Building a new PC

[Justin]

Lol, games, power hungry applications! My 6 year old often embarasses me on the Wii so I stay clear of games!

[Dharok]

JNMann, having built a few custom spec PCs in the past for myself I could offer some good advice here.

4GB of the same memory will indeed improve the speed of the load time and amount of applications you can use, especially if the memory of the 4GB has a higher clock speed (in MHz) compared to that of the 8GB.

It is true that 8GB of memory is supported under any 64bit operating system, do the programs you use utilise all of this memory available? Probably not.

Windows 7 as a business operating solution at this moment in time isn't commonly recommended. Due to the amount of bugs and glitches still readily being seen in W7 I don't see it as being a justifiable operating system that needs to be relied upon under heavy daily use. I'd stick with Windows XP 64-bit for now, this version has definitely been the most reliable for businesses still in the past year and commercially now people are still not convinced by the likes of Vista/W7.

Quad-core processor, depending upon how much you want to spend on a new mothherboard, all Dual-Core boards will often support Quad-Core processors too. If your thinking of going Intel, or already have a Socket 775 motherboard I'd recommend spending just under £100 on a Quad-Core and purchasing some cheap 800MHz DDR2 memory to go with it. A 500GB hard drive of a decent brand will only cost a maximum of £50 so the overall cost isn't so bad.

[Justin]

I did wonder about bugs in Win7, I see a lot of folk are still sticking with XP so I think I will as well....there, that's saved me a few quid!

Software used will mainly be CorelDraw X4 and Photoshop so I'm not sure whether these would benefit from 4Gb+ and a quad processor?

Will post a few ideas of the spec I'm looking at for a wee bit of feedback.

Justin

[Dharok]

I personally have a 24" monitor, natively running at 1920*1200 pixels, running on a half decent graphics card, dual core processor and 4GB of DDR2 memory. Keeping in mind this dual core processor is running at 3.0GHz it can be used to edit very high resolution images without any lag whilst also running your usual web browsers or media players at the same time.

To future proof your new specification a tad' right now I would recommend going Quad due to the value for money and the so-called 64-bit only programs that are always 'just around the corner'. Saying that, a graphical oriented computer can still easily run an a quick Dual Core and 4GB. Memory is still very cheap and I would definitely advise you to stick with DDR2 memory as the performance per buck ratio is very good still. DDR3 is still relatively new and isn't necessary unless your video editing or encoding large files.

[Justin]

I think the budget (or lack of it!) may dictate going for a dual core, not sure when the next upgrade would be so if I can just get things stable and running a little quicker that will do for now

Here's a qukck idea:

Asrock K10N78M GeForce 8100 Socket AM2+ DVI VGA Out Gigabit LAN 6 Channel Audio MATX Motherboard

AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ (3GHz) Socket AM2 L2 2MB (2 x 1MB) Cache OEM Processor

Kingston 2GB (2x1GB) DDR2 1066MHz/PC2-8500 Hyperx Memory Non-ECC Cl5(5-5-5-15) Unbuffered

I'm not keen on cheap motherboards but it should be ok. Hopefully push to 4Gb.

[JSR]

Good heavens. Quad-core processors, 8GB RAM, 64-bit OSes, 1920x1200 screens, 500GB hard drives...

Blimey, how do I manage on my netbook?