[留档]Purely subjective story of computer build for a friend. 8GB vs 4GB Vista 64

Built a rig for a buddy that is going into his VapoLS. Long story short, he has more funds than patience and contracted me to build him a top end gaming system. Now before I say anything else, I'm saying top end, not Ultimate unlimited budget. So here are parts I chose
Asus P5E-I've had great experience running this board on 8gb ie 4x2gb ddr2 dimms in the past, and this was paramount to gain stability yet have oc'ability.
Intel 8400 cpu. We considered quad core but fps meant more to him NOW and he doesn't do anything else on this PC. We will upgrade once he needs too for quad.
Mushkin PC6400 4-4-4 4gb kit x 2. Damm good pricing at $108 or something at newegg, and I've had good luck running this in pairs for 8gb on the Asus P5E. Now I must admit that I've never really oc'd them much b/c the 2 prior builds were for Photoshop users who were too "chicken" I'll call them lol to oc. Actually, the run very "mission" critical work and to them the risk of crashing could fubar hours of work, so I understand. Needless to say, 8GB is "alot" of ram for now, who knows in 1 yr it might be like 1gb on XP was. Personally I run 4gb of the 8000 4gb Redline at home, and have it hummning at 1050mhz at 5-5-5 everyday . Same chips, different rating lower mhz, tighter timings.
Mushkin 800W PSU-big MOFO- we got a deal on it so yeah
9800GX2 XFX video card. OMG I want one now!!!

One issue was the tab on the PCI express power was offset on the PSU . We contacted Mushkin and they sent out an adapter that got here in 2 days . Used a 7800GTX in the mean time. Installed Vista 64 as he wants to play newer DX10 games, and running at 4.2ghz on my water setup(I live in IL, he's in CA--so Vapo had to wait till it got to him) DAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMM I have the same setup but with 4gb and I couldn't believe how much more fluid the OS felt.

My Vista install is only weeks old so it's not plugged up with needless junk, or spyware. Plus no pron on that computer lol. Anyway, for giggles I took 4gb out and it felt pretty much the same as my computer then. I will say this, and I'm sure I'll get flamed, that for w/e reason Vista "felt" faster with his Nvidia card in there versus my 3870(not X2). Maybe it's my install or my card or w/e. Maybe it's a weird driver issue. However, I did "rob" his 2nd 4gb kit to put in mine, and sure enough WAMMMM faster than hell. I did downclock to 970mhz at 5-5-4 as this is what I tested his system at and I didn't want to fubar my OS as this was just a quick test to see if the feel of my OS changed which it did. Now I couldn't really tell any differences in benches. Super PI, 3dmark all were about the same, within varience of runs anyway. So I really didn't spend alot of time getting SS's etc...

Just wanted to put this out there for those people considering 8GB of ram on Vista. I didn't think it would make that big of a difference in the feel of the OS. If I had to compare it, I would say it would be something like how moving from 512mb to 1gb of ram in XP was. 1GB to 2gb was a nice jump, but 512mb to 1gb made XP for me nice, and was very noticable to me. Alot less disk paging, and everything was pretty smooth in XP. Now Vista on 8GB runs great, probably better than XP on 2gb, but I'm just comparing the jump in ram volume if that makes any sense. Actually, my best guess would be more like 768mb or ram compared to 2gb on XP, but I think I'd be splitting hairs