My question is this: I have 512 ram and thinking about buying 512 more for a total of 1 Gb. Will adding the 512 mb of ram really make a difference when it comes to games' speed? thanks

I found a big difference just surfing the web going from 512 to 1gig. XP is so ram intensive it seems that 512 is bare minimum anymore. I'd go with the upgrade for sure.

If you don't already know, you can set swap file usage=0. It can benefit your peformance better, particularly if you have fewer programs open. Why should poor computers exist?

yes it can help everything and yes..games, its always nice to have an extra kick Asus A7N8X Deluxe 2.0 ATI 9800 Pro AMD Barton 2500+ 1024 PC3200 Ram 120gig Maxtor HD Audigy 2 420 watt psu

The more ram that you have, the more efficient your comp will be able to run. Having two sticks of ram that are eqaul in size can create dual channel ram, which double the max bandwidth of your ram, thus increasing performance. Also, if you have two sticks of ram, the cpu can store some information in both sticks and go back and forth between the two. (it may not seem like it would increase performance, but it does) You can be amused by the simplest of things. The smartest people in the world, over-look the smallest objects. War does not determine who is right, only who is left.