W3v with 1.5GB RAM?

I have my W3v for college, and I want to upgrade it so I won't have to worry about it running the internet, AIM, playing music and typing a paper all at the same time, for the next 4-6 years. I play some of the latest games now, but when college starts it will be much more casual. I was planning on upgrading with a 1 GB stick from Newegg. I'm starting to think that maybe I should wait till next summer or xmas time, and it will be even lower in price.
I saw the Kingston 1GB for $101.50.

 

Getting 1 stick of 1gb is fine, it'll last you til you get a new laptop I would think, as those activities don't use that much ram.

The price always inflates and flunctuates, and technology always drops, so get it when you need it.

 

just keep in mind that if you don't have sticks that are of the same size, you lose the dual channel support (which won't make that much of a difference with a w3v, because of its dedicated GPU, but with say a z63a it would).

 

dual channel doesnt have that much of a performance boost anyway.

 

That was the impression I was under as well.

I always thought it was more for benchmarks and very intensive applications...

 

If you can make use of it all... 1.5gb in single channel is going to work much better for you than 1gb in dual channel...... if you can make use of all of it.

 

ummmm I never really figured out why everything tells me I'm running dual channel with 1.5GBs of ram, but i'm not complain'
I think you are able to run different size RAM at dual channel with DDR2, not sure though:

 

i was initially going to go for 2gb with this rig, but i decided to go with 2x512mb because i felt i'd rarely use more than 1gb of memory. Obviously if I had 2gb of RAM, i'd be more inclided to optimized windows to use the RAM as well as be more greedy with it in terms of applications running, etc. But 1gb is very respectible right now, and most games work with 1gb (if you close all applications). If however, you feel you need more than 1gb, why not just shell out the extra few dollars and get 2gb? That would solve the dual channel stuff, and it's not that much more expensive than 1.5gb.

 

extra hundred bucks plus i'll have to dig under the keyboard to replace it

whoa deja vu.. felt like i've made this exact post before

 

I don't imagine ever need 2GB for anything. The only reason for added the GB is for a little added performance in some games, and to insure smooth performance for months and years to come.