Hardware What Hardware Should I Buy? - May 2009

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2009/05/06/what-hardware-should-i-buy-may-2009/1

At bit-tech, it's always time for a PC upgrade and we're here once again to help with our comprehensive buyer's guide. With hardware recommendations to suit any budget, if you're looking at improving your system, or building one from scratch, this is the place to start.

 

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!!!

 

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!"

 

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

+ Agree with TurboTab

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.

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

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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/cata...th=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 )

 

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.