RAM Amount and GFX Card Question

[earthworm48]

Hi all,

Sorry for the question if its a bit dumb. Just looking at putting a computer together (In the UK btw to help with price scale) and, probably its just me, but it seems to be rather more expensive! I'm looking for decent RAM and see that DDR3 1333Mhz is about £100 for 4GB, so I was thinking of picking up 4GB and hoping that was enough? I'm looking to mainly use the new system for existing and upcoming games, so it would be interesting to hear what the knowledgable (sp) people here say is good. I mean I guess I could always bump up the 4gb down the road?

Also I've been a bit confused about which GFX card is worthwhile, I've normally gone for Nvidia in the past, (apart from the horrible FX period), due to problems I've had with some games and the ATi drivers and more recently the support for PhysX nvidia has. Looking at the prices of current cards though it seems a 5850 can be obtained for £220 ish easily, but the other side of the coin is probably the Geforce 470 which is about £280-300, with the 280 not being the best known brands and a bit more difficult to source.

I was wondering what the best thing to do would be? Other parts I'm looking at are the i5 750, Asus P7P55D-E Mobo, and an OCZ Stealthxstream 700W PSU.

It would be great to get some advice, I only do this every 3-4 years!

 

[Lmeow]

I suggest you get the ASUS P7P55D-E Pro or higher (Evo/Deluxe/Premium IIRC) so that you can add another HD 5850 or GTX 470 later on. Currently 4GB is more than enough, if you need to expand to 8GB buying another 4GB kit would be easy, and if you're not overclocking, DDR3 1333MHz RAM should be sufficient. Try and get lower latency RAM (indicated by 'CL', normally CL7, CL8 or CL9). If you are overclocking, you'd best be using a DDR3 1600MHz kit, which shouldn't be that much more expensive.

 

[erick81]

4GB of ram usually is plenty.Ati's drivers for the 5000 series cards has been pretty good so far.

 

[batuchka]

Go with the HD 5850 Across several respectable hardware sites HD 5850 v GTX 470 and HD 5870 v GTX 480 not a single conclude Fermi was worth the wait and the acoustics/heat/power consumption is a whole matter to worry about...after the pricing scheme...