Four Gigabyte, my gosh times are changing fast. So do you really need 4 GB of memory ? Well gaming wise I'd say 2 GB is your soft spot and baseline right now. We did not notice a performance increase whatsoever when we jump from 2 to 4 GB. That doesn't mean that in the near future it won't have an effect though. OSes get bigger, page file's fill up, applications get more demanding. See where 2 GB is the new norm, 4GB really doesn't sound that awkward anymore. It's the same reason you purchase an 800 Watt power supply, to have some reserve ensuring an optimal PC experience.

Well, that and the fact that I'm such an awful hardware whore makes me admit that I really like this memory kit.

I mean, I just hate it when that drive start purring and swapping slowing down that beautiful Vista experience (yes the Vista part was sarcasm). Next to that, the baseline prices for DDR2 memory have fallen incredibly. I was just checking prices of this kit and stumbled into some pretty good deals. Normally you pay 150-200 USD for a 2x2GB, which is higher than the mainstream 30 bucks per 1 GB yet here and there stores are stunting with prices, click here for example and after a mail-in rebate you end up paying 136 bucks for the kit as tested today ! And at such prices this kit is getting really interesting.

The memory itself is very recommendable. It performs as expected and despite having slapped 4GB in your system, you still get to play around with very nice timings making your system memory perform really well. Even at 1066 MHz this memory was still working beautifully, making it compete with OCZ's enthusiast user targeted Reaper memory, at the same price level.

So yeah, I find this kit very sexy.

Bare in mind that in a 32-bit environment you can not utilize all 4GB as system memory. On Vista 32-bit for example you'll end up with roughly 3.2 GB. It's a shame but if that is too hard to swallow then consider making the move towards a 64-bit Vista. And yes, we know about the PAE; you can use PAE on Vista to access more than 4GB of physical ram, you'll only get 4GB of virtual address space though. More info on that here. But be careful.

OCZ Technology SLI-Ready Edition 4GB PC2-6400 DDR2 DIMM Dual Channel Kit
SKU: OCZ2N800SR4GK
Info: OCZ Company Website
Best Price: click here