Zenskas

Man this is funny Is any of this real?

Lol should this be in the funny farm? Remember to solder the graphics card to the slot to prevent it from falling out EDIT: @geek: Don't you mean use superglue to ensure tight bond between your CPU and heat sink or socket?

I have got a 1GB Sony "micro vault tiny". It is very small and comes with a little pouch to protect it. They come in up to 4GB I think, maybe more, and I have had mine for almost two years! Still works good. Been squashed in my bag and abused but takes it all. Fast and looks great. There's my little review of that for you

Yes but don't assume prices are that cheap where dard_thesorrow lives in India. I reckon if it costs around as much where he lives as it does in Aus then buying 2GB would save a fair bit of money. Depends how much it costs over there relative to how much Indian money he wants to spend on each PC.

No problem. With XP 64-bit the latest is SP2 just in case your wondering.

Where I live it would be impossible to build a PC with 4GB RAM, dual core CPU and big fast sata drive. I'm sorry if prices in Australia are way too high for everyone one else but I can't do anything about it. The magazine I am quoting from is Australian and there are three writers who all recommend 2GB even for Vista. One of them has been writing in that same magazine for over 10 years. I get everything done with 2GB RAM that any gamer or heavy user would want to get done. You can't count the savings of 2GB over 4GB in a "$1000+" amount as I highly doubt a desk and chair would make the PC run faster. I'm talking savings with the computer hardware. It is really up to him what he gets but I do have sources for what I am saying. Don't worry about it anymore, we will see what happens. Why do plenty of people still chat about win 98 in the 95/98/ME section of MSFN? Because it works better for what they want. DirectX 10 hardly looks any different in the small number of DX10 games anyway and can reduce performance for little things like subtle differences in shadows and particles. The writers are not talking about XP. They are talking Vista. All three separate writers. 4GB may be nice but in Australia it will cost you around $40 for a 2GB stick. That is $80 for 4GB. $40 less which could get you a 9800 GT instead of a 9600 GT or a faster CPU which would make more difference. This is just my opinion as I run everything anyone would want to run in a cybercafe. Who is going to have two users logged in each with several apps open? How many apps does a cybercafe have anyway?

There is a definite chance RAM will drop in price. It is the current trend so why should it change? Meanwhile I would recommend using Win XP with 2GB then go to 4GB when Windows 7 comes out. Yeah I know Vista ain't all bad if you tweak it but if you tweak XP you CAN get it to run just about any game or standard app on 1GB RAM. Trust me, I have a P3 1Ghz system with just 512MB RAM and it runs XP just as good as the PC in my sig, just any apps and games that have been made in the past few years are slower (obviously) because it is highly tweaked. I can still go on the net with it, play online flash games, play heaps of fun older games on it etc. What is the point of 4GB in a kid's box? I can run every program any non-millionaire kid would want on 2GB or even 1GB RAM so long as the rest of the PC is fast enough. And dual-channel doesn't do much at all. I have sources for not needing 4GB too. First the benchmark I posted. Second the February 2009 issue of PC User magazine where they did benchmarks on 2GB vs 4GB in XP AND Vista. PC User Dan Gardiner and Nick Mailath write: "Adding another 2GB (for 4GB) gave more mixed results. With DDR2, most areas will still see some slight benefit, but with DDR3 some scores actually didn't budge at all, or even slid backwards. That said, Vista will certainly use up more than 2GB of RAM if given access to it, but it's hard to quantify the benefits in benchmarks..." "In most cases, you'd better off reserving the extra cash for a faster CPU or graphics card, which will give you noticeable speed gains. Likewise, most users won't notice a big difference with more than 2GB, though power users may see some small benefits from jumping to 4GB." Now 4GB ain't too bad if you have Vista Home premium or ultimate 64-bit, but if you don't then I would be getting 2GB. Depends which OS the OP wants. If he is using XP 2GB is plenty. If he is using Vista 4GB may be an option depending on whether or not he would rather get a slightly faster CPU or slightly bigger hard drive etc.

