My housemate ran Win98 on that mother board (well, the A7N8X-E Deluxe to be precise) with 512MB RAM back when that hw was new. Don't remember the GPU, but it was nVidia AGP too. Biggest problem was hardware: that Asus board was impossibly choosy with RAM, only ram stable with some Infineon DIMMs I had on my Gigabyte GA-7NF400L (same chipset), whereas all his DIMMs (he tried several sets) worked fine on mine. We swapped 😉

Be prepared to try multiple DIMMs before it works properly. Follow Asus' QVL for the board (the exact revision of the board!) if at all possible.

Also note the nForce2 supported dual-channel DDR, so you get significantly better performance with 2x256MB than with 1x512MB. That said, if the 512MB DIMM works and you don't have spares or money to buy more, just use it - you'll lose about 20% of performance but it should be fully functional and stable.

so you get significantly better performance with 2x256MB than with 1x512MB.

No.

you'll lose about 20% of performance but it should be fully functional and stable.

Also not true.

The Serpent Rider wrote:

so you get significantly better performance with 2x256MB than with 1x512MB.

No.

Yes.

http://ixbtlabs.com/articles2/nforce2-1vs2cha … nels/index.html

Dual-channel mode vs. single-channel mode, % difference With the external video card (GF4Ti4600) With the integrated graphics […]
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Dual-channel mode vs. single-channel mode, % difference With the external video card (GF4Ti4600) With the integrated graphics core (IGP)
memory reading +0.4 +4.4
memory recording +2.3 +15.5
memory copying +20.9 +31.5
MPEG4 +2.2 +6.7
WinAce +2.9 +8.4
drv-08 +24.7 +55.0
dx-07 +15.9 +65.8
3dsmax-01 +1.8 +13.5
light-05 +4.6 +45.0
proe-01 +19.0 +24.6
3DMark2001 +1.7 +65.0
RtCW(Fast) +3.5 +42.4
RtCW(High) +1.1 +76.1
SS2(Speed) +2.8 +40.6
SS2(Normal) +1.8 +67.1

Exact gain depends on the application, but in every single benchmark using dual channel scores better. Note that the discrete GPU scores here use a far slower GeForce4 MX 440 than the 6800, so would stress the AGP bus and so memory controller less. With a 6800 the difference will be somewhat higher, although that difference is not likely to be significant.

Exact gain depends on the application, but in every single benchmark using dual channel scores better.

For roughly 2-4%, yes. And let's not even mention IGP scores, because it's silly. My statement remains correct: there's no significant improvement with dual channel enabled.

Dual Channel memory on nForce2 will give you an 1-5% increase in games, which is what the OP referred to. Nice to have but not something to worry about.