[Colonol Dekker]

What's the 32bit ram limit?
I've got 3 slots free

[colecampbell666]

2.8 GB or so.

[Tyrian]

The difference between 32 bit and 64 bit is that 64 bit generally runs faster, because you can handle more data at once.  Also, it is the only way to make your computer recognize more than 3GB of RAM, unless you have an Intel motherboard that supports the /PAE switch.  The reason 32 bit systems can't see the 4th gig of RAM is because the memory addresses that would normally point there are reserved for the BIOS.  The /PAE switch, which is put in your boot.ini (only if running XP, I think), changes the way an Intel motherboard handles that last block of addresses.  It redirects them to point at your RAM, enabling your machine to use that 4th gig.

The downside is that in 64 bit OSes, you lose the ability to run 16 bit programs, which is actually a huge problem.  While most programs you run nowadays are 32 bit, almost all of them still use 16 bit installers.  So if you buy a 32 bit program that says "64 bit compatible," it will run, but you might not actually be able to install it.  In most cases, though the 64 bit OS will silently substitute a 32 bit installer in place of the 16 bit one, however, I have run into instances where it doesn't.  (I was installing a $300 voice recognition package on a friend's 64 bit OS, and the silent 32 bit installer substitution failed, making it impossible to run that program.)  

In theory, you can get around this problem by virtualizing a 32 bit OS and running the installer on that, but you'll need VMWare Tools in order to run it on the virtual machine, and set the install directory to the physical disk, not the virtual one.  

I guess the short answer is that it's really up to you.  It depends on whether or not you think the benefits are worth the risks.  And before I forget, you should make sure your CPU supports a 64 bit instruction set.  If it doesn't, you'll have to upgrade to one that does, else it won't work.

[Colonol Dekker]

2 gb is enough for now. When the world catches up. I'll upgrade.

[Hippo]

40% of people who complain about vista would have complained just as loud during the 9x/NT/ME to Xp switch.
20% of people who complain about vista jump on the 'lol it sucks' bandwagon.
15% of people who complain about vista had legitimate issues due to 3rd party drivers and hardware (read: not Microsoft) not being as backwards compatible as thought.
15% of people knew that it was going to be a rough transition from xp onwards, but understand that it was a necessary progression and didn't complain.
10% other.

[Nuke]

i just realized winxp pro 64 is actually fairly decent as far as windowses goes. has most of the low level modernizations that vista has, super stable codebase based of server 2003. its easy to crack. that part is important.

now i need to figure out how to hack my oem windows vista ultimate edition to work on my newly refunctional old computer. i need to run vista on there so i can use my 3d glasses with the new drivers, which are only available for vista 32.

[Al Tarket]

i don't use vista, there is something about that program that makes mysterious errors when you don't need them. it might be my end, however vista remains off my machine until microsoft comes up with an os designed specifically for internet and gaming experience.

4gb issue, are you sure?. i just bought some 2x2gb ddr2 800mhz patriot low latency. i dont want to have the problems your described on my new machine that is still only half built. it would be a big waste of money.

[Tyrian]

Tiny , but before I pitch this new rig to my friend, I would like to know if the changes I made with respect to mobo, RAM, GPU, PSU, and monitor are beneficial, or if anyone has any better suggestions. 

As always, any feedback is much appreciated.

[colecampbell666]

4gb issue, are you sure?. i just bought some 2x2gb ddr2 800mhz patriot low latency. i dont want to have the problems your described on my new machine that is still only half built. it would be a big waste of money.

Yes, there is an issue with 4 GB RAM on 32-bit OSes.

Tyrian, Go for the 4870, I still think it'll be better, and cheaper, as benchmarks say. Get two 64 GB SSD HDDs and put them on RAID0 for the OS/games, and two 640 GB on RAID1 for storage, you don't need that CPU, the 9450 is good enough for a high end system, and easily overclockable to that speed.

[CP5670]

Tyrian, Go for the 4870, I still think it'll be better, and cheaper, as benchmarks say.

They're cheaper, but not better. The GTX 280 is also down to $400 at this point.

Also, keep in mind that we're dealing with a $4000 budget here. I've seen these cases before and top performance rather than bang for the buck is typically the primary consideration for such buyers.

[colecampbell666]

Good point. Ditch the CPU, and use the extra 500$ to add the HDDs I suggested, that will give a huge performance boost.

[[DW]-Hunter]

Windows XP 64 Bit is a 64bit emulated piece of crap from what i hear. BTW, Are you building a server? because from the looks of it your building yourself a wannabe cray supercomputer. BTW, if your gunna make a server and spend a GRAND on a processor, AMD Opteron is better then Core Duo.

[Topgun]

a note on Vista.
the only real problems with vista (not driver stuff...) has to do with the way it handles users. as long as you keep it a single-user setup, you should be fine.

[Tyrian]

For those who have asked, this is not a server.  It's a gaming rig with a $4000 budget. 

What I'm most worried about is the motherboard.  I usually prefer to deal with ASUS boards, but for this one, I had to use an EVGA.  Has anyone had any experience with that brand's motherboards?  (I know that they are well known for their GPUs.)

[Hippo]

nothing wrong with evga boards other than some series not handling s.m.a.r.t. data and occasionally giving off some wonky temp readings (but thats what 3rd party 5.25" devices are for)

[Tyrian]

Will the improper handling of SMART data cause any problems with the hard drives, like saying they're about to fail, when they're really fine?  And will the potentially weird temp readings trigger a thermal failsafe shutdown?  (I've had that happen before with certain ATI cards being run on particular Northbridge chipsets.) 

These issues are of concern to me because I'm going back to university this fall and I'm not going to be around in the event some part starts misbehaving.  I really need the motherboard (and everything else) to be solid. 

EDIT:  This isn't one of the boards that misreports SMART and temp data, is it?

[Hippo]

they flat out don't handle it. you can use something like hdtune to assess the status of the drive, but it cant give you the temperature or erroraneous passes logs or anything

the temperature passing to windows is only in that module, the overheat and everything are fine

http://www.xoxide.com/nzxt-sentry-1-fan-controller.html

[Tyrian]

Based on the fact that a board doesn't handle data the way it should, I'm a little leery of putting it in any system.  If designers know a board won't be able to handle data like SMART and temp data, they should filter it out.  And if that data has to be filtered out, it makes me question the designers even more for the fact that they can't get their board to work with semi-standard data streams.  I'm not getting a good feeling here...So I've gone back to an ASUS board, this time the P5N64WS.  Link is in the first post.

[CP5670]

I would stay away from anything that doesn't handle basic functionality like SMART. Such a board is simply defective. However, EVGA's boards are basically reference Nvidia models and I highly doubt that all of them have a problem like this. It's probably limited to a specific board or series.

[Hippo]

hence why i said some series

and to be honest, i'd rather have a motherboard that doesn't tell me that the hard drive has 2 bad bits at the end of the platter, than a motherboard that claims to support 3 way sli with only 2 pci-ex16 ports that also costs 50% more for no particular reason, and is based off the same model that the evga's are