If you read my post I do agree with 500GB but I can tell you now I have 25 games sitting on my PC right now all large games which do not load anything from the CD plus about ten 700MB movies and a bunch of photos and music...and I'm only using 90GB ATM. Wow Vista and office uses that much space? Lucky I got XP then. You can still buy hard drives around 160-250GB which are just about as fast as a 500GB. Even faster than some 500GB hard drives I reckon. I thought you may need 8GB for something to do with photos. Click on the link I posted to some benchmarks though and it shows hardly and difference between 2GB and 4GB for gaming on Vista 64-bit. Just thought that if you buy 1x2GB now and 1x2GB later then it may end up cheaper than 2X2GB right now.

SP3 is not available for win xp pro x64. SP2 is the latest you can download. SP2C is just a minor update which according to wikipedia: "On 10 August 2007, Microsoft announced a minor update to Service Pack 2, called Service Pack 2c (SP2c). The update fixes the issue of the diminishing number of available product keys for Windows XP. This update will only be available to system builders from their distributors in Windows XP Professional and Windows XP Professional N operating systems. SP2c was released in September 2007." So it looks like just SP2 should be fine.

Yes I wish I could magically adjust my motherboard to support intel core i7 CPU's and while I'm there I will make DDR3 magically fit into the slot. You might want to research what you say before you say it:( i didn't say it i asked it ?? i will look around in wikipedia, not shore if it will explain the above but dose look like a good reference point. thanks. cool, i7 CPU looks like a good thing. how do i find out what i have ?? do i have it ??? i have Intel centrino 2 duel core inside hey, but look at all the cool stuff i am learning now. I was actually quoting tekkiegurl not you so don't worry about it Core i7 CPU's are new desktop processors and are not in laptops right now. I reckon you would have a mobile version of the core 2 duos. Glad to hear you are learning stuff

Why not? A 4GB kit is around $50, and a 2GB kit is $30 or so. IMO that $20 is well worth it, some games will eventually make good use of it, and he's not gonna be running 32 bit XP forever either (I for one, am no longer using XP, nor a 32 bit version of Windows). It's worth it, even just for future-proofing (besides, I hate filling slots with tiny 1GB sticks, that you'll inevitably "discard" later on, as you buy 2GB sticks for an upgrade, what a waste!) Also, the benches you quoted might have been bottlenecked elsewhere (vid card perhaps, only glanced at it) -- most benches on the web are like that these days... And some other benches seem to show it's not a waste at all: Firstly you could buy the one 2GB stick now then by the time you need 4GB you could buy another 2GB for less than $30. Maybe $20. Then your only spending $50 all together according to your prices. Secondly the computer used for these benchmarks was a powerful one...Intel Core 2 Quad QX9770 CPU, Gigabyte X38-DQ6 mobo, XFX GeForce 9800 GX2 video card, 2GB & 4GB Corsair 9136C5 RAM. Definitely not bottle necked elsewhere. And the biggest performance increase was in crysis which is not mentioned by dard_thesorrow. Really you may even end up saving money if you wait till 4GB is necessary as the price of RAM will drop more and buying 2GB now and another 2GB stick later could cost less than buying a 2X2GB sticks right now. If you wanna save money, you gotta think like this. I have to agree with buying 500GB hard drives though now that I think of it. Just thought it might be a fair bit cheaper buying six hard 250GB drives in say a bulk buy. And I would say upgradeing to 4GB if you were gaming on an 8800GT at the large res of the benchmarks you posted may help that much, but the 8800GT is probably not powerful enough for gaming at 1920x1200 ATM and I doubt dard_thesorrow will have six monitor that big anyway. Plus that is only two games. Not nine as used in the benchmark I posted.

