They have 12gb ram kits now

hey mate just wondering what your going to do with 8 gig Ram ??

are you using 64bit windows ?

because any other windows is only going to see about 3.1gig there abouts

is there any disadvantage of going 64 bit windows?

So when I buy windows 7 in the coming months i should be buying 64 bit ?

will i need to upgrade my hardware ?
do drivers become an issue ?

Hey Mate,

Yeah using 64 bit Windows 7 RC. His doing a bit of video editing and complications of holiday photos etc. I'm also running the 64bit version on my lappy with 4GB of ram.

These days ram is cheap as chips, and it really makes the difference in how fast a machine performs. So more the merrier!

I'm yet to find anything that doesn't work under 64 bit windows, including alot of legacy hardware like printers and scanners that i've had to use. All the common applications install fine.

The biggest thing i've found is retraining myself from downloading x86 versions to now selecting the x64 bit!

**edit**

With regards to upgrading hardware, basically the requirement is to have a processor that is x64 compatible, and also a main board that supports x64 as well. You can check the spec's of your CPU/Main Board on the manufacturers website and it will state if it's x64 compatible.

Pretty much everything thats been manufactured in the last year or so should be x64 ready, however because of the problems they experienced with the initial x64 versions of windows xp, it got quite the bad reputation so it hasn't become common place yet.

In the server world, 2008 server and 2007 Exchange have only been released as 64bit versions. I predict that the next version of windows will most likely take the same path.

__________________
Osama Bin Hooning
Senior Terrorist Operative
Perth-Wrx

yes will have 64bit windows

running 2 screens currently, gaming & surfing net and they are lagging hence i think it was time to upgrade

Yopi one piece of advice, the most expensive parts don't always give the best performance.

You should look at the finer points of a system, and look for bottle necks. IE the most common bottle neck these days are hard disks. 7200rpm is just way to slow for a true performance system. You really need to splurge and pick up something like the Western Digital Raptor drives. Sure you pay a premium for them, but they run at 10 000rpm which means everything runs that bit faster. If money's no object then check out some solid state drives.

The storage capacity for the faster drives isn't really there yet, but you can get something like a 80GB raptor drive to use for your OS, then whack in 2 x 1TB drives to mirror and store all your crap on.

Other thing to look at is RAM, pick up something decent! DDR 3 is the newest RAM out on the market. Look for the highest speed you can get, either DDR3-1333 or DDR3-1600. The higher the bus speed the faster the ram is essentially.

Also when choosing your processor make sure you read up on the reviews (should do this for any parts) as it might be common place to say quad core is the latest and greatest. But i've seen plenty of testing done that shows the higher end core2duo's can outperform the lower speed quad cores. Software still isn't there yet when it comes to using multi core processing. Developers were just getting the hang of using 2 cores and now they're having to adjust to using an unlimited amount of cores.

One final piece of advice... Make sure you have a grunty Power Supply. I would suggest minimum 650W for a decent gaming rig, however if you think you'll add either more hard disks or optical drives or anything else really go for 750+ hell the 1000W PSU's aren't that expensive.

If it's only running dual screens that's causing lag you may get away with just buying a new graphics cards. I've seen a fair few of the older cards grinding quite slowly with 2 screens. Even the bottom end of the new cards should be fine!

__________________
Osama Bin Hooning
Senior Terrorist Operative
Perth-Wrx

Sorry, yes I was referring to video cards.

The motherboard you have in your list only supports 2 x ATI graphics cars to work together, so as you have listed a nVidia graphics card, if you ever feel the need to buy another graphics card they will only work individually and not work together to perform better in anything rendering.

My current system is running
1 x 69G 15,000rpm hd (for windows & programs)
1 x 120G 10,000rpm hd (for games)
3 x 750g 7,500rpm hd (movie & porn & cartoon storage)
1 x silverstone 750W PS

Pretty much all of the above will be upgraded in due time but right now the essentials first. I built this system with my bare hands and will do it all again as long as the manuals are in english...

Will be off to asia soon hence looking for ideas on the ultimate system at affordable prices.

I know Australia is at least 2 versions/series behind Asia.
Like i mean the state of the art computer system in asia now; - australia will have it in 4 months time.

But that would be too expensive all new & extraordinary fast stuff always are. So maybe not the best, 1 or 2 versions down will be all gud.

7200rpm hdd's are fine. 10,000+ are really only needed for intense files transfers, server use. its all good having lots of hard drives + space. The larger the hard drive, the more amount of data you have to fail. Better of using a raid setup with 7200rpm drives.

64bit Windows Vista/7 runs fine on any machine with 3gb+ and drivers are fairly easy to find as long as your hardware isnt more than 3 years old. Windows 7 seems to pickup drivers and install them automatically.

I would say if you are running a 64bit cpu and have 4gb+ of ram you might as well run 64bit as it will utilize all your resources.

I was looking at the cpu list and Cant see where it says 64bit or 32

looking at the core 2 quad cpus.

Because i currently run a Core 2 Quad with 4 gig ram, dual graphic cards running 3 x monitors.

just wondering if windows 7 64 would work on my current hardware ill have to look into it.
that would save me upgrading again.