New computer, what do you think?

[Pharnakes]

OK, some of you may remember my thread a month or so back, however, in the end I decided not to build my own. Instead I am ordering this:

Intel Core 2 Duo E6850 3.0 GHz 4Mb Cache
4Gb Corsair Memory DDR2 800 - 4 x 1GB
150Gb raptor drive 10000rpm sata
250GB SATA Hard Drive
Atrix 800Watt Silent
Dual Fan 2x 12v Dual Rail
2 x 512Mb 8800GT PCI express
QC - ASUS P5N-ESLI 1333fsb-DDR800x4 SLI motherboard
2 x Samsung DVD +/- Re-writer
22 inch Video 7 TFT 5ms widescreen D22W11
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 4 PCI 7.1
Trust 5.1 SP-6210 Speaker Set
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Inc SP2


What do people think?


I reckon at £1250, its a pretty good bargain.

[Charge]

you need get vista 64bit also (why 4gb for xp?) (xp should be 64bit as well in order to handle them)..

not the best, but definitely powerful.

[Pharnakes]

Because I will upgrade to vista as soon as the service packs come out, inthe mean time, xp is still capable of recognising 3.2? (ish) of the ram, which, given that vista consumes nealry a gig just idle, means that I wil get near3y the same effective preformance with xp.

[Charge]

inthe mean time, xp is still capable of recognising 3.2?

XP 32-bit uses only 2gb, dunno about 64-bit, but as with vista, it should use 4gb...

[Pharnakes]

my understanding of the matter is this:

32 bit technology can recognise an absolute mximum of 4GB of ram.

Therefore addressable system ram= 4GB-all other ram present, in my case 1GB of grpahics, plus say another 256MB, gives me well over 2GBS of addressable ram, also it makes more economic sense from my point of view to get 4GBs of perfectly matched ram, rather than buy 2 now and 2 later, (which would never come to such a good match), or haveto buy a whole new 4GB. Graned 4BG later will be cheaper than 4GB now, but not cheaper than 4BG later + 2GB now.


So, there you have it.

As to why I don't get 64bit XP, I have heard it dosen't get on well with EB, even worse than vista, so that is right out of the window.

[Charge]

OK, XP32 uses 4gb max, and 2gb per single process (or 3 with some config..); and 64bit uses 4 gb per process (O.O max)...
did somebody said vista32 uses only 2 gigs?

why you think

rather than buy 2 now and 2 later, (which would never come to such a good match)

?
2x1gig now and 2x1 gig of same ram later will cost less, and wouldn't affect perfomance, I think.

[Pharnakes]

did somebody said vista32 uses only 2 gigs?

Yes, vista 32bit is 32bit software, just like xp is, so it can support a maxium of 4gb.

2x1gig now and 2x1 gig of same ram later will cost less, and wouldn't affect perfomance, I think

I thought ram has to be absolutely identical to get the very best pairing, so if you buy it all together you will get the best pairing. I have heard of instances were poorly matched ram means that you actualy get a preformance increase if you take some out.

[Tran]

I thought ram has to be absolutely identical to get the very best pairing, so if you buy it all together you will get the best pairing. I have heard of instances were poorly matched ram means that you actualy get a preformance increase if you take some out.

Yes, to be safe it is best to have identical RAM. In my opinion, buying 4 GB RAM now is a better invesment than buying 2 GB now and buy 2 GB later (who knows if at later time, the products are not available? The price goes up? etc)

As for XP-64 bit, it is infamous for being incompatible with many programs, so if I were you I'll go with XP 32 bit regardless of all the advertisements.