Go for 4gb! I think I might upgrade next year Since then some money's gonna roll in at fall and winter and my birthday is on April, I might pony up something like 500-600 bucks, if all's well Or I might do a small upgrade right now, if I'll get some prizes from Guru3d contest...
My brother has about the exact same setup and it runs everything. I would get 4GB of ddr2 800mhz RAM though, as others have said.
4GB of ram wont do you much good on a 32 Bit OS. You will only be able to address a little more than 3GB of it. I would get 4GB and go with Win7 Ultimate X64
What they mean is that 4GB (2x2GB) is at a good price, so there is no point in getting 2GB to save a buck.
What I was about to say And the OP should jump on an HD 4850 for $10 more... it's definitely worth it since he said he'd be gaming on it too, occasionally. As mentioned previously, one should get 4 GB memory for around the same price... I saw a 4 GB OCZ Reaper DDR2 800 Kit (4-4-4-15) on Newegg yesterday, for $36, I'd get that instead of 2 GB 1066. I'd definitely jump on the Kuma if the OP wanted to game on it as it is faster clock-for-clock compared to K8, and it's a Black Edition, easy to boost the performance when needed.
I did a little swapping of parts. I managed to find a better case for less money from a friend. (Coolermaster Centurion 5 Mid-ATX) This allowed me to upgrade the CPU to the 7850 BE, and get a 22'' monitor instead of the 20'' one, and still stay in my budget of 450.00. (448.90 now)
