Time to upgrade...

[onelifecrisis]

Okay here's a question for you Arclight. If you could choose between these, which would you choose?

1) 2GB RAM with a 640GB HDD (7200rpm, 16MB cache)
2) 4GB RAM with a 250GB HDD (7200rpm, 8MB cache)

Bearing in mind that for me, the extra space on the HDD is not of benefit but the extra speed given by that space (and by the extra cache) is appealing.

In my experience many games do not make good use of RAM. They tend not to preload very well, and will happily thrash the HDD when data is needed, in spite of the fact that I have (typically) a spare 1 Gb of RAM sat around doing nothing (which could have been preloaded with the data beforehand). Because of this, I'm inclined to go with option 1. Option 1 is also a bit cheaper than option 2.

[Arclight]

The second.

I think you'll get a better experience from doubling the RAM than doubling the cache on the HD. Once everything is in memory, paging is minimal.

Are you looking at WD drives? You might consider a 160GB drive then, should be faster than the 250GB model.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Arclight

Once everything is in memory, paging is minimal.

I agree. But have you ever actually watched the memory usage of your games? Generally they will be programmed to use a certain amount and if you've got more than that certain amount then they simply won't use it, and your extra RAM is quite literally sat there doing nothing.

Originally Posted by Arclight

Are you looking at WD drives? You might consider a 160GB drive then, should be faster than the 250GB model.

Really? I read somewhere that, all other things being equal, a larger drive will be faster than a smaller one. If what you say is true then I'll go for the smaller one. All I care about on the HDD is speed. I don't need space.

Edit1: The site doesn't specify the HDD manufacturer. I'll call them and ask.
Edit2: I found the part of their site listing manufacturers. Apparently all their hard disks are either Seagate or WD.

[Arclight]

It's just a theory though, I'll see if I can dig something up.

Basically, most manufacturers use 250, 500, 750 etc. WD switched to 160, 320, 640 etc.

It comes down to the way the platter for the drive is manufactured. Those 640GB drives are very fast, so I extend the logic to conclude those 160 (or 320) drives will have high performance as well.


On memory use; depends on the game. I don't know what you usually play, but I imagine OFP2 doesn't do a proper job because it was designed to run on consoles, which obviously are pretty limited memory wise.

For example, Supreme Commander can suffer a crash from exceding it's 2GB address limit, so there are definetly games that actually need all of it.

[onelifecrisis]

Originally Posted by Arclight

On memory use; depends on the game. I don't know what you usually play...

Well there are several upcoming titles I'm interested in and several recent (ish) ones that I missed out on because my PC couldn't handle them. Off the top of my head I plan to be playing Operation Flashpoint 2, Diablo 3 (should be very easy on any system, it's Blizzard after all), Silent Hunter 5 (obviously), Empire: Total War, and maybe the upcoming Napoleon: Total War as well. Oh and at some point I want to get a steering wheel and play some racers, but I don't know which ones yet, most of them seem quite "arcadey" these days, but the graphics in DiRT and GRID are really nice.

[onelifecrisis]

And maybe Crysis.
Just to see how nice it looks.

[Arclight]

Originally Posted by bybyx

I will take:
a PSU from Corsair because they have a single powerful +12V rail.
4 gb of ram in an instant. I will go with Mushkin Ram. I used Ram from Mushkin in 3 PC-s in the last year and they work fine. Sh3 with GWX3 eats almost 700mb of ram. Add that to whatever Windows eats up and you find that 2gb is rather...low. and I have Win Xp pro 32bits.
Videocard wise take a ATI 5850. It is DX11 capable. If you have more money take the 5870. A 4850X2 is powerful but limited in some games because some of them are designed in a way that those 2 VPU-s won't be used. The same thing goes sometimes for crossfire and SLI sistems.
Regarding the Hdd get a SATA2 WD or Seagate or Hitachi Hdd. They are fine all of them. 500gb at least

PS.
£600 is not much for a gaming system.

What he said.

