Is it worth opting for 4 GB of memory over 2 GB?

Of course you should get 4 Gb over 2 Gb. Windows will be fine, and its a huge performance booster that means you won't have to upgrade your RAM for quite a while.

4GB is the limit that Windows XP can handle, and it is doubtful that you will tax even 2GB. Benchmarks would be based on the applications that you are running. For gaming, 2GB should be plenty. If you are a hardcore overclocker and play high end first person shooters, you might want to look into more RAM. If you are building a system from scratch, look at the FSB speed of your motherboard and RAM. That is the mark of your RAM speed. How much you have only makes a difference if you don't have enough. Run with 2GB, and watch the PF usage in the performance tab of task manager- that is the hard disk acting in place of RAM. If it never moves, you have plenty.

People are saying that 4GB is better than 2GB, and it is, but your question was "is it worth it" and to me the answer is no. XP can recognize up to 4GB, Vista will recognize up to 128 depending on which version you get. Anyway, we are still currently using 32 bit programs, mostly, and they can only use 1.5GB at a time, so why would you need more than 2GB. It will probably cost at least $250 to go from 2GB to 4GB, and it simply is not worth it for the almost unnoticeable performance gain.

If you got the cash I'd say go for it.. I installed 4gig on my rig (running 32 bit OS) and only recognize 2.61GB of ram, could have been more but I'm also using 2 v-cards SLI and sound card on and FX-60 proc. I could encode/burn 3 movies at the same time AND play oblivion with no lags whatsoever.

Also if you bout to go 4 one GB sticks of ram .. make sure they all have the same cas latency or preferably same ram from same manufacturer.

if ur pc can take 4gb on da motherboard then yes opting . for it will do a great thing for ur pc it will be even more fast. but check with ur pc company can ur pc take on 4gb tell them you have 2 gb on da pc as it is they will check it out if ur pc can take on 4gb.windows xp will have no problem with a pc of 4gb ram and a 500 gb hard drive

Yes its worth it, you should go for it. It will help you multi task alot better, and it wouldn't hold your computer down. In this case, i would spend extra money to get a performance boost.

have a good day