memory dilemma

[deakinusa]

ok heres the situation. i recently built a comp for a friend (my first try at it) and he only wanted 512 megs of ram so i ordered it. its just one stick 512 ddr 3200. the mobo supports dual channel though so i figured he might wanna try to get another stick of the exact one and it might work in dual mode. so here are the options due to his lack of funds. should he get 256 x 2 matched ram or just get another 512 stick? he only has two slotts for ram.
so basically ahve 512 dual mode or 1 gig that might not be in dual mode.

 

[Nubius]

go with buying the 512mb right now and face the other 512mb possibly not running in Dual Channel...as 1gb of RAM would certainly perform better than 512mb regardless if it's running dual channel. Some mobo's boast a 50% increase in performance, but generally I've heard you're getting less than that, 10 maybe 20% at the very most performance boost. So he'd be better off with a gig of RAM even if it didn't run in dual channel