New PC Questions (Buying, SSDs, Graphics Cards, and DIMM)

[Yoli]

Yeah. Overclocking sounds interesting, but I'm not going to try that just now. Something that could be worth looking more into later though - I can always come back to it if it turns out I feel I need a bit more heft for my pc (and if things end up running ok for me without, I can just play it safe).

The biggest problem I'm thinking is just that the newer graphic cards aren't fitting in my pc, so just getting a new pc with a bigger tower (and a slightly better processor) that can accomodate a good card should go a long way. Might as well add an SSD for the OS while I'm at it, since that's apparently neat, and I can stick some of the RAM from my current pc into the new one as well, I guess, along with whatever it comes with. From what you all have said it sounds like regular fans will work fine, so I'll try and stick to them.

All that's left I guess is to decide if I want to pay up for a fancy 6-core processor, or stick with a 4-core one. I was looking at some benchmark site for CPU's, and one of the fancy intel 6 core ones (i7 980, i think?) got a score around twice as high as their 4-core one (i7 930?). The AMD 6-core one got a score even lower than the i7 930, which surprised me a bit. That said, I'm not entirely sure what those scores represent, and if a score "twice as big" really means something is twice as good, or if it's on some entirely different scale, or what.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ is the site, just so you guys can getr an idea of what I'm talking about.

Far as money goes, I /could/ pick up either. If the difference is a lot less than it sounds though, I'd obviously be dumb to pay almost 1000 extra for a six core pc. Just cause I /can/ pay it doesn't mean I /want/ to pay it. But if the difference really is "twice as much", maybe the six core one is something that would hold up a lot better over the next four or five years...

[Furtwangler]

What kind of ram is currently in your pc? It most likely isn't ddr3 in which case you'll need to upgrade anyway

[Yoli]

Hmm. That's a good question.

<.>

It's just saying how much, and not what type, on control panel > system and maintenance > System.

Guess I'll just stick with the new RAM then, to play it safe. Unless I see that this is the same if I take it out of the PC or something once the new one is here. Thanks for pointing that out.