hello, I'm starting a new thread because i feel i am not asking my question correctly..let me try again

i am upgrading my pcs mainboard, proccessor and ram within the week and need to know what is the best deal for my money..

the music i make uses a combination of
vsti's (all native instruments), samples/loops, and my own audio (guitars vocals etc)

i have been looking at getting an

- AMD Athlon 64 3500+
- ASUS A8V DELUXE
- Kingston Dual Channel Kit 2x512MB PC3200 DDR RAM or more

my questions :

1) this board has four memory slots and allows dual channel memory.
would 4 sticks of 512 (=2 GB) be better than FOUR sticks of 1GB (= 4gb)... as somebody mentioned to me that when using dual channel memory you get better performance from 512 sticks

2) or would i benefit more by getting an intel board and chip (P4)
if so which one is a similar spec to the athlon 64 3500+