hi! I recently got this good opportunity to sell my old 2x256 DDR and get 1x1DDR2 mem stick. For those of you who have upgraded the memory in their PCs - how much this change would actually affect the performance of my system?
in terms of performance you have lost an advantage over your previous setup, you now only have one memory stick so your pc will now operate in single-channel mode which will decrease performance (you should always use 2 or 4 modules, never an odd number) - puley for performance but yeh, you've doubled your memory capacity which will allow you to have more programs open at once and let the system optomise your programs more efficiently for better (but not much) performance 512mb isnt especially recommended for XP, 1GB is cool, 2GB would be better but it depends on what you do with your pooter, if you have enough memory for what you do there is NO need to upgrade, again, it all depends on what you do with your pc - consult tasman, if your memory exceeds 50% you have run out of ram (anything over 50% is your pagefile) so... to gain better performance always stick to 2 modules to get dual channel - im not smart on this subject but i think it degrades your FSB speeds with just a single stick
I want to go with 1 stick for two reasons: 1st -- I think I might later add another 1GB module to the 1GB module. 2nd -- currently I have two 256mb modules which are supposed to be ddr400,but I run them at 333 cause they cause instability issues, BUT if I take one of the modules out and set the frq to 400 it runs OK (maybe that cause I've got a ViA chipset or because my FSB is 533). hence -- I will play it safer if I buy only a single-pack of RAM.
