What Hardware Should I Buy? - May 2009

Would mostly agree but no AMD Phenom II X3 720 for £115?! No Dell 2209WA (e-ips panel) for £180?

Good budget system...but by making a compromise on the Case (smaller Coolermaster) and a (slightly smaller 320Gb) hard drive, you could knock the price down by a further £25-£30

A brilliant, cheap gaming PC for £360......almost an 'impulse' purchase.

neither the Intel E5x00 nor E7x00 supports virtualisation. it might be something power-users really need seeing Win7 is making it so easy.

all other recommendations are great. i personally won't say p183 is worth waiting as it merges towards the 900 rather than keeping the elegant look.

@ Gaming Workhorse. The Q6700 & Gigabyte GA EP45-UD3P can be found at scan for £268, you just saved £20. If you never want to use Crossfire, the EP45 UD3R, could be selected, saving another £18. Put that money towards some nice Blu-rays. If you want to go down the AMD route, the X3 720 seems the best value @ £120. Just my 2 cents, still a great article.
PS, why the hell does the 30 inch NEC, refuse to drop in price, at this rate my kidney is in serious jeopardy:)

The 1 TB F1 spinpoints, can be found 90p cheaper at Ebuyer, because of its free delivery!!!

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
neither the Intel E5x00 nor E7x00 supports virtualisation. it might be something power-users really need seeing Win7 is making it so easy.

That's a good point, but XP mode will only be supported on W7 ultimate or professional, users running the most expensive versions of an OS, probably won't buy budget CPUs.

Guys, good call on reccommending the Vertex for the premium kit! ;)

However, if i'm not mistaken the Vertex is NOT a dual controller drive. It uses a single Illindinx (or smth) controller, and they tweaked it for responsiveness and not speed. Read all about it at Anand's excellent coverage of the thing.

As someone who's just had to replace his 1 year old gigabyte motherboard (X38-DQ6) because it's failing (*looses* hd's/ethernet ports while running, crashes regularly) I say steer clear.

Why do some sites insist on saying that a 32bit OS can't use more than 3GB or 3.5GB ram, its simply not true.

"it’s extremely hard to justify not having 4GB of RAM, just as long as you’re running the 64-bit operating system required to take advantage of more than 3GB of system memory. "

"just make sure you're running a 64-bit OS like Windows Vista Home Premium to make use of more than 3GB of system memory!"

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
neither the Intel E5x00 nor E7x00 supports virtualisation. it might be something power-users really need seeing Win7 is making it so easy.

Do you care about WinXP when using Vista? I think it's over rated to be honest.

+ Agree with TurboTab

Would mostly agree but no AMD Phenom II X3 720 for £115?!

What motherboard would you pair it with? Plus you're losing a core if you're comparing it to the 940 and pairing a £115 CPU with a £150 motherboard and expensive DDR3 doesn't make sense.

However, if i'm not mistaken the Vertex is NOT a dual controller drive. It uses a single Illindinx (or smth) controller, and they tweaked it for responsiveness and not speed. Read all about it at Anand's excellent coverage of the thing.

My fault for not changing the text from last month :( EDIT: Fixed.

Originally Posted by wuyanxu
neither the Intel E5x00 nor E7x00 supports virtualisation. it might be something power-users really need seeing Win7 is making it so easy.

all other recommendations are great. i personally won't say p183 is worth waiting as it merges towards the 900 rather than keeping the elegant look.

To be honest, I doubt there will be many users that will need the hardware virtualisation. I would tend to think that if they know what they are doing enough to use the HW virtualisation then it wouldn't be too much bother to use the software version instead, something like MS's VirtualPC.
As for the case, that is one issue I always tend to ignore as a case is a very personal choice. Once you find a case that has the features you need its all about the aesthetics.

All in all a very good clear article.

Originally Posted by Gazbarber
Why do some sites insist on saying that a 32bit OS can't use more than 3GB or 3.5GB ram, its simply not true.

Both comments are true. 32bit systems can be written to use more than 4GB of RAM but these tend to be either Linux based or server based, such as MS Server 2003/08. Current operating systems such as XP, Vista, Win7 can not use more than the stated RAM while in 32bit form.

Originally Posted by Gazbarber
Why do some sites insist on saying that a 32bit OS can't use more than 3GB or 3.5GB ram, its simply not true.

"it’s extremely hard to justify not having 4GB of RAM, just as long as you’re running the 64-bit operating system required to take advantage of more than 3GB of system memory. "

"just make sure you're running a 64-bit OS like Windows Vista Home Premium to make use of more than 3GB of system memory!"

You also have factor in graphics card memory, hard drive cache etc, or are we missing something?

