looking for opinions on memory chips

[sparky0277]

Hi, I am a novice computer builder and was wondering what other people ideas of proper amount of memory is. I bought a chaintech apogee silver spjl2 motherboard with a intel P4, 3.0 ghz cpu. This motherboard supports 4 gigs of memory, but with the prices of memory it would take almost $500 to max it out. The main purpose of this computer is for online gaming and internet entertainment (streaming video, music, and various entertainment like we all do). My question is, what would be a appropriate amount of memory to have a fast, efficent computer while keeping cost down? My second question is: what is better, single channel or duel channel memory? MB supports both but for speed would you go with the single or the double channel? One last thing and i will stop my rambling: in your opinion, is there a signifigant difference in speed and ability between pc2100/2700 and 3200 DDR modules? I am sure there are differences but is it a difference you can actually see and experience? Thank you for your time and expertise. As i said, im trying to learn and I value the thoughts and experience of other users such as yourselves.

[2k dummy]

Ok, Mikey, here's what you need to know.

Much depends on the OS you want to install. W9x has problems with memory above 512 megs. It can handle more but you will have to do some tweaking. 2K and XP handle large amounts of memory with ease but you will have problems with DOS based games. A dual boot system with W9x or DOS will solve that. If you intend to do any disk operations from DOS, use the FAT32 file system. More memory is always better,but for what you will be doing, nothing less than 1gig would be satisfactory. Use the fastest memory that your motherboard will support, subject to the following "gotcha". There is no such thing as dual channel memory (yet). It is a misnomer. What really happens is that the motherboad has a dual channel memory access controller. You MUST use perfectly matched pairs of memory modules in order for it work. If they are not matched pairs, no matter what you set the motherboard to, it will default to single channel. Crucial, Kingston, Micron and others do sell memory in matched pairs. Don't get confused and think that DDR (double data rate) means dual channel. They are two different animals entirely.