The price of 2 x 512 GB kits has dropped recently. RAM actually looks affordable at these proportions. 2 x 1 GB might bulletproof you for future upgrades like VISTA to some extent. 2 x 1 Gb is the more powerful alternative if your talking personal PC system building. 2 x 512 would be strapped for resource if you were editing video or opening 100 photoshop pictures to crop out. Not to be sarcastic but, if your in to Microsoft word processor 2 x 512 will fly for you.
Try for 2 if you can swing it even under XP you'll see great improvement. 2 is essential for vista, but if you can leave your upgrade path open for another when you can afford to then you should be ok in the short and long term. God, I am getting a wake-up when it comes to tight budgets recently, so I know how it goes.
It depends on what the machine is being used for. Anything graphical like games, Photoshop, video editing, or if you plan on running Vista, go with 2GB. Everything else, 1GB will be fine.
I think going to 2mb ram is unnecessary unless you are running Vista. I have only 1 mb ram and it runs perfectly fine at 525FSB with my E6300 P5B.
One very smart self-taught expert recently told me that 2mb or more of ram actually slows the system down, but you should have that theory corobborated before taking it as gospel.
When I sold my first set of ram (they were duds, only did 700MHz), I ran my system with a single 512mb chip for a couple of weeks (until I got my new Crucial Ballistix PC6400 😀) . With only 512 it was noticeably a slight bit slower when refreshing Windows screens, for instance, but you would get used to that within minutes. With most applications 512mb works fine.
More important is the quality of ram, my Ballistix run at 4-5-5-12 timings at 525 MHz...pretty good for DDR800 MHz ram! You can buy brand new (Micron D9GMH) 512mb sticks for $39 on EBay.
do you need ddr2-800, if not save yourself some money and just get 667 and go with 2gb kit. look at gskill or or others, corsair isnt the best just because it is the more expensive.
Tell me about it. I edit video, and when i put lots of video in, it slows because of my 1 gig. At least ill get another for my bday this month! 😛 i hope... :?