Who'd have thought?
Our friends over at Corsair have gone through a whole lot of testing to determine what we all already knew; 4GiB of memory is better than 2GiB of memory, particularly when you're gaming.
According to Corsair's Gareth Ogden, adding memory is one of the best and most cost effective methods of improving your PC’s performance. The memory manufacturer ran tests on an Intel P965-based PC using 2GiB and 4GiB memory array sizes (both in dual channel mode), while keeping memory frequency and latency timings constant. Corsair's own XMS2 DHX memory was used and though the results aren't surprising to most, Corsair itself was "surprised by the magnitude of many of these results," stated John Beekley, VP of Applications Engineering at Corsair.
The summary of Corsair's testing results is demonstrated in the following graph, highlighting the factor by which 4GiB is faster than 2GiB:
It might all sound a little clichéd coming from a memory manufacturer, but, it's true. With the current low pricing of DDR2 memory, from any manufacturer, doubling up from 2GiB to 4GiB is arguably one of the best routes for a significant performance boost for many users.
Users of a 32-bit Windows operating system should however be aware that you'll only be able to access up to 3.5GiB of memory, though, that too would provide a worthy jump in performance. If you're interested in Corsair's findings, take a long look at Corsair's 13-page PDF document; "Gaming Performance Analysis – 4GB vs 2GB".
Official press release: CORSAIR REAL-WORLD TESTING DEMONSTRATES SIGNIFICANT PERFORMANCE BENEFITS OF 4GB MEMORY FOR GAMING PCs
