PC Peripherals Need advice on choosing RAM for general usage

[cool.aquarian]

Hi Folks,

My relative has an old Dell Inspiron 6000 running XP, which came from factory with 2x256mb PC2 3200 RAM and supports dual channel with max 1GB PC2 5300 in each slot.

Recently, one of the RAM stick seems to have conked off.

The major use of the Laptop is: Internet Access, chatting, movies, music and working on Office Documents. And he is against unnecessary spending right now.

So, I am confused whether to:

1. buy him single 1GB stick and use it with the working 256mb stick (with maybe later upgrade to 1GB) or,

2. buy him two 512mb sticks and tuck away the 256mb one.

How much would be performance difference in both RAM combinations 1.25 GB(single channel) vs 1GB(dual channel) considering his usage?

Also, if going for first option, should I place the higher RAM in DIMMA and lower in DIMMB, or otherwise around or it does not matter ?

Thank you

 

[vivacious_tg]

For XP, one 512 mb stick is more than enough. buy one 512mb & use it with 256mb.
put any ram in any slot, I doubt this will affect the system performance in any way.

negligible or very minimal performance gain as per your usage if use rams in dual channel. you may not even able to observe the performance difference.

 

[cool.aquarian]

For XP, one 512 mb stick is more than enough. buy one 512mb & use it with 256mb.
put any ram in any slot, I doubt this will affect the system performance in any way.

negligible or very minimal performance gain as per your usage if use rams in dual channel. you may not even able to observe the performance difference.

Thanku for advice. I bought 1GB, as 512 was not available in original brand packaging.