My motherboard says "Supports 2 DIMM for DDR 400/333/266 memory up to 2GB" so does this mean it can only take 2G per slot or 2G total -- can I buy two 2G and have a total of 4 or am I limited to just 2G total.

 

Also with the 400/333/266, is 400MHZ RAM much faster than 266?

2G total. yeah 400 is much faster than 266

Does more than a gig of RAM really do anything?

well 2 gigs willoffer an improvement over one gig. but its only really worth it if you do very intensive stuff like simulation and gaming. its not as much as an improvement as you would notice from 512mb to 1 gig.

4gigs is only used by certain programs so isn't really worth getting unless your running a server or some all powerful simulator. no games support it yet.

2GB total.

 

400 is the fastest and that is what you want to go for, no question!

 

As for do you actually need 2GB? Depends on the cost and what you use your computer for. 1GB is normally enough. 1.5GB if you wanna give high performance games the extra boost, for a game which used that much RAM you'd need a damn good graphics card for. 2GB is generally overkill, IMO, for home users. But hey, if you're a heavy gamer or have loadsa spare cash go for it!

400 is the fastest for DDR. DDR2 can go quite a bit faster than that.

 

If you want to know why I need 2G, try playing Civ4 on any map larger than "tiny." 512 really doesn't cut it, despite what the box sais.

 

With 2G though I'm also going to try to run my gentoo in RAM. It's 712MB compressed w/ sqash which leaves more than a gig free (still more than I have now).

Oh right, that explains why my civ4 operated so slowly :/