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3 Gigabytes of RAM on WinXP Home SP2

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I'll get right to the point, I've been running 2Gig of RAM (DDR) for quite a while now and have had no problems, and I was Going through old computer parts, and found 2 more stick of ram, 512Mb each, both DDRs and thought might as well use them too.

System properties say I have 3.00GB of RAM.

It even lists is as I hoped as I boot up my computer...

But how can I be sure that my computer is really using that RAM?

I'll list hardware and such, but if I missed something you need to know, ask me

"system properties"

System:
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Service Pack 2

Computer:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 Processor
3400+
2.19 GHz, 3.00 GB of RAM
Physical Address Extension.
____

My hardware:
Motherboard: Micro-Star MS-7184 (http://www.memoryx.net/msimsmome95.html)
RAM: 2x 1024MB DDR (PC3200) 200 MHz
2x 512MB DDR (PC3200) 200 MHz
PCI-E: Radeon X700 Graphics
PCI1: Dynex G Desktop Card (Wireless Network)
PCI2: D-Link DFE-530TX PCI Fast Ethernet Adapter
PCI3: Nothing
HDD(Main) 200GB IDE HDD
HDD(Secondary storage) 120GB S-ATA
Virtual(DVD) LG S-ATA DVD RAM drive
CPU: AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3400+

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I've always been of the mind that 2GB RAM is sufficient for Win XP.

What also happens is that when you have two 1GB sticks (usually matched) you benefit from the motherboards ability to run in dual channel mode.

When you populate more than the two slots and especially with different RAM (512MB) you actually defeat that feature.

Long story short you may actually have lost performance.



ETA: Was noticing that you're still on XP SP2? Tsk Tsk. :) 

Yeah, I'm going to run some games and programs I use often and compare performance with the 3GB I have in now compared to the 2GB before and see

And yes Sp2 lol, To be honest I find it hard to bring myself to update it :D  and never shall I use Vista or 7 ^_^

Well I managed to avoid Vista myself but I have installed Win7 64bit in several of my machines and have been pleasantly surprised by its performance.

It really is a good idea to remain updated because you might well be lacking some critical updates by this point in time.



I also ran across this thread that you might want to glance at since it touches on RAM and some of the complications that can come about due to mixing. http://www.computing.net/answers/hardware/mixing-ram/38...
Memory Authority

If you have the 2 1-gig sticks in 1 channel, and the 2 -512 gig sticks in the other channel, then you are running in dual channel mode. However, unless you are doing something that requires the extra memory, you won't notice any difference at all.
Now, if the 2 -512meg sticks are slower memory, then you have just slowed all the memory in the system down to their speed. Most boards in fact will default to a slower memory speed when you populate all 4 slots. (That is why we tell you to buy 2-2 gig sticks if you want to run more than 2 gig of memory) So, in general day to day use, you are likely going to have a performance loss instead of any gain.
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