A new computer
 

Im havinbg a new computer built.

Intel i7 870
8GB Ram
1GB Video graphics card.
Windows 64 bit

I dont know what the motherboard specified is, but have seen the Intel DP55KGand might ask for that.

How do I know if it has slots for 2 graphics cards.

if i add a 2nd graphics card, will programs work faster or is that only for programs that are set up for 2 cards.

is it woprth getting as much RAM as possible.....16GB. Friends have told me that only prgrams thats are specialised will actually use the 16 GB.

Thoughts anyone....................

Right now dual video cards probably isn't as performance-effective as one card at twice the price.

You don't say what you are going to use the computer for. I built a gaming machine for my son a couple of years ago - we sounded out his fellow gamers for the optimum spec and modifed that with what could be afforded. We found that the game he wanted to play was optimised for one type of video card.
What specific programs do you have that are currently running too slow?

No, parallel computing isn't that simple. (and graphics cards don't "make programs run faster" anyway, they only offload graphics tasks.... hence the name)

If you want dual output (i.e. two screens) then get a good dual graphics card (one card, two outputs).

Your friends don't know what they are talking about.

Software will use the RAM it needs, no more, no less.

The more software you run at one time (either foreground or background), the more RAM you will need.

Graphic design and CAD/CAM also tends to be RAM intensive in its own rights.

Simple case of supply and demand.

I would suggest you stay with 8GB, and then if your computer feels slow because of what you're doing on it, then try throwing more RAM at the problem.

You dont say what programs your going to use or what type of programs.

Even in this day and age of multiple 64bit operating systems alot of applications are still only written for 32bit platforms, this means even though you may have 8,10,16 or more gb of ram the maximum addressible memory by that application is 4gb (of which most wont address above 2gb for legacy reasons).

The more RAM the better is generally the performance but typically (and agreed there are exceptions) for most home use anything above 6gb you will be spending money on diminishing returns.

If you have multiple applications running then you will get more efficient use of the memory, but with the windows architecture of memory allocation you will still find a swap file used even tho physical memory is available, so dont blow good money in the hope that its going to give you great returns.

Dual+ graphics card installations have been around for years and have never really caught on because there really is not much software that will take true advantage of the potential they offer. Its sort of a catch 22 situation in that most graphics intensive applications e.g. games are written to a common denominator of the hardware required - as the vast majority of platforms used at home are single cards (and not top of the range) most games will be optomised for that. Things are gradually changing in this area and you can spend huge amounts on the graphic subsystem which will only be wasted if your not using it.

Whats it you want to do ?

Well, unless you use it memory is expensive. 4 Gbytes is actually fine for most people. Without knowing the board it is hard to say but it probably has 4 memory slots. Looking at good old overclockers, most memory seems to come in 2 Gb sticks, so if you get 2 off 2 Gb sticks it will do for now and leave (probably) 2 slots free for another 2 in future. What you want to avoid is getting 4 off 1 Gb sticks as this will mean an upgrade requires you to throw at least two away (boards want you to use two channels, the memory slots are colour coded).

As for graphic cards, these are only really useful if you play games. One decent card is enough for most human beings. 'Crossfire' and other schemes allow you to parallel up cards to get higher detail/faster frame rates on BIG monitors. You need two pcie slots on the board for this (board adverts say crossfire enabled and such like).

If you don't play games or have a large monitor one decent card is all you need, and maybe not that if the motherboard has onboard video.

If you do play games an ATI 5770 at ~ £130 is enough. If you don't play games the motherboard may have onboard video anyway. If not a sub-£50 card would do.

Note that a lot of the mainstream gaming cards take up a lot of space and use a lot of power, so fitting two is not always that easy and you better have a good power supply (>500 watts at a guess, real watts too not Chinese !).