Any point to having more than 2gb for XP?

Hardware and technical stuff
1

I am running 2gb of ram on my XP Pro install (full specs below). At some point, likely after it’s October release I plan on “upgrading” to Windows 7 and getting some more ram. I can get 8gb at a fairly decent price so I might just do that. In the meantime I’m wondering about XP. I realize it can only effectively use about 3.25gb of RAM, but that’s one and a bit more than I have in there now.

My options are to wait until after I get Window 7 later this year, then pick up the full 8gb then… or get 4gb now and get it in place giving me 3.25gb useable in XP, then nabbing another 4gb later if it seems like it might prove useful with Win7.

My system runs fine with 2gb, but as said 3.25gb is more (!) so it can’t hurt. Will I see any sort of real world benefit to slapping 4gb into this rig with XP Pro SP3 or should I just wait?

Specs
Q6600 2.4ghz overclocked to 3.7ghz
Asus P5N32-E SLI mobo with BIOS 1701
2gb OCZ Reaper 9600 @857mhz (4-4-4-12-1T)
nVidia BFG 8800GT OC2 x2 (SLI) with 190.38 beta drivers
OCZ GameXStream 850w PSU
Two 150gb 10k rpm WD Raptors + 1 TB WD Caviar Black
Logitech G15 keyboard
Logitech G9 mouse
TrackIR5 + TrackClip Pro
Win XP Pro SP3

2

Very short answer, YES.

3.25 GB > 2 GB even if you can only use 2 GB per process.

Even Battlefield 2 and Sims 2 would get over 1 GB.

3

RAM is cheap for my P965 system, so I’ll go double my RAM now. I’m still trying to hold myself to the 3-year upgrade path, so while i7 is tempting, I want to eek out what I can on the current overclocked system.

The only issue is that I’d have to fiddle with my system to go for the overclock again since I’d be changing my memory.

4

I’m running my memory unlinked so I’m hoping new ram would be as simple as sticking it in, setting it to factory specs in the BIOS and being done with it… then later tightening the timings if I was in the mood. With any luck the overclock would go unaffected due to it being unlinked.

As far as specific memory goes I was looking at these, 4gb now and maybe another 4gb later.

EDIT: Or instead of the G.Skill, perhaps some Corsair XMS2 4GB (2X2GB) PC6400