>The question still remains -- is the RAM worth it? We can end up almost within hardware budget if we get the 512 Meg of RAM, and go about 50% over hardware budget if go to 1 Gig of Ram. But hardware cost is trivial compared to developer cost, and the cost of having to wait a long time for jobs to finish. So if the Gig will buy us something real, I have no problem fighting for it. That is the question. Will the Gig get us improved speed. The only thing I know on this is that Microsoft says the more RAM the better, and some people on this thread have added that RAM only does you good if your chip can access it directly. (Most modern chips and motherboards can.)
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The RAM issue is largely determined by the processor and chipset in use. If you do not intend to use a Slot2 (Xeon) processor, there is an upper limit of 512MB of cacheable RAM in the Slot 1 and Athlon processors - and with Celerons and prior processors, that limit is far, far lower - as low as 64MB in some Pentium processor chipsets. With NT and Win2K, memory is alloted from the free memory pool top down - so using non-cacheable memory is guarenteed to use the least capable RAM first. I'd recommend a site that deals with the particulars of hardware implementation - FPA is not a reliable source of information, regardless of their press credentials, they are not sandworms and solder monkeys. A good start point is www.tomshardware.com - covers issues in moderate detail, and will point to more detailed sources if you want to investigate in detail.

I realize that this probably goes against the recommendations of the 'experts' here who make an unqualified statement of "more is better". THey are about as knowledgable about this as they are about subatomic physics, and while they'd like you to believe otherwise, their poinions are flawed. I'm not absolutely up-to-date on what is shipping, so rather than believe me, go look to people who have a clue, as opposed to those who might like to believe they're gawd's gift to hardware.