I'm sorry, but I have to point out that 1 GB of RAM is too low for even most day to day processes, let alone games. The only operating system that runs well on 1 GB is XP, and lets face it, that is outdated.
It sounds like you're telling him to build his own pc for $300. While it is entirely possible, I would strongly recommend against this. If you're building a pc, spend a solid $600, otherwise buying an HP or a Dell for $300-400 will actually be a better deal.
I'll see if I can put together a "Under $500" list when I get home from work.
No you atleast need to dual-channel 2 gigs..minimum. I'm running 64 bit windows 7 with 2 gigs dual channeled and the OS alone uses about 50% of my memory but you can make it a lot less by turning off Aero
The core services of both Windows XP and Windows 7 combined is under 500MB of physical memory; what exactly do you foresee the other 500-700MB going to?
Sorry, I forgot I'm running Win 7 x64 Ultimate, which requires 2GB just to run that without any real addons. The 32 bit only requires 1GB. But remember, if you want to run Win Xp Mode, that is an additional 1GB requirement. So any old games that he wants to play, say bye bye.
Lets say he runs Win 7 x32 with 2GB, and he's not lame, so he's running it with Aero. Right there, .8GB. Open Mozilla Firefox; that's .3 GB, have an antivirus monitoring in the background; that's another .2 (generous), Peer Guardian +Speedfan; .1GB, Spybot; .1GB, Windows Media Player; .1GB, the list goes on.
Then imagine if he actually wanted to install something, .5-1GB right there. Trust me, 2GB is a realistic minimum for operating Win 7 32 bit, and 3GB is the realistic min for operating Win 7 64 bit like any normal person would. Also consider that the OS doesn't register 100% of the RAM. With my PC, I idle at 1.3GB with Win 7 x64 Ultimate. That is only with Spybot, Avast, PeerGuardian, and Speedfan running.
I can guarantee that a game like DIII will run like crap with only 2GB RAM. Personally I wouldn't run DIII with less than 4GB, and I'm going to run it with a minimum of 8GB by the time it comes out. I want the bottleneck to be my video card, which will most likely be an XFX 5830.
Now I expected a reasonable amount of bias but those quotes are just ridiculous. Let's take Windows 7 for example with a base consumption of 320MB that covers all core services including explorer.
Aero: +40MB
Firefox: Well I have 18 tabs open right now; 92MB
Norton: 65MB
Peer Guardian: 28MB
Spybot: 39MB
WMP: 29MB (Playing a standard MP3)
Leaving you with ~400MB which will be more than enough for Diablo III, hell, Crysis doesn't even use that much. And what's this about an installer using 1GB? Installer's do not load the entire package into memory.
320MB? Everything I've ever read, and all my personal experience, puts Win 7 x86 w/ Aero themes right around .8GB.
I'd love for you to post a pic of your Task Manager showing your system running off of .32GB. And for some reason, all your program stats are significantly different than mine, except for WMP.
I also think you keep forgetting that the operating system needs to reserve memory addressing space for all of the hardware devices. On my PC, with Win 7 x64, that addressing space is .673GB. I hope that is clear enough, that 2GB is the bare minimum for an average user with Win 7 x86 and 3GB min with Win 7 x64.
As for the installation quote of .5-1GB. I take it you've never installed Photoshop. :rolleyes:
As far as antivirus goes, I personally and strongly recommend Kaspersky. It's worked fantastically for me, it's light weight, and by far one of the best I've used yet.
Stay away from Norton and McAfee... as they are very very intrusive and memory intensive.
System memory quantity is rarely an issue; aim for a sufficient quantity (~1GB) of quality memory.
Processor clock-speed is negligible; don't waste $50 on a 400MHz increase.
Invest in a quality motherboard; system bus bandwidth is a major bottleneck for games.
Any recent video-card will do, again, don't waste money on the latest greatest video card they're just placebo's for the most part.
A standard HDD will be fine; you can always use RAM-disk software, rather ad hoc, but it works.
The majority of this is great advice. I'd recommend a minimum of 2GB (4GB average) for a standard home-usage machine, though. It'll get the job done, and for the most part, you won't have too many issues (unless you're trying to multitask heavily). Plus, if you go with an older motherboard that supports DDR2, you'll be able to pick up 1-2GB sticks rather cheaply (Wal-mart and other various retail stores will carry the Kingston brand, which isn't bad on the low end).
It's not until you start going up to DDR3 1333-2000(O.C) that you'll hit a price barrier ($150-$300 USD per 2GB stick). Unless you're looking to do uber gaming and high-end processing // rendering, DDR2 is definitely more cost effective.
Also, clock speed is great for some things, but in gaming, Matt's right, a 400MHz increase isn't going to provide that much of a difference. For cost effectiveness, I'd recommend something around the i5 2.33-2.5 range, depending on your tastes and budget. Are the i5s on an LGA 1366 or LGA 1156 socket? I can't remember. I think it's 1156, but anyway.
