System Spec (OT?)

[Liam Proven]

On 02/02/2008, Graham Watkins <shellycat.gw at ntlworld.com> wrote:

> 1) I'd thought I was pushing the envelope with 2Gb RAM.  Aren't there
> difficulties getting the OS to recognise RAM over a certain amount?
> Please correct me if I'm wrong about this.

32-bit x86 OSs can only handle 4GB of RAM directly. Some 1/2 - 3/4 GB
is reserved for system purposes, so effectively, your limit is about
3.25GB.

3GB will be recognised and handled by anything. For more than that,
you need to go to a 64-bit OS.

> 2) I'll consider this although I don't as a rule copy on the fly - was
> put off it due to high production  of coasters when I first started burning.

I'd agree with you there!

> 3) I checked the NVDIA site and the driver is *supposed* to work with
> the 8400GS.  Can you think of another card that I might do better to
 look at?

If it were me & I were going for a cheap card, I'd go for the previous
generation, rather than the rather crippled 8400 and 8600 ranges. A
point to look for: consider a passively-cooled card. It'll mean a
quieter PC and less fans to clog with dust and need cleaning or
replacement. PNY do some good business-oriented passively-cooled
nVidia cards.

> 4) 2 hard drives on my computer is sort of a tradition or an old charter
> or something due to usually running more than one operating system and
> backing up crucial files to both in case one fails. (And it *has*
> happened.) Didn't know much about RAID though I looked it up after
> reading what you wrote and it looked a bit more technically
> sophisticated than anything I'd needed up to now.

RAID is not hard these days. Booting off a RAID can be. My Ubuntu home
server has a 2GB boot disk and half a dozen old 40GB EIDE disks in a
big RAID5 array.

-- 
Liam Proven • Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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