How much performance is gained from more RAM?

I'm going to be upgrading to the following system:

AMD Athlon XP 2000+
Asus A7N8X nForce2
256MB PC2700 DDR (CAS2)
Western Digital 800JB
ATI Radeon 9700 Pro

I'm going to continue using Windows Me because, quite frankly, I don't think that XP Home would provide me with a great deal of performance improvements - certainly not $100 worth, anyway. I use my computer primarily for gaming, and there is generally less than a 1% difference in framerates between XP and Me. It's just not worth the extra cash right now.

Windows XP also essentially requires 512Mb of RAM, which is another reason why I certainly won't be spending the extra cash. But what I am wondering is how much 512Mb of similar RAM would improve performance over 256Mb on a Windows Me system. I'm running an Athlon 1.4GHz with 256Mb PC2100 DDR right now, and I have no complaints about Windows's performance. What would the extra cash do for my games? How greatly would it effect load time and overall performance?

Many thanks in advance for the help.

Ah, I see. I guess I'll just save myself the cash then. Thanks a lot! You saved me $70.

Probably very little; I'd rather run Xp on 256 than Me on 512.

I honestly think going from Me to XP is the single best investment you can make in your computer, provided you have 256 megs of RAM or greater. But to each his own.

I just don't want to give Microsoft any more money than I have to. Besides, with the money saved from not buying XP I could get a nice graphics card instead.

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