Help with potential pc

[s_h12345]

Hey guys, im thinking of buying a new pc from dell, its going to be the studio xps as its quite good and cheap. I've been trying to lower the price down of the pc my upgrading bits myself.

Im planning to buy the base unit with i7 920, 3GB DDR3 1066, 1TB ram and 1gb GT220 graphics card.

My questions are:

If I buy 3 x 2gb of ram will it still use tri channel? there will be 9GB in total and will use all 6 slots. would I have to place the 1 GB ram sticks as 2,4,6 and the 2GB sticks as 1,3,5?

Also which graphic cards can I buy without changing the power supply? the power supply is 360W but dell support said it can do a max of 425W. I think the ati 4850 1GB isn't bad or should i go for 4870 512mb or 4890 512mb?

Also one last question, im going to get the SP2309W dell monitor? any comments about it being good or bad?

Any help would be great

 

[Helloworld_98]

1) can't answer.

2) you'd be cutting it close with a 4850, let alone a 4890, and you can't get them in 512MB's. 4870 512MB's are a bad buy because after 1680x1050 the performance just drops, you need the 1GB model. The 4850 1GB is a bad buy because it can't make use of the extra 512MB.

 

[s_h12345]

thanks for replying, which cards would you recommend with a 360W power supply which is decent for games? with an i7 will an ATI be better or Nvidia?

 

[Helloworld_98]

^ the only card for that PSU with an i7 would be a 4670. and no you won't be able to game with it, build your own PC if you want to do that.

ATI or nvidia, it won't matter if the CPU is amd or Intel, there will be no performance difference.