Mac recognizes more ram but no performance difference?

I purchase an extra 2 GB of ram for my macbook pro intel core 2 duo laptop for a total of 3 GB. I bought the ram at a pc store outside of apple but is built with the exact specifications of memory bought from apple.
I successfully installed the memory myself and when I booted up the mac and looked under 'about this mac' it showed 3 GB of ram so hip hip hurray i did everything ok.
However, there was no performance difference at all. Opening up music files, to video and even PDF files loaded up no faster than when I had just 1 GB of ram.
I did a mem test and an additional memory test with tech tool pro and everything seemed to be working fine.
Anyone know why I cannot see any performance difference? Actually to be exact, it feels as though the speed has improved about 512 MB but no where near 3GB.
I then took my 1GB ram stick out and just inserted the 2GB ram stick (which is the newly purchased one) and no performance difference occurred.
Even when I talked to customer support of where I bought the ram the guy said that this is quite odd and that the mac should perform much faster.
Any suggestions or solutions?
Thank you.
Dorian

+Opening up music files, to video and even PDF files loaded up no faster than when I had just 1 GB of ram.+
The first time you open them, it's limited by the speed of reading from your hard drive, so the extra RAM isn't making any difference.
+Actually to be exact, it feels as though the speed has improved about 512 MB but no where near 3GB.+
RAM won't magically make your computer run faster. Adding more RAM simply stops the computer from slowing down by going to the hard drive only if it actually uses that much memory.
It just sounds like the typical way in which you use your computer requires a bit more than 512 MB but less than 1 GB, and this is really quite normal.

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