Question For Ya...

xioutlawix

<div class="IPBDescription">Regarding ram</div> As I'm sure we're aware by now, the difference between ddr333 and ddr400 (pc2700 and pc3200) is minimal, so that's not really much of an issue (although my motherboard is ddr400 compliant for when it gets better in the future),

For heavy gaming, would you guys reommend getting a gig of ddr333, or just sticking to 512megs?

Open criticisms and flames are generally welcome, even your preferred brand of ram <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->

Dezmodium

I am of course not the final say but heres my opinion.

If you have the extra dough and nothing ele to spend it on... get the gig. But if money is tough to come by I would just stick with 512. The extra 512 probably will not enhance your gaming all that much to make it really worth while.

DOOManiac

If you were planning on doing any development I'd definately say go with the 1gb.

For just pure gaming though, its a bit tougher choice. A lot of new games require 256MB, so gonna be really good to have. But I'm quite sure that when DOOM III rolls around it'd be nice to have 1gb of RAM, cause it'll probably need it. heh. Also things like Photoshop and map compiling eat up gobs of ram, if you ever plan on doing either of these.

But of course, with the HL community being the way it is, I should probably ask this: You do play other games right? I mean if HL is all you play then there's absolutely no reason to get more than 256MB ram. and no reason to have faster than a 1ghz cpu either. Hopefully you do NOT fall into this category, as the poor chaps who do really don't know what they're missing.

Oh and if you do get either 512MB or 1GB ram, make sure you're running windows 2000 or XP. Windows9x's Memory management is absolute crap, and you won't see much of anything above 256MB used by the os. NT kernel pwns 9x on memory management. Also make sure you have a fast cpu, as that's still the limiting factor. No need in having gobs of ram if you're moving at a turtle's pace. :P

Sycophant

If it's just for a gaming rig, then the performance boost from 512 -> 1024 would be mostly negligable. At this point in time, it's basically just for bragging rights. <!--emo&:p--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/tounge.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='tounge.gif'><!--endemo-->

Unless, of course, you plan on running a dedicated NS server. <!--emo&;)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/wink.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='wink.gif'><!--endemo-->

xioutlawix

Hehe, I'll list the specs of what I've got going so far so you guys can get a feel for what I'm dealing with:

Soyo Dragon Ultra Platinum Motherboard
p4 2.53ghz
windows xp professional w/ service pack 1

BTW, yes, can't wait for doom3 <!--emo&:D--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/biggrin.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='biggrin.gif'><!--endemo-->

DOOManiac

Last night Ari conned me into deciding on my next upgrade. :P

I'm gonna get a P4 2.4B. For the $ its the best buy right now, as the 2.52 is like $90 more, and the 2.2 is only $30 cheaper or so.

As far as motherboard, right now I got my eye on the <a href='http://www.newegg.com/app/viewproduct.asp?DEPA=&submit=Go&description=P4G8X' target='_blank'>Asus P4G8X Deluxe</a>