Will I benefit from more RAM?

Hello Everyone,

I have 2 gigs of this RAM : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6820146118

And I have this Motherboard : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] -EP45-Ud3R

Now I do game on this machine a good bit (mainly TF2, Oblivion, and Age Of Empires 3), but I am also beginning to program too. I occasionally do some photo and video editing as well. I am running Vista Home Premium 32 bit OEM. I also listen to a good bit of music.

Everything runs fast enough I guess but would I see a noticeable bump in performance if I added another gig or 2?

What would be the best way to do it? 1 gig (2x512), 1 gig (1x1Gig), or just the same 2 gig kit again?

My sig should give the rest of the specs but just in case:

Core 2 E7200

HD 4850 512MB

640 Gig WD Caviar

Thanks!

i have an e7200 at 3.8G 1.33v, 400mhz fsb. 4G patriot pc6400. I am on windows xp sp2, so my system only uses 3.5G. It is still more than i need, but i noticed some games like bf2 sometimes crashing out when i only had 2G of RAM. I now play TF2, crysis, cod4, cod5, left4dead, never any crashes due to RAM.

I will never have less than 4G again. If i had 64bit i would go higher. You may not notice a performance bump, but you will more memory to run multiple apps.

My system is similar, I have the 3P mobo, 4870, E6300 @ 2.56, 2x1GB OCZ plat II DDR2-800. And although I am using XP32, I am starting to feel the RAM pinch in games, Crysis Warhead seems particularly pissed at only having 2GB.

Developing doesn't always need much RAM, but it depends what you are doing, simple .net apps, a gig would probably do, but when you start hardcore multitasking, profiling, reg tests, multiple virtual machines, editing HD video, maybe tweaking some frames in PS, then RAM gets swallowed up like alcohol at a Geordie wedding.

Ideally you should enough RAM that you don't need to worry about it, it's just always there when you need it. Personally I'm going 4GB and Vista64 asap.

i run 8 gigs in all my systems capable of it on vista 64. i kill the virtual file and see some speed bumps i didn't have at 4 gigs. so yeah i agree 4 gigs is a no brainer.