General Discussion

This entire system is focused around having 16GB of memory; why? To create a 10-11gb ramdisk to place the current MMORPG being played onto, so the hard drive to RAM bottleneck is eliminated during gameplay. My only problem is, I can't seem to find a decent motherboard to place this 16gb of memory on, as well as being able to harbor a current generation CPU and GPU.

Any suggestions?

Check this maybe? Not sure if you're into Mac Pros, but they're like the closest thing that can even exceed your 16gb RAM reqs (32gb max there on the spec page). Of course another thing to factor in is that you'll have to multi boot to accommodate said MMORPGs if some of those are Win based. However I do have a question...Are you really sure about the calculated efficiencies you're gunning for?

Well, I have heard in the past with smaller video games, like FPS, where gamers would load the entire game onto a RAMdisk so they would have instant load times to have an edge against the competition. But, what I'm wondering is; Could you actually load Windows Vista onto Mac hardware like that?

Originally posted by yegnats

Well, I have heard in the past with smaller video games, like FPS, where gamers would load the entire game onto a RAMdisk so they would have instant load times to have an edge against the competition. But, what I'm wondering is; Could you actually load Windows Vista onto Mac hardware like that?

You realize that if the game is being played through a 32-bit emulator on a 64-bit OS it will still only be able to use 2 gigs of RAM for the game (which is more than enough). Why go with 16 gigs? Thats only needed for servers, 8 or even 4 gigs will suffice.

Your theory is very interesting, but I don't think it would work well in most games. Maybe once we start getting native 64 bit clients.

I suppose my theory is kinda overkill, perhaps I have just been playing games like Lord of the Rings Online, which seem to be inadequately coded for loading texture files to memory in a speedy fashion without causing stutters on the fly. Or, perhaps my hard drive is just getting old; as is all my hardware, second best stuff that I bought 3 years ago. Perhaps getting one of those SATA2 seagate barracudas with a 32mb cache will help with the bottlenecks, I only have a SATA2 western digital with a 16mb cache.

I plan on running Vista Ultimate 64 bit, would it be worth it to get 8gb of ram? And for all you Vista haters, I'll also have 32 bit XP Pro on dual boot to fall back on if I experience any compatibility issues.

Perhaps, with certain MMORPGs that don't pack all their game files into a pack file (like WoW), I could find some way to force load all the player models, textures, sounds associated with all armor, equipments and abilities used in the game into the memory, as that seems to be what is swapped around the most in memory during gameplay; causing the stutters.

Originally posted by yegnats

I suppose my theory is kinda overkill, perhaps I have just been playing games like Lord of the Rings Online, which seem to be inadequately coded for loading texture files to memory in a speedy fashion without causing stutters on the fly. Or, perhaps my hard drive is just getting old; as is all my hardware, second best stuff that I bought 3 years ago. Perhaps getting one of those SATA2 seagate barracudas with a 32mb cache will help with the bottlenecks, I only have a SATA2 western digital with a 16mb cache.

I plan on running Vista Ultimate 64 bit, would it be worth it to get 8gb of ram? And for all you Vista haters, I'll also have 32 bit XP Pro on dual boot to fall back on if I experience any compatibility issues.

Perhaps, with certain MMORPGs that don't pack all their game files into a pack file (like WoW), I could find some way to force load all the player models, textures, sounds associated with all armor, equipments and abilities used in the game into the memory, as that seems to be what is swapped around the most in memory during gameplay; causing the stutters.

As for the hard drive, among the fastest hard drives out right now is the 640 gig WD hard drive. The seagate 7200.11s are plenty fast as well.

Yeah i met some people yesterday who when 1gig of ram was still extermely expnesive they bought a stick and loaded quake 3 into it. The lvls loaded extermely fast.

And if you win the lottery go buy a 15 mil computer just for the hell of it. 128 processors each more powerful then 200 of the leading dual cores a terabyte of ram and a exabyte of hard drive space. You could run wow from that thing.

Originally posted by Arndur

And if you win the lottery go buy a 15 mil computer just for the hell of it. 128 processors each more powerful then 200 of the leading dual cores a terabyte of ram and a exabyte of hard drive space. You could run wow from that thing.

LOL Talk about an exaggeration. But anyways, I doubt getting enough ram to load a MMORPG client like Warhammer Online onto a ramdisk, while also having enough to spare for normal system RAM is going to be easy, while also being able to use gaming oriented hardware on the motherboard, that seems difficult. So, I think getting 8GB of ram will be enough for me since it's so cheap, and it would definitely futureproof my system for a long time, considering that I'm also getting a Geforce 9800 GX2, and a Intel Core 2 Quad E6600.

If you want 16+ gigs of ram on a non-server Motherboard.  You are pretty much limited to AM2+.  Intel Boards with that much ram have old Northbridges.  Of the AM2+ boards.  Its also limited to the Gigabyte 790FX, and 790X boards for a descent board.  Don't get the ECS or 780G boards though.  ECS is kinda a bad manufacturer.  The current 780G boards also don't have enough juice to support a phenom processor.

Despite what others may say.  The new phenoms, specifically the 9850 BE run very well.  Clock for Clock they are very close to being on parallel with Core2Quad.  Just remember to buy a phenom thats XX50, and not XX00.

Also the 9800GX2 is a waste.  Its like running 2 8800 GTS (G80) in sli.  Just like the last iteration of X2 video cards that are remarkably unremarkable.