CS3 and RAM question

Just purchased CS3 and I haven't loaded it yet cause I'm wondering if I should buy more RAM for my computer.
My computer just celebrated its 4th birthday and is running an Intel 4 (hyper thread) chip w/ 1 mb RAM (Win XP ser pack 2).
If there is an explansion slot for more RAM is it as simple as getting another 1 mb and literally pluging it in? And further, given my chipset would the additional RAM help with running CS3?
Any other considerations or recommendations for upgrading my computer to help get the most out of what CS3 has to offer would be apprecitated.
Thanks in advance.

PS in general requires alot of memory. the more you give it the more it'll like it. As for installing more memory that depends on the MB. But, in most cases install matching memory works best. Check w/ Memory companies like crucial or kingston's site for memory configurator they would be able to recommend more specific memory for your system.

Another solution is to get another HDD for PS's scratch Disk or cache memory other then your main HDD (C

I currently use three SATA drive one for OS and program, one for DATA, and one for PS cache.

I have not tried CS3 but I am assuming that the cache configuration should be similar to CS2.

Thanks Lostdoggy! I'll look into your suggestion. I've got several issues that seem common to those like myself that are new to digital photography (storage, PP, back-ups,...workflow stuff...). Thanks again for the alternate suggestion!

CS3 performance seems the same as CS2 to me. If you regularly work with large images then sure get more memory, if not just tell PS to use 256MB of RAM, turn down the history states, and you should be ok.

Incidentally 1mb is incorrect in a couple of ways - you mean 1GB. 'm' I don't think has a meaning, 'M' is mega (million), 'G' is giga. 'b' is bits (8 bits to a byte), 'B' is bytes. Anyway that's technical stuff, but you should really look at getting 1GB of RAM, not 1mb.

I have found that generally more RAM is a good thing.

"m" = milli

tim wrote in post #3159165
CS3 performance seems the same as CS2 to me. If you regularly work with large images then sure get more memory, if not just tell PS to use 256MB of RAM, turn down the history states, and you should be ok.

Incidentally 1mb is incorrect in a couple of ways - you mean 1GB. 'm' I don't think has a meaning, 'M' is mega (million), 'G' is giga. 'b' is bits (8 bits to a byte), 'B' is bytes. Anyway that's technical stuff, but you should really look at getting 1GB of RAM, not 1mb.

I thought I knew all the terms but now you've just confused me... what I do know though, I was talking to Simon of 4wd tv in Australia a couple of weeks ago and he was saying they have just under 2 TB (terabytes) of hard drive space,

So all I can say is your lucky you don't have hours of video footage to store

I have around 1.2TB of hard drive space, including backups. I need more for backups too.