Dont build a system hoping you will upgrade it later , This was stated earlier in this same thread but i will offer my experience
as to why .
I built a nice amd system ,Asus crossfire ready MB , 4 gigs ram( 2 ,2 gig sticks in a set )MB has 4 ram slots( with intentions of getting 4 more gigs later)2 more 2 gig sticks...
,I only bought one video card , Was going to get the other later .
The videocard , which has to be a very specific model to work in crossfire, is no longer available .
ALL Ram(Motherboard mounted memory) must be bought in a complete matched set!!
,Even the Same ram from same maker will not work if bought in two or more separate pieces!!,
Must be a matched set .
I must throw away my old 4 gigs of ram to upgrade to 8 gigs( ended up getting two 4 gig sticks )For dual channel .
Otherwise ...crash or no boot at all . Had i known all this from the beginning i would have built differently and had a better system or saved some money .
Even buying two video-cards at this point is not looking good because for the cost of an actual upgrade in cards( my card is a 256 bit and they are expensive) i could start on a whole new system and be much better off with new OS .
Besides the fact that the Graphics card plugs have changed twice i think since i built this system . There just arent that many cards on the market that will still fit my system .
Your Bit width is biggest factor, all other things equal, in video card performance, ( and price),
256 Bit is the running standard but 512 bit cards are becoming more popular , 64 and 128 bit cards are common and cheap but i dont use them ,
This is not the same as on-board Video-card memory
!!!,A 64 bit card with 512 megs of memory will not perform as well as same 256 bit card with 512 megs of memory and probably not as well as one with half as much memory.
None the less , My system works mostly flawlessly with SH5
since i got the 8 gigs of ram , I have a triple core proc ( phenom II)at 2.8 ghrts , 512 megs ram on Videocard (Radeon 4830 256 bit ). The Asus board has been really easy to work with and i think ive done some things to it that would have ruined a lesser board ( i have seen smoke when playing with fan wires
OOpsy) . Its nearly 4 years old and cost around 700 dollars to build then.Could build better for less now ,As DX is better . But my system has held up pretty well .
Im only running Vista , You operating system is what decides what Direct X you can run so always build to the latest operating system if you looking to the latest and greatest graphics . SH5 is DX9 so if its all you wanting to run vista will suffice but its just as cheap to go W7 or later at this point , Most os ranges 100 bucks it doesnt matter what version .
Finally be careful when choosing your power supply , Get one too big and you(hopefully) wont ever notice it or have issues, Too small and you will have intermittent and hard to diagnose problems , Besides it will run longer and cooler ( and thus quieter)if its not constantly pushed to its limit .
This is all accurate as far as i know , There may indeed be some instances where memory can be added from a different batch , In the old days it was no problem to add another stick so long as it was the same type/speed memory .
However in our new dual and triple channel world apparently this has changed .. Just something to keep in mind if you are building .