If your really strapped on ram and don't want to upgrade it right away black box for windows might be a option to try out it's a shell replacement to the windows explorer gui that uses a decent chunk less memory.

http://blackbox4win.blogspot.com/

I do game on the PC a little but not hard-core. I do some video stuff though. I record some videos and use Windows Movie Maker sometimes. But at least having a quad core will future proof my PC for a long while.

I will get another gigabyte of RAM and another GPU but for what I'm doing at this time, it works fine. The more I wait, the cheaper the prices, yes?

Shame about the PSU. I just bought this 460 watt PSU to replace a 430 watt Thermaltake that stopped working after a few days of emitting a burning smell. Ah, the spending never stops.

Thanks everyone.

The quad core will be handy if you multitask a lot athe video card you have might be decent enough depending on the games you intend to play I'd almost certainly get another 1GB of ram though for heavy multitasking and yeah waiting equals cheaper prices.

Wow, you make it sound pretty bad. My computer is very stable and runs great running Windows XP. But I just don't "feel" the four cores, you know? But it does perform great, even with only having 1 GB of RAM. And according to the mobo's hardware monitor, the CPU temp is only 32C with the Q6600 overclocked to almost 3 Ghz on the stock fan. So I don't think it's that bad.

2GB of ram and a 8800GT or similar card would make a giant difference as far as 3Dmark06 goes. Your cpu temp reasonable I'll assume that your idle temp. As for the slow 1-2 fps during the cpu test that's typical the video card doesn't impact that test any.

I just upgraded my PC yesterday. I had a Pentium 4 3.0E processor with a AGP 8x motherboard, so I finally upgraded. Here is my new setup:

Cooler Master 460 watt PSU
Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600
Biostar TP43D2-A7 motherboard
1 GB of G-Skill DDR 1066 RAM
Zotac GeForce 7300GT graphics card (temporary)

Now I know the graphics card isn't very powerful, but I was low on cash and needed a video card for the setup so I chose the 7300. It was cheap and performs pretty well. I'll get a powerful graphics card later. I'll also add another gigabyte of memory too.

And, yes, I do have a few questions. I previously had a ATI Radeon 9600XT. With the 7300GT, will I notice an increase or decrease in video performance in gaming? The 7300GT has more video memory but a slower core clock.

Second, is a 460 watt PSU enough juice to give the CPU for best performance? And third, the BIOS of this motherboard is a little complex. Is there a program I can download to check how the four cores of the CPU are running? Thanks.

dog64

The PSU should be more than adequate as for video card it really depends on if the game is making use of all the extra vram or not assuming the two cards have similar performance in the first place you'd probably want to check toms harward video charts to find out how the two compare. As for the cpu and finding out how the four cores are running just hit control alt delete and see in task manager under performance tab if 4 cpu usage history sections are being displayed now if your looking to find out what the cpu speed is in windows try cpu-z and if your looking to stress test the cores try orthos or the newest version of prime95. If you have questions with the bios I have the same motherboard so just leave me know most of the bios settings are really pretty straight forward can leave me a comment on my blogsite if you have questions

http://biostartp43d2-a7.blogspot.com/