generic hardware question: 2gb vs. 3gb vs. 4gb...

[hardyn]

I would like to add a little more ram to my older notebook system. when i am in windows land i am finding 2gb gets gobbled up pretty quickly. now, it is an old notebook, and i doubt the practicality up maxing it to 4gb. question is, how much if any performance is lost by doing 3gb ram and dropping to single channel memory mode?

its a pentium dual core, 2.1ghz
2gb ram
gma3100
and a big hard disk.

thanks for your help.

[conundrumx]

There probably won't be a perceptible loss of performance, but RAM is pretty cheap these days, and if you're running a 64 bit OS you should really just go all the way to 4gb. Alternatively, if the CPU and GPU are starting to seem a bit lacking you might want to save up for a new machine altogether.

[valbaca]

Ubuntu's support for 64-bit has come a long way in the past couple of years. Except for flash (which only Adobe has control over), using 64-bit Ubuntu has not caused a single-hiccup in my experience. If you can, go for 4GB (RAM is cheap, especially for older laptops) and you'll see a difference.

[LowSky]

adobe's 64bit aplha for flash works really well

[hardyn]

I am currently using 64bit lucid and Win7. The GPU is most lacking part of this system, And yes, ideally 4gb. Just uncertain about the cost benefit as i must buy two x 2gb for a max-out.