again, the tests I have seen indicate that it has it's biggest effect on systems with little memory (e.g. 512MB total).

 

[phoenixrevival]

Thanks for all the info. So, would you recommend I stick with the two gigs that I already have or:

a. go ahead and get another 2gig set for only $83 (free shipping also)

b. get 2x512 for $53 (plus $6 for shipping)

Those are the only 2 options to keep dual channel, but would I notice a difference over the 2gigs? For the money, option a. seems to be the best bet, but I don't want to waste money if it's a negligible effect. The system will be running Vista Premium 32, I constantly have multiple windows/programs running, and would like to be able to keep my system tray processes (quite a few will be on this rig) all running automatically without slowing my performance meaning I don't want to worry about them "eating" valuable resources.