Decisions, decisions...

[jeece]

Just be careful what brand of memory you put in the motherboard . I have an A7V333 mb, and I can tell you from experience that asus' motherboards are very picky about their memory.

I agree with the cheap memory quote... I had a stick of 256 Mb pc133 AZENRAM on my a7v133... and the Ram busted 9 months after I built my computer. (It happened right when I installed a USB ADSL modem... ) Anyways...

I haven't looked at the webpage for the A7N8X-E yet, but I'd recommend if they have a list on the bottom of the page with certified memory that is certified to work in the motherboard, go with that.

Yup, looked at it. (in fact, it was the A7N8-X (not -E) deluxe's) They don't say which is best for overclocking though. lol

It depends what you're doing with your computer as to how much an extra 256 mb of RAM will help. [...] But be careful, if you have RAM from a previous computer it may not work in that asus motherboard, I know my motherboard doesn't like mixing of brands.

Yeah, some games... NFS Underground, Quake 3, Halo, SimCity 4... . Nothing *that* heavy. My Duron can actually (barely in some cases) run these games. But I don't look forward playing Half-Life 2 on my current system! lol
I'm not an extreme gamer, who attends 3 LAN parties/week and who brags about my FPS. Extreme performance is not my goal, just some playability.
I do some minor video editing and much image processing too.
Thus, I'd like 512 mb of RAM.

I don't think I'll go (and need) higher, anyways, there's a 75% chance that I'll keep my Win98/2000 setup, and from what I read, 98 can't manage more than 512. (correct me if I'm wrong here)

As for mixing brands, even if it was 100% safe and OK, I wouldn't do it... Too damn superstitious. And I would never buy OEM parts for the same reason.