It's not all that hard to see how much RAM you use, btw. For all you semi-computer literate people out there :p just open all the applications you would ever use, including the stuff that sucks up the most RAM. Photoshop, Maya, web browser, game (maybe not all at once...what're you doing in photoshop while fragging?). Then right-click your task bar and click task manager. Go to our preformance tab. Under Physical Memory, look at your available.

I currently have a total of 2096608 with 1378084 available. That's 2 GB with 1.3GB available. If that number is below 100KB, get more RAM. If it's above 500KB, you don't need any more RAM. IMO, most people probably don't need more than 1GB.

My numbers are roughly the same, a little bit less is available.

Yea, I'm not surprised. I honestly haven't checked with games open... with TF2 and L4D I'm willing to be I have at least 500MB remaining. With Empire:TW I'm probably closer to 300MB remaining...but that's still fine. It's only when you run out of memory and start swapping out to the hard-drive swap file that you start getting major performance hits. It's also pretty obvious because the hard drive will start grinding.

Not that I'm telling you anything you probably don't already know, Peltz. :p Still, my i7 box (whenever I build it) will probably have at least 3GB or RAM, maybe 6GB since you have to use 3 RAM sticks for max performance.

Dont worry, i know that you know what you are doing. Its just that the computer mentioned in the other thread was put together based on bragging rights not common sense. Im sure your rig will be nicely balanced.

Atleast your computer will be built with a certain goal in mind, unlike his, which was built quite randomly.

Is he rich, btw? Cause if so, I'd kinda understand. If I'd win euromillions (unlikely, as I don't play, but you never know ) one if the first things I'd do would be to build a crazy rig.

(first being buying a house/flat, second givig some petty cash to friends and family)

true enough. If money was no object I'd just keep my rig at the blazing forefront. I have a friend who's obsessed with his PC... more the graphics card than anything, though. He's the only person I know that run multiple top-end cards in tandem. But hey, whatever floats your boat, right?

Still, building a PC with a quad core, a ton of RAM, and a crappy graphics card makes little sense regardless of how much money you have. You don't skimp on the graphics card, it just shows a lack of knowledge.

Hey satis, you have a monitor thats capable of 1080p. With your new rig it might be time to upgrade the monitor aswell.

yea, actually I plan on upgrading it. Right now I'm on a 19" LCD at 1680x1050. I plan on upgrading to a 22" widescreen LCD that can push 1080p... I guess that 1920x1280 or something for a 16:9 monitor? Dunno, too lazy to look it up right now. :p Anyway, I plan on doing that before I build the i7 rig. Just keeping an eye out for a good deal.

This is my opinion and understanding of 12gb RAM in a visual form. Unless a home user is doing some massive computing and running some really complex calculation i can't see the need for such amount of RAM.

that's one of the most bizarre graphs I have ever seen.

But yes, 12GB of RAM is retarded for a desktop machine. A server could use it in some cases... certainly a database server. But even if I were doing hardcore graphics I don't know if I could justify 12GB.

On the other hand... 12GB of RAM and then make an 8GB RAM drive on bootup to hold your page file and temp files and such. Not only would all your caching be mega-fast, but when you shut down your PC all that crap would get wiped out. Assuming 12GB can be had for $200-$300, that's not so bad a plan.

Well you have to have some 3d thinking here, Dont think of it as a coil, but rather a tube or a pipe. Fuck, its impossible for me to describe in english what i had in mind.

oh, I got you... you're going all 3d on me with your graphs and stuff. What's wrong with the good old bell curve?

Stole this image but it's oddly relevant