Wouldn't you say it's most likely that with the way people use their systems today, at least in the US, personal systems, not necessarily business systems, though I had open four different applications simultaneously at work yesterday all day...

No, not really. But for the sake of arguement 4 apps:

firefox, outlook express, msn messenger, word, security apps. There is your apps. Windows would hardly touch the swap as we still have yet to approach 375MB used RAM. Besides, you woould be hard pressed to notice any significant performance increase. But as I said, I never build em with less than 1GB RAM.

You know, I do this all the time, and Im done splitting hairs with you here.

If your not gaming, your PC will run fine on 512MB RAM under Win XP. Since that is not the case here, Im done on this thread. ciao.

"If your not gaming, your PC will run fine on 512MB RAM under Win XP."

Ok, so who the hell is worried about RAM latency if they aren't gaming? Give me a break. You're talking about two mutually exclusive groups. Grandma Emailers and letter writters they would be fine running on 256 MB or RAM cause that's all they do. Or midrange users who game and also email or demanding uses who hardcore game, burn music/movies, email, use their comps alot, and use them online a lot, that need robust security, do all of these things at the same time, more ram is better then faster ram for that type or system use environment.

But you are right splitting hairs is how you measure performances.

The bottom line in order of cost effectiveness of upgrades is...

More ram up to about 2GB, then
faster ram, up to 2GB, then
more ram up to 4GB, then
faster CPU/mother board.

Each more costly then the last, try running Galciv2 with 512 Ram and let me know how its working out for you in a gigantic galaxy.

Each more costly then the last, try running Galciv2 with 512 Ram and let me know how its working out for you in a gigantic galaxy.

I guess you can't read Dan?

If your not gaming, your PC will run fine on 512MB RAM under Win XP.

If you have an issue reading this, let me know how you need it translated.

Oh, and I refuse to take any further part in this hijacking.

Talk to the wall if you like.

My point was, this is a discussion about ram latency vs adding additional ram quantity, my point was simply if you aren't a gamer, you wouldn't be in either group, interested in ram latency, or interested in adding more ram.

As you said, 512 MB Ram would be fine for email/word processing, exclusive to gaming.

My point, is that if you are gaming, then and only then does your interest in ram latency vs ram quantity come into play.

If all you do is email, play spider solitare, and word process the occassional letter, then you could even argue that 256MB is enough, either way, 256 or 512, who's got that amount of ram in their system and cares about the argument of adding more or lowering the latency?

Answer : Nobody.