4GB max addressable, if you’re using a 512mb gfx card then you’re still left with 3.5GB usable which is what the entry level describes.
HDD cache may or may not be addressable by the OS but even so even a 'massive' 32mb for HDD out of 3.5gb is not much, still leaves you with more than 3GB, and Even 3.5GB is better than 2gb, no?

If you’re buying a modern machine you should get a 64bit OS just so that add-in cards esp. SLI/X-fire don't reduce your usable ram to piddling amount, especially if you have say 2x1gb cards in a machine your effective ram is around 2GB.

If you already have a 32bit OS then upgrading to 4gb (for effective 3 .5gb or even 3gb) from say 2gb or 1gb is a very cheap and effective upgrade, one that will travel with say upgrading to windows 7 64bit.

Sadly Be Quiet! doesn't sell its excellent PSUs in the USA, but this Corsair TX650W is a great alternative

You can find some in the US, but they are the Straight Power Series.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817426001
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=347&zenid=a64ec68e89f297897c5d9ea3f3bc57b1

Originally Posted by pizan
You can find some in the US, but they are the Straight Power Series.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817426001
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catalog/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=347&zenid=a64ec68e89f297897c5d9ea3f3bc57b1

You can't even buy straight power in the UK. I wouldn't bother.

No intel SSDs in there - shame!

To confuse the topic a bit more, although a 32bit OS can address memory above 4Gb with some tricks, different versions of windows are hard limited to certain memory levels, all documented here. For example, Win 2003 Server Standard can only 'see' 4Gb of Ram, no matter how much you have in there (annoying if you've just bought two servers with 8Gb each :()

Originally Posted by Gazbarber
If you already have a 32bit OS then upgrading to 4gb (for effective 3 .5gb or even 3gb) from say 2gb or 1gb is a very cheap and effective upgrade, one that will travel with say upgrading to windows 7 64bit.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

If you read the article posted above you will see some interesting stats. Depending on what it is that you do with your system you will actually see very little benefit in increasing your RAM above 2GB. Games seem to limit out around 2GB with very little FPS or available increase in graphics settings when using more than 2GB of RAM or even more. Of course there are some benefits when encoding, graphic designing and of course major benefits if using virtualisation software to run multiple environments at once.

I for one am running Windows XP (32bit) with 4GB of RAM but I am also using Windows7 RC1 (64bit) and it is the 64bit version that I will be using (you get both with retail versions of the OS) when 7 is actually released. Not because I have to, not because it gives any major benefits, but purely because I see no reason not upgrade to 64bit.

Originally Posted by SchizoFrog
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

If you read the article posted above you will see some interesting stats. Depending on what it is that you do with your system you will actually see very little benefit in increasing your RAM above 2GB. Games seem to limit out around 2GB with very little FPS or available increase in graphics settings when using more than 2GB of RAM or even more. Of course there are some benefits when encoding, graphic designing and of course major benefits if using virtualisation software to run multiple environments at once.

I for one am running Windows XP (32bit) with 4GB of RAM but I am also using Windows7 RC1 (64bit) and it is the 64bit version that I will be using (you get both with retail versions of the OS) when 7 is actually released. Not because I have to, not because it gives any major benefits, but purely because I see no reason not upgrade to 64bit.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/memory/2008/07/08/is-more-memory-better/1

I highly disagree that 2GB of memory is enough. 4GB should be the absoulte minimum for all Vista machines these days - it's too cheap not to pass up.

Originally Posted by SchizoFrog
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/memory-module-upgrade,2264.html

If you read the article posted above you will see some interesting stats. Depending on what it is that you do with your system you will actually see very little benefit in increasing your RAM above 2GB. Games seem to limit out around 2GB with very little FPS or available increase in graphics settings when using more than 2GB of RAM or even more. Of course there are some benefits when encoding, graphic designing and of course major benefits if using virtualisation software to run multiple environments at once.

I for one am running Windows XP (32bit) with 4GB of RAM but I am also using Windows7 RC1 (64bit) and it is the 64bit version that I will be using (you get both with retail versions of the OS) when 7 is actually released. Not because I have to, not because it gives any major benefits, but purely because I see no reason not upgrade to 64bit.

I wouldn't build a machine with less than 4GB of RAM in it these days. For the most part though, I'd be looking at 6 or 8GB minimum - 4GB just doesn't cut it for me in a desktop machine, although I've just specced up a new laptop with 4GB of RAM in it and it's an ultraportable. It'll be installing Windows 7 x64 (I've specced Vista Business x64) when it arrives.

Case in point is that I've only got five browser windows open (maybe 20-30 tabs total) on my work machine at the moment and I'm using 48 percent of the 8GB installed. I don't see any reason not to buy lots of RAM these days since it's so damn cheap. I remember a friend of mine telling me "you can never have too much RAM" when 2MB of RAM was a lot and that still rings true today IMO.

