2GB or 3GB RAM Upgrade

[1337n00b]

I'm looking to upgrade my memory from 1GB (2x512) to either 2GB or 3GB. I'm using XP with a very old comp P4 3GHz, 1GB DDR1, HD 3650 512. Would 3GB make much, if any difference over 2GB if gaming performance, loading times, etc. considerig how ancient my CPU is?

Thanks!

 

[lxskllr]

It depends on how much ram you're using. After a day of using your "heaviest" apps, open up task manager and see how much your peak memory usage is. Ideally your physical ram should be greater than that number.

 

[1337n00b]

Originally posted by: lxskllr
It depends on how much ram you're using. After a day of using your "heaviest" apps, open up task manager and see how much your peak memory usage is. Ideally your physical ram should be greater than that number.

200-300mb is being used by the background apps. Would 3GB be worth it? Or would 2GB be sufficient. I'm really looking just to play modern warfare 2 and bad company 2.

 

[lxskllr]

Look at this picture...

http://imgur.com/xzqij.jpg

I'm not sure how much memory those apps you listed use. I would say you certainly don't need more than 2gb, and your 1gb may even be enough. Looking at your peak memory usage will tell you.

Edit:
Just to clarify, if you don't need the ram, it won't do any good to add more in XP. In Vista and Win7 extra ram will get put to use precaching frequently used programs, in XP it just gets wasted. That's why the peak usage is the interesting number. If that's below the amount of physical ram you have installed, adding more ram won't help. If that numbers greater than your installed ram, that means you're hitting your page file, and adding more ram will give you a performance boost.