Macbook RAM

I recently purchased the stock 1.83ghz Macbook with the stock 512mb RAM. Now I'm a student so I'm in a tight budget so I was wondering if:

1. Can I put a 1gb RAM stick with one of the standard 256mb for about a month or two until I can afford to buy the second 1gb stick?

2. Would my Macbook still run properly? I've heard that it would in fact loose some performance as it's better to run a dual RAM rates but so long as it still works well enough I'm ok. Would this wreck my Macbook?

3. I saw a brand quite cheap via Ebay called ADATA. Has anyone used it? Is it ok? Is it compatible?

Thanks in advance!

if you spend good money on a macbook, i wouldnt go for cheap ram. but thats just me, i know new egg has the corsair ram that i see alot of mac users put in their books for for like 133 a gig or something like that.

Check out www.macsales.com They have pretty good prices on Ram. I ordered my ram from them (ugrading to a Gig 2x512) and it has been running flawlessly. Most will recommend Crucial however and rightfully so.

Yes, you can run your MacBook with a gig stick and a 256mb stick, but your video performance will suffer. By how much, I don't know. MacBooks like dual channel ram, which simply means that there are two sticks of ram in the machine of the same size and speed. Having them un-matched won't affect the system much, but since the video card shares memory with the system, you will take a hit there. Again, I don't know how that will affect you in real life. However, it will not wreck your MacBook.

Ram is cheap right now at about $80 per gig stick. With shipping, you can usually pick up 2 gigs for about $170. Check out the RAM section of my MacBook Resource Site for a decent selection and links to installation information:

http://www.wiredbynature.org/comp/mac/macbook/mods.php#Ram

I just installed some G.Skill in my brother's MacBook Pro and it is working fabulously. It comes in at $80.99 per stick plus $4.99 shipping. G.Skill is a very good brand. As long as you promise us you'll buy a matching stick in a month or so, we'll let you upgrade to a gig stick for now Here's a link to the G.Skill:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820231069

Where are you getting that he would take a video performance hit by running 1x256 and 1x1GB? I agree that running a matched pair is the best way to go because you then take advantage of the dual data rates, but running 1.25GB of Ram in any configuration is going to trump 512mb any day of the week. Many people are forced to run this configuration in their ibooks or powerbooks that came stock with 256mb and only have one slot available for upgrade.