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Got this together last night:

XFX 680i LT Motherboard

4 x 1G Patriot PC 6400 (4 4 4 12)

Q6600 Quad Core CPU

EVGA 8800 GTS 320

Auzen Prelude 7.1 Sound Card

Western Digital 320G 7200 RPM HD

Windows Vista Home Premium 64 Bit







This took a while:

Damn those are some large pictures. Nice rig. You'll love the quad core and 8800 GTS card.

That's Nice.. One of these days... I'll upgrade.. Just having a hard time justifying an upgrade atm..

eGo

Nice stuff. Should play everything. I'm sticking with XP, so I'm a bit afraid to do 4gb (even though I already have the extra sticks).

normalicy wrote:Nice stuff. Should play everything. I'm sticking with XP, so I'm a bit afraid to do 4gb (even though I already have the extra sticks).

You can use 4GB just fine, I am currently using 2 x 2GB sticks. XP will not be able to address it all, but that is ok. It makes it useful when multi-tasking. I've played games and burned DVDs at the same time with no issues.

Well, if you say so, then I'll try it out after all. Shame that XP can't really use it though. Not that I'm having problems with 2gb.

XP can use 4Gb just fine, same as Vista. The problem is that if you're running a 32bit operating system, you run up against a HARDWARE limitation of being able to address only 4Gb of memory space AND some of that address space needs to be used for hardware.

Both XP32 bit and Vista32 bit have the same issue: They are 32bit operating systems and if you have 4Gb installed you will only be able to access 3 or 3.5 Gb of that RAM (the actual amount depends on your motherboard and how much memory your hardware devices require).

Your video card, sound card, PCI bus devices, USB ports, etc all need address space and that can use up more than 500 Mb easily on a modern gaming system. The video card memory needs to be mapped to the computer's address space. Usually it's not the whole size of the card's memory but on modern cards it's usually 256-512Mb.

On my quad core rig I have 4Gb installed but Windows only sees 3Gb of it. That's normal.

The only way to get full use of 4Gb is to go with a 64bit OS (XP64 or Vista64) which is still not a practical option right now (due to compatibility and driver issues) except for people who REALLY need a lot of memory. You might see a professional high-end Photoshop workstation with a 64-bit OS and 8Gb of RAM.

IMO go with XP because Vista is a memory hog. I'd rather have more of my 3Gb of available RAM available for games and apps and less tied up running the OS.

FlyingPenguin wrote:
The only way to get full use of 4Gb is to go with a 64bit OS (XP64 or Vista64) which is still not a practical option right now (due to compatibility and driver issues) except for people who REALLY need a lot of memory. You might see a professional high-end Photoshop workstation with a 64-bit OS and 8Gb of RAM.

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u keep saying that man and ive been running xp-64 quite happily for some time
whenever i cant find a driver for xp 64 i load a server 2003/vista driver and boom no problems

the only issue ive ever had for real was my sound blaster series sound cards
and lets face it with them old things its better to use the build in sound card these days

Sov, and I'm happy for ya. I run a LOT of old software myself (rather specific stuff) and I already know some of it won't work.

Yes 64-bit can run just fine, but then you have to accept that something you like to use MAY not work. Right now, why bother taking a chance when 4 Gb is ample for most people? I certainly don't need anymore right now. That's my opinion anyway.

I still say the way to get everyone on the 64bit bandwagon is to force them to: Microsoft should make the next version of Windows 64 bit only. Those who need to use 32 bit for a while longer can use Vista, and the rest of us will move on.

Yeah, I don't even know why Microsoft even bothered with 32 bit on Vista. It was already changing so many other things, might as well make it a forced change to 64 bit while they were at it.