Should I get the extra RAM option for better performance?

sadly, some of us did pay this much back in the day. Mine was a Legend 486sx from Future Shop, close to $2k

My first semi-modern computer was a 386; the 486's had just come out.
I paid about a thousand for it.

I remember my Dad was rather jealous because I had 2mb of ram, twice what his system had.
But he was the one who convinced me, a Commodore 64 wasn't really comparable for games.