Quick ram question

[L337Llama]

On my desktop, I had 2 gb of ram. One of the sticks went bad, and now I need more memory.

I got a 1gb stick in it now, so I am debating between getting another 2gb kit or a 4gb kit, leaving me with 3 or 5 gb of ram. Would I be able to run two sticks in dual channel, and other just on its own?

And is the 50$ difference going to give much of a performance boost? Especially considering the rest of the desktop.
its
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820211066
vs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820211188

Thanks!

 

[corkyg]

It really depends on your mobo and your OS. Unless you are running 64 bit, there's no point in more than 3 GB. My choice would be to replace the single stick with another like it. If it ran OK before, it should run OK after.

 

[L337Llama]

I'm running the 64 bit version of windows 7, so addressability isnt an issue. I'm mostly curious about mixing single channel and dual channel, and if the performance benefits of 3 vs 5 gb. I'd like to upgrade the system a bit, and this pretty much the last thing I can do without replacing a ton of parts.

 

[killster1]

almost all ram has good warranty right? rma the two sticks and get 4gb set for the mean time. Im also curious about the dual channel and if it matters from what i looked at before, it really helped back in the 939/ socket 478 days but with 775 and above it doesnt help more than 5%? i guess i could take some sticks out and run some benchmarks to find out, i have 8gb now 4x2gb sticks (i never use that much, all my pc's have 8gb except my 2 year olds pc has 6gb)

 

[Emulex]

you want matched memory for channel interleaving to work best - but 5% is 5% and thats alot in ram since the ratio of CORES to ram is so high these days.