[Smithy]

I am busy building myself a new one.

At the moment I have purchased

Asus P5K Premium WiFi Motherboard (LGA775, DDR2)

4 x 1GB matched Corsair Twinx XMS PC2 6400 RAM

2 x Nvidia Geforce 6600GT 128MB graphics cards.

and I am thinking of getting

a 2.4Ghz Core 2 Quad Q6600
2 x 500GB Samsung Hard Drive
Corsair TX 650W PSU

to go with it yet.

Just toying if to buy Vista or stick with Windows XP? If I stick with XP I can only use 3GB of memory. What are peoples experiences?

[deej027]

xp is best mate, but if u like vista invest in a bigger memory and a faster CPU and percessor

[adam]

I can assure you that what she's listed there is plenty to run Vista.

The differences between Vista and XP are down to personal preference.

- If you want your OS to hold your hand every step of the way then go for Vista.
- If you'd prefer to be left alone and don't mind not having a fancy-pants 3D GUI then go for XP.

Needless to say I'll be sticking with XP for a while.


Sounds like an alright build by the way. Gaming machine?

[Smithy]

Yep as well as video editing, storage of digital camera pictures and all round PC use.

We haven't been able to play fairly recent games for a couple of years on the old PC now, quite fancy having a go at Colin McRae Dirt.

My thinking of getting Vista means I can utilise the 64bit chip and also use all the memory I will have. However I have heard mixed reviews about it so don't know who to believe.

I already have an XP licence and getting Vista will cost me about £110 for the Ultimate OEM version. Hmmm decisions decisions

[Martin 420]

[quote}Vista will cost me about £110 for the Ultimate OEM version.[/quote]

save money and download it for free!!

[Smithy]

No ta, prefer a legitimate version. Is there somewhere I can get a CD from for a 30 day trial or something though?

[adam]

I don't know about any free trial versions but I'd say if you had one of those you'd probably go for it long term, then regret it when all the weird stuff they've incorporated into it screws with your settings

I think the single most important piece of advice I could offer if you do go for Vista is to constantly back up any data you save, because the amount of times I've had to run a recovery on one is getting quite high and I've not been doing my job terribly long.

Also, if you have any trouble with it, ask me. I will've almost certainly seen the problem before. That is, if you don't know what to do yourself, I don't want to insult your intelligence as you obviously know how to put one together and that's considerably more than most.

[Clawjaw]

I build my own computers. Mine are built for games

Just get the home premium version of vista. Dual boot with XP, simple

Edit:... Oh and 1 9600GT will out perform 2 6600GT's. A 8800GT will also do the same against twin 6600GT's.

6600 is so 3 years ago. If your building an uptodate rig make sure its all uptodate

I cant rate the 9600GT highly enough. I use the sonic version @ 700/2000 but i can still scrape it to 765/2110. If i go higher ill crash

[martinhodge]

pay for software!!!! *laughs*


do your self a favour and get a linux platform will surport all your ram and work alot quicker .

i mean it must say somthing that ms own servers run on a linux platform *laughs* and not there own software

[Smithy]

Thanks for the advice on graphics Clawjaw.

Martin - Games aren't written for linux, sadly. Neither is a fair amount of the other software I use and there isn't a decent open source alternative. If there is no open source suitable then legally there are no alternatives but to purchase software.

I can't really imagine Microsoft servers running on Apache and mysql either. ;)