Wounded 955 or new 740 BE?

4GB RAM w/ 955 and 64 bit Windows 7

and the 64 bit windows wont be too cumbersome with only four gigs of RAM?

hers
win7 ultimate 32 bit
gigabyte m68m-s2p
955 black
2 gigs Adata ddr2 800
xfx radeon hd 4650
320 gig system disk, and 1 TB storage disk
430 watt BFG PSU

Mine
win7 home premium 64 bit
MSI 770T-C45
740 black
8 gigs wintec labs ddr2 800
xfx hd 5770
320 gig Wd blue system disk, 750gig and 1 TB data disks
750 watt zepher psu

Her machine is used as our bedroom theater as well as some light video/photo editing

mine is the living room theater as well as gaming/general purpose rig

besides a bit more ram she is happy with her machine, possibly a new GC sometime down the line, I suppose my main question is will the quad help her more with editing or me with gaming? its my understanding that most games are still not using the full four cores, and a decent OC on the 740 would be more useful for me than the extra core on the 955.

of course this is just "to my understanding" and my logic may be flawed....hence my asking here....any help at all would be appreciated

both, the quadcore will be useful with heavily treaded programs, also with multi-tasking and games are starting to support more than 2 cores, so ull have the advantage in the near close future,

so in all cases ull have advantage both in real time applications and gaming  

I never had a doubt that a new 955 is better than a new 740, but in my case, if I go from my 740 back to the 955, I will have to give up four gigs of memory, trying to decide if the 955 is "that much" better, or if I should simply OC and (if I'm lucky) unlock the triple and keep all eight gigs of RAM

she's relly the multitasker, to be honest about the most multitasking I ask of my machine is to put a movie on the tv while I play dragon age or neverwinter nights2 and possibly run a torrent client in the background

the extra core in the 955 will come in handy when u multitask, bar none its faster , but the ? is do u need the xtra core, or that extra ram, 2 gigs of ram runs fine for windows 7 64bit but 4 gigs runs it better, and allows u to do more than one thing at a time and not get a slow down

th machine currently running 2 gig of memory is also only running 32 bit win7

my options are to keep the 740 and 8 gigs of ram, or go back to the 955 and drop to 4 gigs (for some reason I cant explain the 955 will only post with memory in slots 1 and 3, if I try to put a stick in either slot 2 or 4 then not only will it not post, but I get no beep code to try and decipher either) According to WIE the 740 is currently the weak point (other than the HDD of course at 5.9) at 6.8 if I swap it back to the 955 it will bring it back on par with everything else at 7.5/7.6, but then I lose 4 gigs of ram without another chance to upgrade for several months, sorry if I'm being a bit long winded but I am trying to be thourough

on the other hand, idle core temps have dropped from 38-42c average with the 955 in my machine, to 20-25c with the 740, while the 955 is idling right about 28-32c in her machine, leaving us both a bit more room to play with OC

thank you, thats really what I was looking for

using the 955 and 4 gigs allows me to give her some extra ramso both machines can run 4 gigs with win7 ultimate, and we can sell her other 2 gigs for a start to a new GC

with the 4 gigs of RAM would we be better off running 32 or 64 bit windows though?

Best answer selected by jeffinak.

with 32-bit windows you will not get all4gb of ram recognized because 32-bit os doesn't have PAE turned on, so it will only recognize up to 3.5GB for vista (not sure for Win7)
So if you do have 4gb ram 64bit is probably a better solution for you.
P.S. the disadvantages about 64bit os is that not all programs are compatible with 64bit and most programs don't take the adventage of 64 bit, so it's really your choice.

So you know, 64bit doesn't run slower*. And using only 2 slots of your RAM is faster. It allows it to run in dual instead of single channel mode (assuming you're using RAM in slots of the same color).

*More bits is inherently slower, but the loss from Windows 64 to 32 bit is not noticeable and worth the addressing space it allows.