Official system requirements

[Blackdog_kt]

I can second that. After having to work on Vista for a few months during my army time as a conscript, i can say it was a deeply traumatic experience, i hated them

Excuse me while i ramble on for a while, some of you might enjoy the story...
At some point i was attached to a junior officer who took care of the wing's informatics, networks and so on (which naturally didn't run on windows ). My job was to do maintenance work when people called us about PC problems, plus we had to compile a weekly briefing for the unit's commanding officer (a brigadier with a few thousand hours in mirage 2000s). This we usually did on powerpoint with a PC that ran Vista.

Now, the unit i served in didn't operate aircraft, but it still had an important job and lots of things to keep track of. The wing in question is responsible for half the air-defence network of the country and operates patriot missile systems, plus some of its squadrons are situated in different parts of the country.
Well, every week we had to compile an inventory of everything for the briefing, ranging from the amount of personnel and patriot spare parts right down to food rations, point defence flak gun status (operational/under maintenance/unserviceable and in such a case which part failed) and even the amount of individual ammunition rounds for each weapon, right down to our rifles and pistols. After all this there was the secret operational reports (which i naturally lacked clearance to work on) and descriptions of whatever training activities we were involved in. All of this information was broken up in parts where each squadron had its relevant officers supply the data once per week.

Well, there's nothing worse than having a bunch of officers delaying submission of the required data for the briefing until the last 5 minutes, having them suddenly crowd your tiny office all at once for fear of the CO chewing them off if they miss the deadline and Vista throwing tantrums and errors all the while


This experience made me so determined not to ever install Vista, that when i got my current PC i only got 3GB of RAM because the only 64 bit OSes available were XP 64 (limited drivers) and Vista 64 (see story above.)

When win7 became available i remained hesitant for while, until the stream of positive reviews started. I got a license for free through a friend of mine (he was entitled to it through a university program for post-graduate informatics students but he didn't need it as he's using Linux) and installed it on a secondary hard drive.

A month ago my windows XP installation crashed badly due to file system errors, so i finally made the move to win7 x64.

Compared to XP it's like comparing a jet or turboprop to a piston engine: sometimes win7 feels like it needs some "spool up" time where XP would respond immediately, but overall performance when actually running a demanding piece of software is better.

[Novotny]

Well, that's hardly surprising since you limited the ram to 3gig. I notice upon visiting my parents that their i5 with 3gigs cranks the hdd whilst my 8400(@3.8ghz) with 4gigs just opens things quite quickly in comparison (both win7 64bit).

I had the same attitude to XP when it came out. It took a complete OS failure at a LAN event to make me install XP, and I was very unhappy about it, whilst the friendly chaps helping me politely waited for me to stop being a dick.

Once I had mouse accel sorted, I thought XP was actually very good.

I shifted to Win 7 quite early on and completely refused to boot to XP ever again.

And in the spirit of completeness: Vista was xxxx .

Edit:: Blackdog, just curious: why do you always make such bloody long posts? Not in any way complaining, just asking

[swiss]

Originally Posted by Novotny

Edit:: Blackdog, just curious: why do you always make such bloody long posts? Not in any way complaining, just asking

He found the speech recognition feature of Windows7, lol.

[Blackdog_kt]

I just type fast enough to be able to put thoughts to "virtual paper" in a "thinking out loud/talking over a beer in the bar" kind of fashion, it's not really planned

In the more heated debates it's a byproduct of including as many details as possible so that i can make a clear point and avoid being misunderstood or having an exchange of one-liners with other posters. You could say i just like to preempt and cover as many angles as possible, instead of having to wait for someone to post a single sentence and reply to them in a similar manner. It's a longer posts/more info per post for a smaller post count type of thing

Back on the topic of RAM, that will probably be the one mini-upgrade i'm going to go for after i've done some test flights with CoD. I have three sticks of 1GB each in triple channel (i don't remember timings and clock speeds so i'll have to look it up, but i'm probably going to opt for mid-range settings).

I'm thinking of pushing the total up to 6GB by getting an extra 3x1GB in triple channel, as the motherboard has 3 more slots available in a separate "bank".
My question is, do the new sticks have to share clock speeds and timings with my existing ones, can i "underclock" the faster set to match the slower one if they need to match, or do i just plug them in as long as they are in separate banks?

Edit: Looking at the local e-shop retailers there's DDR3 kits from as low as 35 all the way to 78 Euros, a middle of the road 1333Mhz Corsair kit is at 52 and has a lifetime warranty! I head RAM was getting cheap but i didn't know it was that cheap, i may jump the gun and get it earlier

[kendo65]

Blackdog, afaik, to avoid 'issues' and possible complications, it is important to get exactly the same spec of ram that you are currently using - for maximum dependability get the exact same model from the same manufacturer if that is possible.

Others may have more info on this, but that is the general advice I came across when doubling my ram to 4GB.

[F19_lacrits]

Originally Posted by Blackdog_kt

Back on the topic of RAM, that will probably be the one mini-upgrade i'm going to go for after i've done some test flights with CoD. I have three sticks of 1GB each in triple channel (i don't remember timings and clock speeds so i'll have to look it up, but i'm probably going to opt for mid-range settings).

I'm thinking of pushing the total up to 6GB by getting an extra 3x1GB in triple channel, as the motherboard has 3 more slots available in a separate "bank".
My question is, do the new sticks have to share clock speeds and timings with my existing ones, can i "underclock" the faster set to match the slower one if they need to match, or do i just plug them in as long as they are in separate banks?

In case of triple and dual channel RAM.. This has got to do with how the chipset addresses RAM and it's bus-width. Dual channel is 2*64bit and Triple 3*64bit bus-width.
For the chipset to be able to address memory like this they have to be identical in terms of not only speed but also model and make etc. The "system" sees the two or three RAM sticks as one bank of RAM memory.
On a X58 you have two sets of triple channel memory slots. That's why the banks have two sets of color coding.
You don't need to match your new set of RAM sticks with your existing ones in terms of make and model.. The new set should be matched though so that you can run them in triple channel as well. The bus can not run individual frequency to the different banks, so all memory must run on the same speed and with the same timings. So your "worst" RAM stick will set the mark for all other..

[Razorhead]

edit; i'lll be smart and wait for the final release. First see how the game is running on a E6750, 4GB DDR2 & 4870 1GB.

[Blackdog_kt]

Originally Posted by F19_lacrits

In case of triple and dual channel RAM.. This has got to do with how the chipset addresses RAM and it's bus-width. Dual channel is 2*64bit and Triple 3*64bit bus-width.
For the chipset to be able to address memory like this they have to be identical in terms of not only speed but also model and make etc. The "system" sees the two or three RAM sticks as one bank of RAM memory.
On a X58 you have two sets of triple channel memory slots. That's why the banks have two sets of color coding.
You don't need to match your new set of RAM sticks with your existing ones in terms of make and model.. The new set should be matched though so that you can run them in triple channel as well. The bus can not run individual frequency to the different banks, so all memory must run on the same speed and with the same timings. So your "worst" RAM stick will set the mark for all other..

So if i'm getting this correctly, i can buy 3 identical sticks that match each other but don't need to match the previous 3. Then i will have to downgrade my faster set to the speed and timings of the slower one.

Thanks for the input

[kendo65]

You'll get the 3 matched sticks when you buy a set of triple-channel ram.

As F19_lacrits says they can be of different spec to your current ones, but if so you will have to set everything to the speed (and settings ) of the slowest.

I still suggest, though, that for maximum ease and compatibility you just order a second set of the triple-channel ram you are already using.