If you' re on Vista it inst a terribly bad idea to have 4GB of ram, although it' s still unnecessary.

4 Gb is absolutly not necessary for gaming be it on vista or xp, it' s just a pure waste of money, if you do photo editing and video editing, i can see the use of 4 gb ram or even 8 gb ram , the more ram the better ... but for gaming forget it man, Crysis recomended memory on Vista is 1.5 GB, we know developers always exagerate their claims so if they say 1.5 gb, that' s probably 2 Gb you need...

The point is Geforce 9 cards are coming out in mere months so its stupid to buy two 8800s which are already 1 year old technology.

I wasn' t aware of the new card coming out and overlooked the previous posts. No, I don' t run Geforce 3, so just lay off. My point would have been valid if I hadn' t overlooked the previous posts. So I will say sorry if my comment seemed like I was attacking you. I didn' t mean for it to come across that way.

if you do photo editing and video editing, i can see the use of 4 gb ram or even 8 gb ram , the more ram the better

I agree as well, my 4yr college degree is in Graphic Design. I do a lot of editing with Adobe and use 3dMax. If a game requires more than 2gb Ram, it better be able to fly and call itself Neo.

ORIGINAL: emofag

You should be shot.

No, I barely dodged the bullet on that one. My new computer has 4GB of RAM.

ORIGNIAL: Abasoufiane

didn' t i tell you we are already few here and we can' t afford retards?

Yes you did tell me that, but you stayed anyway!

I' ve lost track of the PC race these days. Definitely cheaper to build your own in the highend market though, thats all I can say.

Its all about longevity since most parts are outdated before they' ve hit market. So reviews by tomshardware, bittech etc are really useful.

Also been put off by Vista, wanted to wait until at least SP1 came out before buying my next one. Last one I built last year in August, still plays the Bioshock demo in 1680x1050 max detail purrfectly. (which is as much a credit to the devs!)

ORIGINAL: Abasoufiane

4 Gb is absolutly not necessary for gaming be it on vista or xp, it' s just a pure waste of money, if you do photo editing and video editing, i can see the use of 4 gb ram or even 8 gb ram , the more ram the better ... but for gaming forget it man, Crysis recomended memory on Vista is 1.5 GB, we know developers always exagerate their claims so if they say 1.5 gb, that' s probably 2 Gb you need...

Running vista on 2Gb works but it runs about as quick as xp on 512Mb. Vista is resource hungery and ideally needs anything over 3Gb seeing as most people want dual channel then you need 4Gb.

I wish i had enough money to buy me a new PC. P4 geforce 4 here.

P4 geforce 4 here.

The Ti was a legendary card.

I think you know what to get Majik, quad core with a top end geforce 8, 4 gbs of ram, a silent big ass heatsink, case of your likeing and a decent psu [like 500w] and a good mobo.

you planning to hook this up to your tv? does pc gaming fair well on a couch?

Get a PSU from a mfr that doesn' t suck ass.

I only buy PC Power & Cooling PSU pretty much, they are more expensive but worth it. I couldn' t imagine powering two $600 videocards on a shitty thermaltake/antec/etc. power supply, you' re just ***ing stupid if you do that, get a real PSU.

ORIGINAL: Silentbomber

you planning to hook this up to your tv? does pc gaming fair well on a couch?

Nah, i' ll be buying a big ass monitor. I' m buying an iMac to replace my workstation in my office and i' m going to buy another desk for this baby.

It' ll probably be December before i get around to sorting it out, especially if i' m building it myself. I' m just too lazy usually which is why i was looking at the new Commodore range.

Just how uselful is SLI guys??? For example; if i have two 768MB 8800 Ultra' s, how will that compare to one GeForce 9??? And what about two 640MB 8800 GTS' s vs a single 768MB 8800 Ultra???

SLI is pretty decent (most of the bugs have been worked out), but because of the motherboard choice I would go with a single 8800 ULTRA even if two 8800 640MB SLI can beat a single ULTRA in some cases. 8800ULTRA today and a 9800GTX tomorrow. Selling a 8800ULTRA would not be difficult, and you should then be able to get a 9800GTX for about half price after putting the profit from the sale on then new card. In the end for about the same price you would have paid for two 8800 640MB SLI, you could have a 9800GTX. A card that performs better than two 8800" s and has more features.

As I said before, having a mobo that supports PCI-E 2.0 should be the top priority for your high end rig. The motherboard is the most important part. You want to future proof it as much as possible. Otherwise, your next upgrade will mean changing the whole computer. Unless Nvidia releases a mobo with PCI-E 2.0, in December your only choice will be a X38 board, or possibly an Intel X48 board. If those are your only options SLI is out of the question. Don' t sacrifice PCI-E 2.0 for SLI.

A single 9800GTX should comfortably beat even 8800ULTRA SLI.

So that' s my advice, forget about SLI under the circumstances. Current CPU' s can barely keep up with a Single 8800 ULTRA anyways.

PS: I' m currently drunk out of my mind, so you would have to excuse any grammatical errors. Regardless I stand by my point.

Ok, what about:

Intel Core 2 Quad-Core Extreme QX6850 ( 3.00GHz, 1333Mhz FSB, 8MB cache

4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX

???

Scratch that. It seems i can get a decent discount if i buy an Alienware machine.

That' d make it:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra

4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM

AGEIA PhysX Physics Processing Unit

...and some funky internal lighting...

I seriously don' t have the time or patience to build my own...

ORIGINAL: Nitro

Scratch that. It seems i can get a decent discount if i buy an Alienware machine.

That' d make it:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra

4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM

AGEIA PhysX Physics Processing Unit

...and some funky internal lighting...

I seriously don' t have the time or patience to build my own...

What are the timings and what brand is the ram? the 667mhz leads me to believe it' s budget ram.

Don' t be stupid and get 4GB of slow ram, the speed of it has greater impact on performance than raw GB.

ORIGINAL: Nitro

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB

Sorry, but that' s not extreme enough. Go for the Intel Core Rad XtReMe Hiptown Mad Tight Fo' Shizzle Spin-Flippin' Duo. It' s the processors all of the xtreme sk8trz use. And you can' t be xtreme if you' re not a sk8tr.

Are current Laptops limited to 2 Gigs of RAM or are there any that go beyond that?

ORIGINAL: Nitro

Scratch that. It seems i can get a decent discount if i buy an Alienware machine.

That' d make it:

Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 3.0GHz 8MB Cache 1333MHz FSB

768MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800 Ultra

4096MB 667MHz Dual Channel DDR2 SDRAM

AGEIA PhysX Physics Processing Unit

...and some funky internal lighting...

I seriously don' t have the time or patience to build my own...

Nice setup although do remember that Alienware = Dell who are notorious for selling people short with crap internals.

You mean Alienware are actually DELL? Or they' re like DELL?

Dell bought alienware