http://www.corsair.com/_appnotes/AN804_ ... alysis.pdf

Found this Corsair marketing scam on 2gb vs 4gb. I love the conclusion part especially the final chart that shows by how many times the gain increases. Especially the Crysis minimum and they just happen to forget to mention that the average frame rate gain was a whopping 1 frame per second for 20$ as the 2gb kit is 70$ and 4gb kit is 90$ on newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductLi ... S%20Series)

Apparently for some reason the link above exludes the final part so if you click it, im not sure if you reach where needed, try pasting the entire link into your browser.

Not to mention the fact that if you run games at 1980x1200 resolution with 8800GT the gpu bottlenecks and the frames per second drop so low that even a single frame gain would show like 10+% increase. SCAM!

The ram sweetspot is 3Gb unfortunately 4gb is cheaper (atleast in Kingston case).
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EDIT: RAM prices on Newegg.

Corsair: Twin2 C5DHX.........................Corsair: Cheapest C5 RAM
1gb ddr2 800: $30 (no twin model)....1gb ddr2: $30
2gb ddr2 800: $70.............................2gb ddr2: $50
4gb ddr2 800: $90.............................4gb ddr2: $90
*In corsair case the 3gb would be a better investement but still pointless if one gets more of ram for $51 should they opt for kingston

Kingston: C6..............................Kingston: C5 HyperX
1gb ddr2 800: $26............................1gb ddr2 800: $30
2gb ddr2 800: $50............................2gb ddr2 800: $55
4gb ddr2 800: $51............................4gb ddr2 800: $114

Crucial: C6
1gb ddr2 800: $28
2gb ddr2 800: $43
4gb ddr2 800: $92
*In crucial case the 3gb would be a better investement but still pointless if one gets more of ram for $51 should they opt for kingston

Mushkin: C5 (who in their right mind would choose a name of Mushkin??)
1gb ddr2 800: $28
2gb ddr2 800: $46
4gb ddr2 800: $90
*In mushkin case the 3gb would be a better investement but still pointless if one gets more of ram for $51 should they opt for kingston

G.Skill: C5
1gb ddr2 800: $23
2gb ddr2 800: $44
4gb ddr2 800: $82
*In G.Skill case the 3gb would be a better investement but still pointless if one gets more of ram for $51 should they opt for kingston


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EDIT: Added a screenshot from newegg.

DDR3 Memory prices at newegg. Cheapest available because Cas Latency is irrelevent.

Best Deal
2GB
DDR3 1066 8500 Crucial 44.-
DDR3 1333 10600 Crucial 45.-
DDR3 1333 10666 Geil 58.-
DDR3 1600 12800 G. Skill 55.-

4gb
DDR3 1066 8500 OCZ 73.-
DDR3 1333 10600 G. Skill 90.-
DDR3 1333 10666 G. Skill 93.-
DDR3 1600 12800 A Data 90.-

Here's an ars article on Fermi (the upcoming Nvidia architecture)

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3651

When I run Dragon's Age my system memory usage is right at 3 gigs. Im also running avast antivirus, and some other small programs like Steam on Vista 64 Home prem. Some of you may enjoy running your machines maxxed out on memory but not me. 3g might be the sweet spot if the only thing you run on your machine is a game and dont run steam, or itunes, antivirus, and anything else.

I currently have 4GB on my Win7/64 box. It's fine by me, and there's definitely a bump from 2GB.

Anyway, here's an article on the Intel and AMD CPU roadmaps for 2010. Pretty simple and accessible, just for whoever is curious.

http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2 ... 582,00.asp

No, its a sweetspot because for the optimal solution for gaming everything "extra" we should consider as waste and a drain on the machine. The problem is that the more money we spend on a pc, the more expensive is going to be the price per % of improvment. If i were to upgrade from core2extreme for instance, i will have to pay more to maintain that 20% gain and it might be even impossible because there is no game where Core i7 machine is that much faster. And in core i7 and core2extreme cases we are already talking about a lot of waste below 16x10 resolution.

