Going from 2 (1GB) memory to 4 (2GB) - What gain?

[leepark]

What type of gains would I experience if I added 2 more sticks (2x512MB) of memory to my system?

 

[Baked]

For games, zero.

 

[RadiclDreamer]

For most things its actually 0 dif, but for high end apps that use large files such as video and sound editing it can make a massive difference

 

[fstime]

Nothing for the average user.

 

[rocketPack]

I encourage you to download an app that lets you monitor your current physical memory usage (NOT pagefile/virtual memory usage, but physical memory)... I have 1gb (2x512mb) in my PC and I never use more than 400mb with a couple of instances of firefox, AIM, APC PowerChute, Microsoft antispyware, gmail notifier, and a couple of other apps loaded. In fact, when I'm not doing much, I don't even peak 350Mb. During heavy use I am using a maximum of about 800Mb. Now I realize that the system will limit what goes into physical memory based on the size of physical memory, but my point is that only programs like Adobe Premiere and apps that use massive amounts of memory (rendering or content creation is really all I can think of). Also, if you go to 2Gb you're going to want a static pagefile for sure (though personally I advocate this for anything 256mb and above), and most recommendations say 2x your physical memory... managing a 4Gb pagefile is not going to be an easy task, so technically if you don't have a well configured system (using high speed physical storage like SCSI or SATA) that is setup properly (slapping all the highest dollar pieces into a system can only guarntee that you wasted your money, and not that you will even get a single bit of performance out of it), you can actually decrease your performance.

To put it another way: you'll know when you need another gig.

[Side note: just look at the intel xeon chips; they thought 4mb of cache could give them some kind of edge but in the end it did pretty much nothing but raise the price).]