As far as video cards go, nVidia's GeForce 9800 amusingly enough has the fastest GPU clock speed of all of its video cards out there, and you can get them for under 150 (The GTS 250 is the same chip, just marketed differently [and I believe it's considered half-height]). It'll definitely work for most of your gaming and computing needs.
Now, this won't run Crysis like a beast, but you'll be able to play your favorite games on a fairly reasonable resolution and graphics setting.
As far as HDD, it really doesn't matter that much. Western Digital's 500GB (or 320GB) Green / Blue 7200RPM HDD will be perfect for all your needs.
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------------------------------------------- Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
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mmio does not implicitly consume memory; it is simply an abstraction to facilitate a unified method for addressing devices over the address bus.
Then Photoshop is an exception to the rule, and in any case, can still be installed.
The only software I personally run from from that list is Firefox [the rest are taken from friends]
Something there just seems fundamentally wrong. 23 processes?!?! Nearly half of that is svchost.exe. You can't be running anything!
For instance, I switched to Win Classic just like you, I shut off every single application save for Avast. Now when I say everything, I mean I even turned off Explorer, and I was only able to get down to .947GB. But after some more searching, aparently Win 7 Basic can run on freakishly low RAM systems. 1 GB it will run no problem, and I even found a couple instance of Win 7 Basic running off of 512MB. Albeit barely, and with virtually zero installed applications aside from an antivirus.
So I admit when I'm wrong. Yes it is possible to run Win 7 BASIC x86 (not Win 7 Ultimate x64) with 1 GB or even 512MB of RAM. Do I think 1GB will be able to run Diablo III? Yes, but barely, since SCII's bare minimum requirement for the beta is only 1GB. Although, I can guarantee that SCII or DIII will run with incredibly slow loading times, the lowest graphical settings, and FPS will probably be in the 20's. Now some of that will still depend on the video card, so if you're running Windows 7 with 1GB of RAM but happen to slap in a 5970 with 2GB of RAM, then I would assume there will be much better performance. But who ever heard of gaming with more RAM in your graphics card than in the rest of your system!!
Something there just seems fundamentally wrong. 23 processes?!?! Nearly half of that is svchost.exe. You can't be running anything!
For instance, I switched to Win Classic just like you, I shut off every single application save for Avast. Now when I say everything, I mean I even turned off Explorer, and I was only able to get down to .947GB. But after some more searching, aparently Win 7 Basic can run on freakishly low RAM systems. 1 GB it will run no problem, and I even found a couple instance of Win 7 Basic running off of 512MB. Albeit barely, and with virtually zero installed applications aside from an antivirus.
Well, the intention afterall was to establish a baseline which I quoted 320MB for the core services (including explorer) and that is what the provided screenshot was to support.
So I admit when I'm wrong. Yes it is possible to run Win 7 BASIC x86 (not Win 7 Ultimate x64) with 1 GB or even 512MB of RAM. Do I think 1GB will be able to run Diablo III? Yes, but barely, since SCII's bare minimum requirement for the beta is only 1GB. Although, I can guarantee that SCII or DIII will run with incredibly slow loading times, the lowest graphical settings, and FPS will probably be in the 20's. Now some of that will still depend on the video card, so if you're running Windows 7 with 1GB of RAM but happen to slap in a 5970 with 2GB of RAM, then I would assume there will be much better performance. But who ever heard of gaming with more RAM in your graphics card than in the rest of your system!!
It's not the Basic edition; it's Ultimate (32-bit). Whether it's the 32-bit build or the 64-bit the difference in memory consumption between the two is negligble.
Again, the only instance where memory quantity is going to be an issue is if the demand outweighs the supply; Diablo III is certainly not going to consume anywhere near 500MB, more likely in the bracket of 150-250.
It may be a rare situation in practice but that doesn't demean it's merit; the vast majority of resources in video games are allocated in video memory, the only real use for system memory is for game logic, physics simulation and resource caching.
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It sounds like you're telling him to build his own pc for $300. While it is entirely possible, I would strongly recommend against this. If you're building a pc, spend a solid $600, otherwise buying an HP or a Dell for $300-400 will actually be a better deal.
I'll see if I can put together a "Under $500" list when I get home from work.
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Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
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♣Strength and Honor♣
Lets say he runs Win 7 x32 with 2GB, and he's not lame, so he's running it with Aero. Right there, .8GB. Open Mozilla Firefox; that's .3 GB, have an antivirus monitoring in the background; that's another .2 (generous), Peer Guardian +Speedfan; .1GB, Spybot; .1GB, Windows Media Player; .1GB, the list goes on.
Then imagine if he actually wanted to install something, .5-1GB right there. Trust me, 2GB is a realistic minimum for operating Win 7 32 bit, and 3GB is the realistic min for operating Win 7 64 bit like any normal person would. Also consider that the OS doesn't register 100% of the RAM. With my PC, I idle at 1.3GB with Win 7 x64 Ultimate. That is only with Spybot, Avast, PeerGuardian, and Speedfan running.
