Is 24GB overkill on Alienware ALX

way overkill if you insist on spending that much 12GB is already beyond use in a strictly gaming computer

If you use your system for 5 years or so, its not an overkill. If you upgrade every year, its is an overkill.

Tbh... even five years from now, 24GB would seem like overkill. Really, 12GB or more is only for professional workstations and servers. For now, 4GB/6GB is more than enough for gaming, and Photoshop and amateur video editing.

For gaming, it is overkill for the next few years. Very few games are even made with 64-bit executables which, so most games are restricted to 2~3GB of ram.

* The applications themselves are limited, not the OS.

5 years from now, it will still be a lot, but it won't be overkill. It only took 5 years to go from 8 megs to 128 megs.

WAAAAAAY Overkill, unless you have some serious, specilalized app that demands it.

And for most users, it's more like starting with Overkill and then doubliing it.

24 gigs is absolutely excessive in a home computer used for gaming.

12 gigs is, to be quite honest, excessive as well. If you insist on getting at least 12gigs, and plan on having the computer for quite some time like others have speculated above, get 12 gigs of 3x4GB chips that way you can upgrade, while retaining your original memory, if you really need to at a later date (which I sincerely doubt you'll find the need to do anytime soon).

After 5 years, you'll be junking the thing because it would be around 2 generations slower than what is currently available.

Case and point, Athlon X2's. They were at the top of their game 5 years ago, but have been heavily superseded by the Phenom's and the i7's.

Yep, I agree with most of what's been said.....

I have been using a XPS Gen 2 for my gaming. I bought it in 2005 and at that time it was a huge spec:
Pentium M770 2.13 Ghz
2 GB Ram (533 MHz) (DDR2) (2x1024mb)
Go 6800 Ultra (256 mb) Video card
17" (1920x1200)

I even managed to run Far Cry 2 on it. Now however it won't run Silent Hunter 5 :-(
So the software has begun to overtake the hardware.
(I think the CPU's the problem)

So I reckon you're probably right - in about 5 years 12 GB will be "the norm"

but by then there'll be no point in having the 24GB as I'd probably need a new computer anyway.

Yea good luck with the new machine, sounds like it's gonna be a beast man!

Better tell that to the legions of 5 year old computers in use today. There are 6 computers within a 100 feet of me and half of them are at least 5 years old.

I have laid eyes on 9 more over the course of the day, and all but 1 were at least 5 years old.

He did list general use.

He did mention, that he would also be gaming. Also, the pc that the guy's going to buy is by no means cheap, which would indicate that he does have a bit of cash. This would also mean that 5 years down the line, he could buy another complete rig for about the same price.

I will let him make that decision for himself. If he can afford it, there is no reason not to. Cost is the only object.

Mmm. Otherwise if his budget is somewhat limited he'd be better off maxing out other options, like GPU or getting an i7 980X EE CPU. Although my AMD Athlon 3200+ 1GB DDR & Leadtek GeForce 6800 system is still working well today, and boots up really, really fast for some reason. I'm really confused why lol.

Hi everyone, thanks for all your responses.

Based on what everyone has said, I think this might be the likely setup, although I do have one question:

CPU: Intel® Core™ i7 Processor 960(3.20GHz,4.8GT/s,8MB)
Video: 2GB ATI® Radeon™ HD 5970 graphics card
Mem: 6GB 1600MHz (3x2GB) Tri Channel Memory
Disk: 512GB Solid State Drive Raid 0 "Stripe" Dual HDD - (2x256GB)
Network: Killer™ Xeno™ Pro Network card

I've opted for the faster 6GB memory which can always be upgraded (there are 3 more slots) - If find it's insufficient in the future.

The question I have is, is it worth getting: Intel® Core™ Core i7-980x (3.33GHz 12MB 6.4GT/sec)
at an additional cost of £500!

I'm not sure whether the 960 can be overclocked whereas I believe it's relatively easy on the 980x....bearing in mind this is a system I'll probably have for the next 5 years

not worth it