Even if 2GB is (just) enough today, you might need a little more not long from now.

I'd stick with WD 320 or 640 though.


Add 100-150 to that budget, and imho the overall quality of the system goes up a lot.

[onelifecrisis]

What is wrong with you two? Do you think money grows on trees? My budget is £600 for a reason.

If you think that the 4GB is really all that essential then suggest a lower graphics card or processor or something. From what I'm seeing, the £40 it will cost me to get the extra 2GB of RAM is going to drop my CPU/GPU specs by a massive amount - a much larger drop than can possibly be compensated for with an extra 2GB of (probably unused) RAM. The CPU/GPU looks to me to be the right place to be putting that £40, but if you have ANY evidence to the contrary then I'm all ears. I've scoured the web for (unmodded) PC games that can use 4GB and come up with diddly squat.

[bybyx]

I will take:
a PSU from Corsair because they have a single powerful +12V rail.
4 gb of ram in an instant. I will go with Mushkin Ram. I used Ram from Mushkin in 3 PC-s in the last year and they work fine. Sh3 with GWX3 eats almost 700mb of ram. Add that to whatever Windows eats up and you find that 2gb is rather...low. and I have Win Xp pro 32bits.
Videocard wise take a ATI 5850. It is DX11 capable. If you have more money take the 5870. A 4850X2 is powerful but limited in some games because some of them are designed in a way that those 2 VPU-s won't be used. The same thing goes sometimes for crossfire and SLI sistems.
Regarding the Hdd get a SATA2 WD or Seagate or Hitachi Hdd. They are fine all of them. 500gb at least

PS.
£600 is not much for a gaming system.

[onelifecrisis]

@bybyx

DX11, eh? The list of current DX10 games is rather short... and even those games usually only have one little extra thing (e.g. God Rays, or Cloud Shadows) that DX10 can do and DX9 can't. I'm not sure that DX11 support is a priority for me right now.

SH3+mods uses only 700Mb on your system!? On my old rig it will quite happily eat up all of the 2GB RAM and then some. Seeing all my RAM being used like that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. But SH3+mods is very much the exception to the rule, at least in the collection of games that I own. Generally, games that could be using 2GB (if they'd only been programmed to) will only use 1GB. As for Windows itself, if properly configured XP will use hardly anything at all.

Originally Posted by bybyx

A 4850X2 is powerful but limited in some games because some of them are designed in a way that those 2 VPU-s won't be used.

Now you just spoiled my day. Can you give me more details on this? I thought crossfire was supposed to always work, not just on games that are designed for it but on all games.

Originally Posted by bybyx

PS.
£600 is not much for a gaming system.

If you'd like to send me some cash to help me buy a better one, I won't object.

[bybyx]

Originally Posted by onelifecrisis

@bybyx

DX11, eh? The list of current DX10 games is rather short... and even those games usually only have one little extra thing (e.g. God Rays, or Cloud Shadows) that DX10 can do and DX9 can't. I'm not sure that DX11 support is a priority for me right now.

SH3+mods uses only 700Mb on your system!? On my old rig it will quite happily eat up all of the 2GB RAM and then some. Seeing all my RAM being used like that gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. But SH3+mods is very much the exception to the rule, at least in the collection of games that I own. Generally, games that could be using 2GB (if they'd only been programmed to) will only use 1GB. As for Windows itself, if properly configured XP will use hardly anything at all.



Now you just spoiled my day. Can you give me more details on this? I thought crossfire was supposed to always work, not just on games that are designed for it but on all games.



If you'd like to send me some cash to help me buy a better one, I won't object.

Crossfire and Sli does not always work. No support in the games for SLI or Crossfire or for dual Gpu an a single card then no gaming at maximum. Go for a single powerful card. I am looking at the links you posted regarding the pc. I'll see what I can find.
Regarding the cash I believe there is a saying in UK, something like Would if i could but I can't? I am sorry but the prices in UK are way to big.
However the sistem at 600 pounds is ok. You could add 2gb more in the future.