The very structure of XP and VIsta alike at this point(32bit) has the obvious problems with seeing 2.5gb to 3.5gb only while having 4gb installed. Boosting the overall system performance by adding memory has to coincide with the OS installed as well as the softwares/games you install. The games currenly out and soon to come out are geared around the average user's machine often prebuilt with no large amount of memory installed. For CAD and other engineering, calculus, graphics design type applications you are working a totally different platform where things can go on and on and on....
On the old build here the idea of going from 1gb of performance memory to 2gb of note "Value Ram" saw improvement overall while still having the dual channel available. Many boards will automatically default to single channel when all dimm slots are filled. That can be a performance loss right there. By going to 4gb here I wouldn't see any real gain with games while maybe seeing some improvement more with video capturing and editing and certainly when running WMP! That chews up more ram then even most new games out as well as the increased load on other things like cpu time and of course video memory where a 512mb card would only then be an investment to consider.
OMEGA also touched on a few good points there as well. CRYING ABOUT MEMORY? Not likely here. I usually the first one looking to grab more for a work horse build. The drawbacks surround the software environment geared around systems generally seeing less. If you are a software designer you have to look at what is seen most often for hardwares in prebuilt systems that are the most common type sold. Some of us simply want to build our own for the options we then can choose from. But software is still wrapped around it's own limits there. Softwares fall behind hardwares however. simply look over the last 5yrs. to see which sees the most changes. It won't be MS! Likewise it won't be EA Games or Activision or even Steam: Source there. But you know are staring at quad core cpus and boards that can run 16gb of ram? Hardwares keaving softwares in the dust there.
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