How is this specs for a 'top-end' PC?

[nocilah]

that's exaggerating a bit, vista runs just fine with only 1GB of ram, and there's still a whole lot free. 2GB will definitely be enough for now.

depends,

right now my windows vista is using 848Mb Ram. I have windows media player open 2x browser windows and MSN running and some yahoo widgets.

Windows Vista LOVES Ram.

2.5GB - 3GB or have a sluggish OS with a pagesys file going crazy everytime you open a window.

I havent even opened Flash, Photoshop or Dreamweaver.

 

[nGAGEd55]

not in vista ATM, but when i played with it had WMP playing and Opera open with a few web pages, and AFAIK it used round about 600MB.

No doubt Vista uses more Ram than XP, but saying 2GB isn't enough is a bit of an exaggeration IMO.

EDIT:

Windows Vista on startup uses about 500Mb then dont forget all your other proggies.

Just booted into Vista, at startup, before I started Opera the memory usage was 362MB out of my 1GB that I have ATM (right now with Opera and 8 tabs open it's using 390MB)

EDIT2: with WMP playing music the usage only went up to 403MB

 

[kingrob]

Vista doesn't use all the RAM at once, it keeps a lot of it in 'pre-fetch', so if a program needs it, it can allocate it straight away. It might look like Vista is using all the RAM, but it isn't really.

Would also say 2GB sounds good, but I'm sure you can make the change from XP to Vista with 1GB.

 

[nGAGEd55]

Vista doesn't use all the RAM at once, it keeps a lot of it in 'pre-fetch', so if a program needs it, it can allocate it straight away. It might look like Vista is using all the RAM, but it isn't really.

ATM the amount of free memory is like 20MB or something crazy like that, but it seems Vista makes much better use of free memory. The used memory is still reporting just above 400MB. I think in XP it didn't subtract the system cache from the amount of free memory that it reports.

 

[nocilah]

not in vista ATM, but when i played with it had WMP playing and Opera open with a few web pages, and AFAIK it used round about 600MB.

No doubt Vista uses more Ram than XP, but saying 2GB isn't enough is a bit of an exaggeration IMO.

EDIT:

Just booted into Vista, at startup, before I started Opera the memory usage was 362MB out of my 1GB that I have ATM (right now with Opera and 8 tabs open it's using 390MB)

EDIT2: with WMP playing music the usage only went up to 403MB

well... i think it depends on what you are going to use your pc for. I tend to do alot of flash dev and photoshop work and both those appz can be very ram hungry so i filled up all my ram slots.

Previoulsy I had 1.5Gb Ram and I have noticed a remarkable improvement with 3Gb.

Up to the individual...

But what you say about Vista utilises memory is true. It does seem effecient

 

[werner]

512mb is passable but slow
1gb will work ok.
2gb or more is ideal.
there, debate settled

 

[scotty777]

um from wat i've heard, vista works just fine with 512mb, only thing is if you planning on use other programes, like lets go extreme and say um mine sweeper, then you going to experince some slowness, btw a gig of ram fine is pecfect, only i mey run a little slow at times, but as werner said 2 gig's is great, but i think 3 gig's maybe overkill, unless you like running 3dmark, photoshop, internet explorer, wpm, and scan for viruses, but if you ganna do that why don't you get 8gigs(4x 2gig cards).

 

[ShockG]

I differ from you wrt the power supply, I think CoolerMaster makes excellent power supplies - in fact, I've been running the 450W RealPower PSU in my rig and it's rock-solid. Also have a look at that link that I posted for it, the specs of that power supply is pretty impressive and the reviews & awards just as good.

Trust me you don't want to take a chance with cooler master. I've used so many high end power supplies and I can tell you that with all that hardware you don't want to take a chance. I have with me an Enermax Galaxy 850Watt, have had the 1KW, tested and benched on Aopen/Fotran 700Watt unit, Antec 600Watt, Enermax Noisetaker 600watt and numerous other units and I can tell you the Enermax (and PC Power units) is by far the best.

Not talking about reviews but stuff I've tested personally with the best hardware money can buy.
As for motherboards, Asus haven't had the fastest motherboard since.... forever. Right now the Asus Striker Extreme is the worst NF6 board out there, giving the lowest overclocks out of every other NF6 based motherboard.

And I'm not just riding on the Striker, right now I have the fastest PC in the country and it was powered by the ASUS Striker Extreme, but if I had the Abit IN9-MAX or the DFI Lanparty the scores would be much better.

Right now I also have 3 Asus motherboads with me, the P5N-32SLI Deluxe, the P5B-E Plus (Green), the Striker and for comparison also the Intel BadAxe2 and Abit AW9D-MAX. Trust me the Abit is superior by a large margin clock for clock.
@ 4.4GHz on the X6800 I could only get 202,000 on the Asus, moved to the Abit and recorded 211K in Aquamark3 (Granted not exact clock speed, but Striker couldn't make the speed anyway)

As for Memory Corsair is good, but the brand will do nothing for you if the sticks aren't using good chips. Since nobody other than Hynix, Elpida, Infinion, Samsung and Winbond make they're own ram the chips used are more important than the brand on the stick. OCZ VX and XTC line for DDR2 is very good, Same goes for the Team Group, G.Skill and Crucial stuff.

Don't let the brand misguide you, the brand does not make the product, but the actual silicon and for the amount of money you willing to throw down, that's where you should be looking. Anandtech if fine and the like, but they not going to push the ram to it's limits like on XS, VR-Zone and the like.

 

[nocilah]

um from wat i've heard, vista works just fine with 512mb, only thing is if you planning on use other programes, like lets go extreme and say um mine sweeper, then you going to experince some slowness, btw a gig of ram fine is pecfect, only i mey run a little slow at times, but as werner said 2 gig's is great, but i think 3 gig's maybe overkill, unless you like running 3dmark, photoshop, internet explorer, wpm, and scan for viruses, but if you ganna do that why don't you get 8gigs(4x 2gig cards).

true, but lets face it windows vista is not designed for the machines of today, i think soon we will all have 3GB Ram 1Tb Disk Space and whole lot more.

I guess i will lean toward 3Gb cuz I actually make a living from my PC, so i will pump it to the extreme. I like the concept of never really having to shutdown a program, and extra Ram affords me that luxury.

2Gb should be okay.

OT: 2GB ram modules DDR 400? <-- exists?

 

[ShockG]

I'd take Dual Channel 2GB than single channel 3GB anyday.
Esp on an AMD powered system. I suppose once we get to DDR3 PC12000 then you could run single with any amount of ram, but the 5GB/sec I lose running 3GB instead of 2GB isn't worth it L:/

 

[Vampir0]

You really going to buy all this? DAMN!!!!!! I wish, I wish!

I paid almost R15000 for mine by now, so what is that monster gonna cost you?