Quote Originally Posted by bovi
Since Windows' own processes easily uses 1GB
But doesn't the XP32 virtual memory scheme mostly page it out to disk after boot, leaving maybe 100-200MB in actual physical RAM? So going from 2GB to 3 or 4GB installed RAM might get your one big application from 1.8GB to 2GB in practice.

Unless you have a 64 bit OS and a program written to actually use it, a single application won't go over 2GB. In the next couple of years, I think this mostly matters to people using Adobe Photoshop on a professional level.

And unless you run two big applications at once (probably on a multi-core), say a hefty game and a high definition video encoder each wanting 1.3GB, there's not much point to having more then 2GB installed RAM on an XP32 PC.