Hey fly_high, regarding your specification.
Specification:
The Corsair 2GB DDR2 XMS2 Dominator PC2-8500C5 TwinX (2x1GB) is £88.11 and you could quite easily buy 4GB of memory that is running at 800Mhz (Which is not slow) instead of 2GB of 1066Mhz memory which in my opinion, is a bit of an overkill anyway. The memory that is worth taking a look at is the
OCZ 2GB (2 x 1GB) PC2-6400C4 Dual Channel Platinum Revision 2 XTC Series DDR2. The OCZ kit will be perfect and at the price its currently selling at, you can't beat it. Even if you keep these running at its stated speed of 800Mhz, it will take your Q6600 all the way up to 3.6GHz. If you are looking at taking your Quad Core further than that, this particular memory should be able to hit 900 - 950MHZ quite easily, however, you may then be limited by the Q6600 on air cooling due to the temperatures.
Another memory kit that you may be interested in is the
OCZ 4GB (2 x 2GB) PC2-6400C5 Dual Channel Vista Gold Series DDR2, once again, for the price, you just cant beat it. However please be aware that most of the 2x 2GB Memory kits out their, do not overclock well at all and if you are looking at overclocking your Q6600 above the 3.6GHz mark then do not get the above OCZ kit. Then again, as said above, you may then be limited by the temperatures of the Quad Core if you are looking to take your Quad further.
Concerning your graphics card choice. I would honestly take a look at the
Nvidia 8800 GT series. The performance that the 8800GTs offer and the price that they are selling at is phenomenal. All though, i hear that running the ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB Graphics Cards in a Crossfire mode is pretty good.
I have seen that you have chosen the Thermaltake V1 CPU Cooler, i can't say i have heard much about that particular cooler. If you have the money then take a look at the
Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme CPU Cooler, one of the best aftermart coolers out there. If you are looking at buying Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme, then you will need a 120mm fan to go with it since it doesn’t come with one.
This one would do the job nicely.
As for a Power Supply Unit.
The Corsair Units are very well known and you can't really go wrong with one. If you will be sticking with the two Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 3870 XT 512MB GDDR4 graphics cards then the
Corsair HX 620W ATX2.2 Modular SLI Compliant PSU will be perfect. Now, if you are going to buy one of the Nvidia GT series cards, then
this one will be absolutely fine.
Operating System:
If anyone is building a new system and also needs a Operating System, then their is no reason not to go with Microsoft Windows Vista at this point in time.
When Windows Vista was first released sure there were a few problems with compatibility, however, this has now changed and the support for Windows Vista is now excellent. The majority of the manufacturers out their have now released 64-bit drivers for their hardware and as regards to software, once again, the majority of software now work perfectly fine under Windows Vista. Their have also been a few problems within Windows Vista but the majority of these are now fixed thanks to the Performance and Reliability packs that Microsoft have been releasing along with other updates. Now there are still a few problems around for example, slow transfer rates across networks, from one folder to another but this seems to be only affecting a few people and not the whole user base that is using Windows Vista. Though I believe this is set to be fully fixed in Service Pack 1 (Fiji) which is due out in the first quarter of next year. This certainly isn't affecting me and I think the same goes for a lot of user’s as well.
Since there are a number of different versions of Windows Vista, you may not be completely sure on which one to purchase if you are looking to by Vista.
Here is a great graph that compares all of the editions of Windows Vista with one another. The two you are most likely looking at are Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate. I have used both Windows Vista Home Premium and Ultimate and in my opinion, Ultimate is not worth the extra £50 over Home Premium.
Now you may also be debating over either purchasing the 32-bit or the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista. If you have a processor that is capable of handling 64-bit instructions then there is no reason to go for the 32-bit edition. You won't see a massive performance increase going from a 32-bit to a 64-bit operating system as of yet since many programs have been written for 32-bit architectures. However this will be changing in the future because with 64bit being more recognized, more and more programs will be written under 64-bit architectures. When programs are released that are written specifically for 64-bit, you will then start to see a performance increase from 32-bit programs.
Now as far as gaming performance goes, in my opinion, it is now exactly the same as Windows XP, I notice no slowdowns what so ever. Now I understand that some people are still having a few problems but I believe these are very far and few between these days and I feel that some people tend to over exaggerate things a tad.
Though please take into account this is under DirectX 9. Regarding DirectX 10 performance, going on most of the responses from others, it currently isn't up to scratch and is actually better to run it under DirectX 9 in some games. Now in my opinion this has nothing to do with Vista and DirectX 10 itself. DirectX 10 is implemented just fine and it is the hardware that needs to catch up a bit. I think their is a lot more to DirectX 10 then a few people think. If someone disagrees with me on this, please post and state your reason. I would be very interested in hearing other people’s views regarding this.
If you do happen to buy Windows Vista and run a game such as Crysis under DirectX 10, you may not be particularly happy with the playability of it. If this happens, you can always run the game in a DirectX 9 mode.
Have a read through
this website, interesting and well worth reading.