Hey puntoMX, just wondering why you recommend so much RAM? Why do you have 8GB? 1GB up to 2GB would be plenty not to mention 32bit Windows doesn't see all 4GB. If the computers are not loaded up with heaps of intensive programs and its mainly games then 2GB is fine. If you further tweak Windows for use with just certain things you can reduce RAM usage by a fair bit. On an average day my PC's RAM usage will be well under 1GB unless I am playing a game where 2GB is a little nicer but 4GB is far overkill unless you run HUGE programs. If you are going to run Vista Ultimate on there then 4GB may help a little but 2GB is still enough. Hey I just checked my RAM usage just then... 15 tabs open in my browser+1 flash game, AVG running a scan, and all my normal background stuff running (nvidia drivers, audio drivers, windows services etc) and I'm using a little over 600MB RAM Still got 1400MB left ready to take on any large game. The games dard_thesorrow mentioned would not need more than 1400MB RAM. EDIT: Now I'm onto something: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/709/3/ A fast gaming PC with Vista Ultimate SP1 64bit. An average performance increase of just 1.6% from 2GB to 4GB. What a waste!!! 1920x1200 res gaming and hardly any good except for a small boost in Crysis. Even with a hefty 64 bit OS 4GB makes a puny amount of difference Anyway the CPU and graphics cards puntoMX has recommended are great and you would probably not need much hard drive space (250GB is heaps, you could get away with 160GB) as you only need the games and some programs on there...not a huge collection of movies and music.

Ccleaner is great! I also use AVG 8.5 and Spybot Search and Destroy 1.6.2 to scan for bad stuff, Uniblue registery booster for cleaning the registery, Windows inbuilt defragger for the HDD and Autoruns to cut out the junk at bootup.

Yes I wish I could magically adjust my motherboard to support intel core i7 CPU's and while I'm there I will make DDR3 magically fit into the slot. You might want to research what you say before you say it In this case you can't learn that, it's just bull...But yes, wikipedia has a lot of good info... My words exactly. But starcraftmaster didn't help by saying what tekkiegurl said was from wikipedia. Unless wikipedia is lying. EDIT: @fun4now: The DDR3 memory in your video card is separate from the RAM on your motherboard. The memory chips are on the actual graphics card.

Latest version is 5.1.2600.5512 Service Pack 3. I think that you can get SP3 already on the disk if you get a OEM install disk as MS does not sell retail XP Pro SP3 installs. Here is an example I found from a search on ebay: http://cgi.ebay.com.au/NEW-Microsoft-Windo...%3A1|240%3A1318 http://cgi.ebay.com.au/GENUINE-WINDOWS-XP-...%3A1|240%3A1318

Definitely FPS. With strategy next. Don't play much else. The Spiderweb Software games are awesome RPG's and I play the odd action game. And World of Goo EDIT:And whats wrong with reviving this thread? Not everyone on the forum has posted in it yet as you can see If you never revived a thread then one day the threads would cover everything and there would be nothing to talk about

Well they are basically the same. Not much noticeable difference. Depends on what brand you want more and which one is cheaper.

They are all very good IDE drives. I have the model below the Lite-On one in my PC now and it works great. Can be loud though. Don't know if they improved that. Your call as to which one.

Hey there, I read Australian PC User and have for a long time. I have noticed it as not being as good quality anymore and by the time it is printed it is out of date! Still a good mag for the informative articles and great game reviews though. Plus it come with a free DVD of software but I don't usually use the software on it. Your choice. Maybe check out some other magazines too.

Nope your motherboard is plenty good. As for the network issues make sure you have the latest drivers. I hate network problems cause there are so many advanced settings to do with networking/internet. My boards network controller is going great though.

Hi there bluebrian Little tip-don't write everything in caps. Comes across as a little rude. That aside welcome

Like what Witt3439 said. DDR3 does not fit into DDR2 slots. You have to buy a DDR3 motherboard, or you can get a motherboard that supports both DDR2 AND DDR3 with different slots. Personally, I see no need to buy DDR3 ATM because it costs a lot unless you have a core i7 system. EDIT: BTW DDR3 will not make your system much faster at all. If you already have 2GB of DDR2 RAM, the best way to give it more zip is to get a new CPU or hard drive.

I created an nlited win xp install and burned the ISO at 52x. Did not install. Went back and burnt at 12x I think. Worked fine. I have a good DVD burner but the CD's are only cheap. To get the ultimate error-free burn, get a good burner, good media, and burn at lower speeds like 16x.

^^ Yeah nice one 1nfamous! That's what you been talking about. Well I have been listening to heaps of Nickelback. Great songs that have meaning and sound awsome if you have high quality headphones. (actually, most songs sound awsome with high quality headphones lol)

Been using AVG free since version 7.0 up to 8.5 and it has been great. I cut out all the junk and it takes up hardly and resources. Cleans out all your viruses great. Definitely one of the best anti-virus programs out there and costs nothing!