2.5 or 2 gigs RAM?

I want to add some RAM to my girlfriend's notebook. It currently has 1gb (2x512mb). Running Vista, the used-memory % pretty much never goes below 60%, even after cleaning up a lot of bloatware / startup programs /processes / services.

Question is:

Is there a consensus on whether it would be better to get 2gb RAM by purchasing 2x1gb sticks, or 2.5gb by buying one 2gb stick and leaving in one of the current 512mb's? Price for either option is about the same.

I'm not sure if it's better to have more RAM, or for the RAM to be symetrical. I guess the 2gb+512mb option leaves room for easier upgrades in the future, but I doubt we will be keeping this notebook that long.

Mac

 

Performance would be about same also. 2 gig would have dual channel which increases performance, but 2.5 gig would have purely just more ram.

 

You guys have it figured out you have pointed out all the variables and the pros/cons. The memory usage being at 60% is not unusual for Vista it is designed to reserve a certain amount of RAM to improve performance. Does the system hit the HDD much when Running non HDD intensive tasks? If so the larger RAM configuration likely to give better performance. If not hitting the HDD much then slight advantage goes to 2GB config. From what I have read (do not have Vista) seems like Vista is going to grab about 50% of the RAM even when you have more than enough, yours is grabbing 60% which tells me you could benefit from a little more RAM, both options will do this. If you want to test this take out 1 SODIMM and see how much Vista reserves. I guess more than 60%. I like 2X1GB but think it does not matter as both will perform equally as well other than benchmarks for the most part.

 

i would go with a 2gb stick because it will be easier to upgrade to 4gb in the future.

 

Dual channel really isn't much these days anymore [or so I've read a thousand times already]. I'd go with 2.5GB -- purchase 1x2GB stick.

Remember, more RAM > Dual Channel.

 

with ram being as cheap as it is now, you should at least go to 3GB if not 4GB. Remove those modules and go with 2 + 1GB if running 32bit, or 4GB if running 64 bit. I found the system got more responsive going from 2GB to 3GB.