I can guarantee that a game like DIII will run like crap with only 2GB RAM. Personally I wouldn't run DIII with less than 4GB, and I'm going to run it with a minimum of 8GB by the time it comes out. I want the bottleneck to be my video card, which will most likely be an XFX 5830.
Aero: +40MB
Firefox: Well I have 18 tabs open right now; 92MB
Norton: 65MB
Peer Guardian: 28MB
Spybot: 39MB
WMP: 29MB (Playing a standard MP3)
Leaving you with ~400MB which will be more than enough for Diablo III, hell, Crysis doesn't even use that much. And what's this about an installer using 1GB? Installer's do not load the entire package into memory.
I'd love for you to post a pic of your Task Manager showing your system running off of .32GB. And for some reason, all your program stats are significantly different than mine, except for WMP.
I also think you keep forgetting that the operating system needs to reserve memory addressing space for all of the hardware devices. On my PC, with Win 7 x64, that addressing space is .673GB. I hope that is clear enough, that 2GB is the bare minimum for an average user with Win 7 x86 and 3GB min with Win 7 x64.
As for the installation quote of .5-1GB. I take it you've never installed Photoshop. :rolleyes:
Question, why is an IT guy using Norton?
mmio does not implicitly consume memory; it is simply an abstraction to facilitate a unified method for addressing devices over the address bus.
Then Photoshop is an exception to the rule, and in any case, can still be installed.
The only software I personally run from from that list is Firefox [the rest are taken from friends]
Stay away from Norton and McAfee... as they are very very intrusive and memory intensive.
The majority of this is great advice. I'd recommend a minimum of 2GB (4GB average) for a standard home-usage machine, though. It'll get the job done, and for the most part, you won't have too many issues (unless you're trying to multitask heavily). Plus, if you go with an older motherboard that supports DDR2, you'll be able to pick up 1-2GB sticks rather cheaply (Wal-mart and other various retail stores will carry the Kingston brand, which isn't bad on the low end).
It's not until you start going up to DDR3 1333-2000(O.C) that you'll hit a price barrier ($150-$300 USD per 2GB stick). Unless you're looking to do uber gaming and high-end processing // rendering, DDR2 is definitely more cost effective.
Also, clock speed is great for some things, but in gaming, Matt's right, a 400MHz increase isn't going to provide that much of a difference. For cost effectiveness, I'd recommend something around the i5 2.33-2.5 range, depending on your tastes and budget. Are the i5s on an LGA 1366 or LGA 1156 socket? I can't remember. I think it's 1156, but anyway.
As far as video cards go, nVidia's GeForce 9800 amusingly enough has the fastest GPU clock speed of all of its video cards out there, and you can get them for under 150 (The GTS 250 is the same chip, just marketed differently [and I believe it's considered half-height]). It'll definitely work for most of your gaming and computing needs.
Now, this won't run Crysis like a beast, but you'll be able to play your favorite games on a fairly reasonable resolution and graphics setting.
As far as HDD, it really doesn't matter that much. Western Digital's 500GB (or 320GB) Green / Blue 7200RPM HDD will be perfect for all your needs.
-------------------------------------------
Those who stand for nothing will fall for anything.
-------------------------------------------
Something there just seems fundamentally wrong. 23 processes?!?! Nearly half of that is svchost.exe. You can't be running anything!
For instance, I switched to Win Classic just like you, I shut off every single application save for Avast. Now when I say everything, I mean I even turned off Explorer, and I was only able to get down to .947GB. But after some more searching, aparently Win 7 Basic can run on freakishly low RAM systems. 1 GB it will run no problem, and I even found a couple instance of Win 7 Basic running off of 512MB. Albeit barely, and with virtually zero installed applications aside from an antivirus.
So I admit when I'm wrong. Yes it is possible to run Win 7 BASIC x86 (not Win 7 Ultimate x64) with 1 GB or even 512MB of RAM. Do I think 1GB will be able to run Diablo III? Yes, but barely, since SCII's bare minimum requirement for the beta is only 1GB. Although, I can guarantee that SCII or DIII will run with incredibly slow loading times, the lowest graphical settings, and FPS will probably be in the 20's. Now some of that will still depend on the video card, so if you're running Windows 7 with 1GB of RAM but happen to slap in a 5970 with 2GB of RAM, then I would assume there will be much better performance. But who ever heard of gaming with more RAM in your graphics card than in the rest of your system!!
It's not the Basic edition; it's Ultimate (32-bit). Whether it's the 32-bit build or the 64-bit the difference in memory consumption between the two is negligble.
Again, the only instance where memory quantity is going to be an issue is if the demand outweighs the supply; Diablo III is certainly not going to consume anywhere near 500MB, more likely in the bracket of 150-250.
It may be a rare situation in practice but that doesn't demean it's merit; the vast majority of resources in video games are allocated in video memory, the only real use for system memory is for game logic, physics simulation and resource caching.