Memory is not an issue at all when you're talking about Athlon 64's. The memory controllers are in the CPU chip itself. When the Venice cores and comparable models came out, they really perfected it, and it accepts almost any kind of DDR ram.
I disagree with the 2gb of ram thing. He'll be throwing money away... 2gb of ram is for people who game with games with HUGE environments. It's not necessary for applications and tasks.
Ryan