Regardless the above when we see that 3gb of ram is more expensive than 4gb of ram, then ofcourse we choose 4 regardless of the extra waste it produces. See that the justification doesn't come from some weird justification that i might need it in my "insert task here" but rather from the fact that it is cheaper. The corridor extremums are 2gb and 4gb and our dream is 3gb whereas we are unwilling to satisfy with 2gb then THE LOWEST COST of not choosing 2gb is $1 (look at the kingston ddr2 800 prices) which is nothing in the total price of the pc.

http://www.anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=2989&p=1
Found this ddr2 vs ddr3 test from 2007. Apparently there are some motherboards which have both ddr2 and ddr3 slots. Those motherboards used in the tests seem to have either ddr2 or ddr3 because the slots on each board look identical.

ASrock board: http://www.daxstore.it/store/components ... rog43t.jpg
We can clearly see the different RAM slots on that picture, both ddr2 and ddr3 memories can be used on that board.
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Next up! Optimal Resolution.

Btw! If anyone wonders where this is heading then allow me to explain. Once we establish what is an optimal gaming computer today, we can apply Pevils wants&needs to this model to make a suggestion as to what kind of PC she should build.

We are still missing the optimal resolution so any thoughts? I would say 1680x1050.

To me, optimal resolution is 1900x1200, but I plan on bumping up to a 23" or 24" monitor. But then again, my PC is not solely for gaming. A large monitor makes sense for coding and 3d and graphic design as well. Similarly, 3d and graphics will take every tiny bit of RAM you feed it, so I'll probably bump to 6GB or more on my eventual build.

Not that this has much to do with Pevil. I think her optimal resolution depends a lot on the size and aspect ratio of her monitor.

Thats why i would never suggest and you would never ask a pc build because I have no idea what work related stuff you would do on it. I highly doubt you and pev are anything alike though.

Your work stuff aside, could you tell the difference if a game was running in FullHD or 16x10?

Actually, yes. I run 16x10 (1680x1050) on my gaming PC, and full HD (1080i) on my home theater pc. There is a big difference to me. Of course, that's also comparing my 19" monitor to my 32" tv, so it's not really apples-to-apples.

lol, man. SO if 3gigs where the cheaper option you would go with 3gig even knowing your going to be maxing out your memory usage ?

I would go with 3gigs because it would be cheaper and knowing that i dont have excess components in my pc that do nothing. From gaming standpoint, the GPU and CPU are powerful enough to override the minor FPS penalty from pagefile.

Afterall we are both running Dragon Age, the game looks exactly the same and i have only 2gb of ddr2 800 RAM.

My old machine is now in the hands of my cousin, it runs an amd 3800 x2 2ghz cpu, 3gb ddr 400 ram, and an ati 4850. Fallout 3 looks exactly like on my intel machine, runs just as well so why did i spend so much money on the upgrade. Thats the question thats been bothering me for some time.

In some abstract world where there is no cost and consequenses, yes more is better but not when we are looking for a good balance between price and performance.

Though I agree that price/performance is important many times, there's also the question of how much money is really worth saving. For instance, if I drop $1500 into a PC... is it really worth going for 4GB instead of 6GB of RAM if the price difference is only $40?

What about a GTX 260 for $220... vs a GTX 275 for $250.. vs a GTX 280 for $290.

And of course there's the question of the SSD. do I buy a 1.5TB traditional hard drive for $100, or a 128GB SSD for $300? To most people hard drives are all about storage, so an SSD makes absolutely no sense at all... but the difference in performance is enormous. Most people agree that upgrading a PC hard drive to an SSD is the single most effective way to improve the performance of a PC.

*shrug*

This doesn't really relate to Pevil directly. Her budget is constrained to the point where many of those questions don't really matter. But in 3 months, who knows.

That depends on the resolution of the PC doesnt it. If you put a gtx 275 into a machine that runs at 1680x1050 then that card is generating excess frames which would be useless. We all agree that the future games are built with consoles in mind and the gpu of 360 and ps3 are 3 generations behind at least. So keeping that mind we will see perhaps a handful of games in the next three years that might give the 260-280 series a hard time.

If you put $1500 into a pc that runs at 1680x1050 wouldnt you be annoyed to see that someone who put $1000 can play the same games. As i said before i believe that we have reached a point where it is no longer necessary to just buy the next generation when it becomes available since the current generation can and will do for some time, especially thanks to consoles, they will prolong the life expectancy of many components.

Im done with this topic. Good luck building your pc.