Originally Posted by
Khamsin
Some more questions:
Will there be any issues with a setup like:
Windows Vista Home 64-bit
Windows XP Home 32-bit (dual boot)
nVidia 8800GT
Intel T9300 2.5GHz
A couple RAID 0 HDs
4 GB RAM
Will XP have issues when I've booted up under that OS? Aside from only recognizing 3 GB instead of all 4, will it complain or not fully take advantage of anything?
And if I just go 32-bit all around, maybe 32-bit Vista Ultimate and 32-bit XP Home or something, and 3 GB memory, will I be missing out on anything?
Or even just Home vs Ultimate, for that matter.
XP shouldn't have any issues... though I'm always a bit wary of dual booting. In theory though there should be no issues. Just so you know Vista x64 has a problem when booting up with 4GB. If you're building this system, install the OS with 2GB, download all the hotfixes through windows update, then once everything's done install the other 2GB. Otherwise a lot of people complain of blue screens or vista installation not completing at all.
You won't be missing out on much by going 32-bit all around. If you're a hardcore PC gamer x64 is the way to go, and it seems to be a bit more stable and a tad quicker in general use. I'm sure you know you'll come across the odd driver issue in x64, as well as not being able to run older applications. Most things these days have 64 bit driver support or run perfectly fine under x64, so it's not as big an issue as it used to be.
I don't like that processor, I'd recommend the q6600 quad or the E8400 duo, both are proven good processors.
Personally Ultimate seems like a waste of money, Home Premium has all the features anyone would need, Ultimate just has the extras which are mostly pointless to me. I wouldn't use their data backup system as I have my own software, and everything else are just silly add-ons. My advice is to save some cash and go with Home Premium.
Finally, x32 deducts your GPU memory from your RAM total... so it's 3GB - 512MB from the 8800gt = 2.5GB available memory.