| Not terribly long ago, I wrote that anyone considering | | | | drop in price when it comes time to purchase another |
| the purchase of a new computer should 'Stay calm | | | | 512MB or even 1GIG stick to increase performance. |
| despite tempting computer prices.' The revolution that | | | | Keep your eyes sharp on the Specification sheets and |
| took about six years to develop was underway at the | | | | know that 'dual channel' DDR RAM is okay too. |
| time and newer technologies revolutionized the guts of | | | | Your love of graphics may not extend beyond the |
| PC's we can buy in the stores. | | | | picture you have on your personalized desktop, but |
| Break time is over. Capable 64-bit applications, | | | | pay heed! "Shared RAM" was one of the best ideas |
| processors and Operating Systems (OS's) are now | | | | ever, but is now so completely backward and |
| mingling on store shelves with the old, standard 32-bit | | | | obsolete that it's a term to avoid at any cost. That |
| applications. SDRAM was stamped out by DDR RAM | | | | cost is quite real in many cases; high-end graphic cards |
| that fathered DDR2 and DDR3. Graphics hardware | | | | sometimes have better RAM (DDR3) than the |
| has become a branch of processor science all to itself. | | | | Motherboard. But this is paramount to a future that will |
| Single core processor motherboards share the market | | | | be filled with online video and pictures in e-mails |
| with dual-core processors and dual processor | | | | exceeding data sizes of 3 and 4 Megabytes. Nearly |
| motherboards. Add to all that clutter on the market the | | | | any PCIe or PCI-e (most common notation) or |
| impending release of the World's largest software | | | | PCI-express card will ensure that you physically have |
| maker's newest OS due out shortly and you get panic | | | | a slot to fill in the future with a more powerful PCI-e |
| at purchase time. | | | | card. The antithesis of good graphics cards is the |
| With the idea of a computer purchase between 'now' | | | | replaced nomenclature, "AGP." That's the slower stuff |
| and mid-2007, here's what's best for us... We'll need | | | | that PCI-e helped phase out even though PCI-e was |
| either a 3Ghz single core processor or a dual-core | | | | slow to mature. |
| processor that's 2Ghz or better if we can't get a | | | | Finally, we arrive at one of the most understated but |
| computer with TWO processors. We can even | | | | vital numbers to look at when purchasing a computer |
| explore purchasing a 64-bit OS for any 64-bit | | | | that should last us a while. It's called the chipset and is |
| processor scheme that we like provided the letters X | | | | usually a three-digit number where higher is better. A |
| and P don't show up together in the OS title. | | | | Pentium 4 with a 745 chipset will not deliver the |
| Getting DDR2 RAM (the computer's short-term | | | | computational speed that the same Pentium 4 with a |
| memory) where one stick provides a minimum of | | | | 925 chipset would. This difference can create a $100 |
| 512MB is great insurance against being left behind by a | | | | jump that's worth it in the long run. The chipset more or |
| faster future. The DDR2 prefix means that it won't | | | | less represents the speed limits on the pathways that |
| soon be phased out, but will get old enough soon to | | | | data travels on. Faster is better. |