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Old November 24th 04, 10:17 PM
Ben Myers
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On Wed, 24 Nov 2004 15:14:05 -0500, Eddie Crismond wrote:
SNIP

3. The Matrox G400 AGP graphics card is plenty fast, unless you are into video
games. Then an nVidia card would be better. But how much faster would a video
game run with a 600MHz processor. The G400 has 16MB or 32MB?


I just did a brief Google search on the G400. Looks like most of the
hits mention 16MB SGRAM. Not only does the G400 not have enough memory
for The Sims2, I don't think it has hardware transform and lighting.


Oh, yes. The G400 is a 16MB card. The G450 is the 32MB card.


4. If the system has a Windows 2000 ceritificate of authentication sticker
(COA), why not re-install Windows 2000?


I may do that, then I might be able to get by with 256MB of memory. I'm
also considering Windows 98SE, since 98SE may work better with 128MB
than a later Windows version, and RDRAM is still almost prohibatively
expensive.


RDRAM will continue to be more expensive than SDRAM or DDR for some time to
come. If anyone is manufacturing it any more, the quantities are small. Intel
was the prime supporter of RDRAM with its chipsets and belief that it was the
only way to fix the memory access bottleneck that inhibited faster system
performance. Then the Rambus company threw patent infringement lawsuits at
everyone (except Intel), and the entire industry soured on RDRAM. Intel saw the
disenchantment with RDRAM and the high price compared to SDRAM and stopped
designing RAMBUS chipsets in favor of today's DDR SDRAM.

So expect to pay a premium for RDRAM almost forever, or until demand drops way
down to almost zero, whichever happens first. The usual rule of thumb for most
memory these days is around $25 for 128MB. RDRAM can't be touched for that sort
of price... Ben Myers