It's not about whether it makes a massive performance difference in one application benchmark - computing is changing and I'm fairly sure you don't just have the one browser window open and nothing else running in the background. It's impossible to consistently benchmark typical system resource usage without spending days testing, but adding more RAM to an ailing system generally gives it a new lease of life.

As for 64-bitness, there are benefits to 64-bit beyond just increasing the amount of addressable memory. 64-bit computing is probably one of the biggest areas of computing where there is a lot of confusion. The problem at the moment is that most of us are still running 32-bit operating systems and when development budgets are tight, you're only going to write one piece of code... it's the 32-bit version of course, because it runs on both x86 and x86-64 CPUs in 32-bit mode, regardless of the version of Windows you're running. If you head into the world of Linux, you'll see some big advances with 64-bit applications thanks to the open source software development community.

As more people adopt a 64 bit OS, developers will start to code for larger amounts of RAM, for multimedia and gaming 6/8 GB will soon become the the little black dress, in a gamer's closet.

NB - I do not wear dresses!

I do agree as I mentioned that in some circumstances more RAM is not only recommended but needed. However, with regards to Bindibadgi... you say 4GB is the min and the only comment regarding this is because 'it's too cheap not to pass up'. Just because something is cheap does not mean you need it, or should I fill my spare drive bays with DVD writers? I'm sure that is not the point you intended but it is how it came across to me. In response to Tim S... Browsers are known to be ineffiencet with RAM resources with Firefox as an example. If that is left open doing nothing at all eventually it consumes growing amounts of RAM and needs to be closed (unless tweaked to drop resources when minimized) to release the cached RAM. However, as I have said, I have 4GB in a 32bit system and even with multiple browsers+tabs, 50GB+ music loaded in to Media Player, Google Desktop, Outlook, Messenger Live... all running my RAM is stable around 35-40% (of the addressed 3-3.5GB). If you are using Vista, then that is another example of how inefficent Vista is and is something that is much better within Win7. So far in XP or Win7 my system is yet to cross 50% usage unless gaming and even then the max I have seen upon viewing Task Manager is around 70%. But my opinion is that to say you need more RAM just incase you want to open multiple browsers with even more tabs is not a good arguement.

In Tim S's case, I imagine a large chunk of ram is taken up by Photoshop et al.

Originally Posted by SchizoFrog
I do agree as I mentioned that in some circumstances more RAM is not only recommended but needed. However, with regards to Bindibadgi... you say 4GB is the min and the only comment regarding this is because 'it's too cheap not to pass up'. Just because something is cheap does not mean you need it, or should I fill my spare drive bays with DVD writers? I'm sure that is not the point you intended but it is how it came across to me. In response to Tim S... Browsers are known to be ineffiencet with RAM resources with Firefox as an example. If that is left open doing nothing at all eventually it consumes growing amounts of RAM and needs to be closed (unless tweaked to drop resources when minimized) to release the cached RAM. However, as I have said, I have 4GB in a 32bit system and even with multiple browsers+tabs, 50GB+ music loaded in to Media Player, Google Desktop, Outlook, Messenger Live... all running my RAM is stable around 35-40% (of the addressed 3-3.5GB). If you are using Vista, then that is another example of how inefficent Vista is and is something that is much better within Win7. So far in XP or Win7 my system is yet to cross 50% usage unless gaming and even then the max I have seen upon viewing Task Manager is around 70%. But my opinion is that to say you need more RAM just incase you want to open multiple browsers with even more tabs is not a good arguement.

The price difference between 2GB of DDR2 and 4GB of DDR2 considering the potential performance benefits for Vista (and Win 7) is considerable. It's been well documented.

I'm currently running about 4-5 programs and I've USED 2.1GB of memory. With Photoshop open that will jump to over 3-4GB out of my 6GB.

You're saying "oh inefficient use of memory" but that only means you NEED MORE to use the programs. I LIKE using Firefox with all its addons, and I leave it open all day because I'm on the net all day. I don't want to have to worry about memory management about as much as I need to worry about overheating or my internet dropping - and nor do others.

Many modern games use a large chunk of memory so why limit yourself when investing in space and free overhead is really not that much money at all?

You're only seeing 70% memory use because you're likely using more pagefile. Windows will always aim to keep a certain percentage free to prevent a sudden slowdown on sudden program access - chances are your PC is slower because of it.

lol @ Turbotab...

I'm not so sure. Technology advancement doesn't seem to be going the way of just using more RAM. Look at current i7 rigs and they use 3-6 as standard. The industry is pushing faster RAM by using DDR3 and even DDR5 on GPUs. There is a need to increase possible amounts for those who need it to run certain software or for those who just want to ever push the 'Extreme' benchmark but as standard, for the average user or even gamer? I think we are a long way off from 4GB being the upper limit.