Around 1700mb being used just for loading vista.

So around 1700mb is being used just for having the operating system loaded up in vista. I have 4GB altogether of DDR2 800 ram, i play games on my computer and wander if it would be a good idea to add another 1GB onto my 4GB to make 5GB to play games. I am playing very contemporary games apart from Battlefield 3, and some others. My computer has some thing i suppose running on start-up but i would like to keep them running while playing games, these are windows sidebar with some useful gadgets i have things like ATI Tray Tools, Xpadder, GamerOSD, Steam, AVG all running at the same time in the task bar, and sometimes xfire.

This brings the memory usage to around or bellow 1800 mb, so i have around 2200mb of ram to spare, i wonder if it would be useful if i added another 1GB of ram on my computer, to make sure i am getting optimal performance from my games. I want to have a couple of browser tabs open at the same time, would i perhaps be better with a 2gb upgrade?

web browsers with either open tabs with pages like toms hardware or google searches don't use CPU performance to have them running? What about having youtube videos in multiple tabs open does that use much CPU performance? Not having the videos playing, but having them loading in tabs?

"You might be able to go for 6GB"
I advise against this as you will lose your dual channel ram configuration (and hence lose performance). The next ram milestone is 8GB.

Any DDR2 system is outdated. At this point, any AMD system is outdated compared to Intel's current systems, especially in gaming. Upgrading to AM3/AM3+ isn't much of an upgrade anyway. To get much better performance you would need an Intel system, that is if AMD's Piledriver doesn't run circles around Phenom II and Bulldozer.

Using Crysis as a basis for saying your computer isn't outdated isn't a good idea, Crysis isn't even close to being among the most demanding games anymore and you are using a low resolution. Right now isn't the best time for an upgrade, that's where the waiting and saving up part of my comment comes from. Once new games come out that utilize the upcoming video cards and CPUs better, your system will be quite outdated. You would probably still be fine with your low resolution, but that doesn't make what I said have any less merit. I know that I couldn't get DDR2 memory as cheaply as you can.

Your video card isn't outdated, but it is bottle-necked by your CPU. Your CPU, in turn, is bottle-necked by your RAM. Your video card is perfect for your monitor's resolution and a better system wouldn't make much difference in most current games without a higher resolution monitor.

I recommended saving up and getting a better system for a good reason. Intel's Sandy Bridge CPUs have about 30 or 40% more IPC than AMD's Phenoms and using DDR2 hurts that even more. That means that unless you are running at a CPU clock frequency over 30% higher than a sandy bridge CPU's frequency, your CPU is slower in games. Even the $70 Pentium G620 would perform similarly to or better than a 3.4GHz Phenom II. Bring a faster CPU like an i3 at around 3.2GHz instead of the G620, the Phenom II needs to run at well over 4GHz to match the i3 in gaming.

Also, 6GB can be run in dual channel, two 1GB modules are one channel and two 2GB modules are another. If you mix the modules in each channel then it would lose dual channel. I ran 2.5GB in dual channel on an old P4 system, two 1GB modules and the two 256MB modules it came with. They were identical besides the capacity difference, even down to the chip density.

If you have two 2GB modules now then you can get either two 1GB modules or two 2GB modules for a decent RAM upgrade, but I stand by what I said about a replacement being better.

It's not about upgrading to DDR3 at all... If you want to remain ignorant about this then fine that's your choice. Upgrading to DDR3 isn't a huge benefit and I made that pretty clear too.

You can run 6GB or 8GB in dual channel as upgrades to your system if you have two 2GB modules. two 2GB modules and two 1GB modules can do dual channel. Two 2GB and two 512MB modules can run in dual channel, that would give you 5GB. then there's four 2GB modules for 8GB in dual channel or two 4GB modules.

Did you ignore what I said about the RAM in my last post?

It's irrational for you to ignore information about the best options. I'm not pushing anything further and I didn't in my last post either, I acknowledged that you chose what you chose.

If you don't want to upgrade, fine. But please tell me... What is your rationalization for your comments about business men and the like, and why are they right wing neo-liberals? Yes, the people that control the companies are greedy people that mostly (maybe all of them) deserve to rot in jail until they die or worse. However, you seem to have taken such an extreme stance here, even with all things considered. Why must you spend a lot of money anyway?

I'm fairly experienced in building so I'd appreciate it if you don't tell me it's expensive to do something that easy when I've done it cheaply. I'll leave and not respond to this thread again since you seem to dislike me, but don't hate me for giving you a better option and a way to just do a RAM upgrade, which is what you asked for anyway. That's what this forum is here for.