anyone know of
 

a place to get ram cheaper than newegg? I need a 512mb or 1gb stick of 184pin ddr. Im thinking of starting to play AA or something again and my 512 stick died a few months ago. Looking to get something cheap to hold me over maybe thru the summer untill I can build a new PC.

What speed ???

i always check buy.com when i pricing stuff sometimes they running specials...and they tend to have the wierd stuff that some places won't carry anymore.

honestly you can get a 1gb set for a pretty good price these days. hell, you can find 2gb sets for just over $150. 512mb just really doesn't cut it these days. "midrange" pc's come with at least a gig now-a-days. memory prices have been greatly fluctuating the past 10 months or so, due to ddr2 coming out. now that it's pretty much the standard, the prices have somewhat settled. ddr is almost dirt cheap now. bad thing is that we'll have to go through it all over again when ddr3 makes it's face shown ><

i'm guessing you need pc3200 (ddr400)

1gb (512x2) dual channel: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145440

1gb (one stick): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820145505

if your chipset supports dual channel i highly recommend getting that set instead. if it doesn't, either one will work about the same.

sorry it is ddr400. The thing with 512 is that it'll work for anything this PC will run. This thing is getting pretty old, I really need to build a new one. Im 99% sure my computer supports dual channel.

But right now its sitting at:
1.6ghz Sempron socket A
384mb DDR
Radeon 9250

Like I said its getting old and untill just now I didn't realize how old it really is. I did have it OC'd to 2ghz but backed it off when I was having startup problems and just haven't bumped it back up again. The problems were because the ram I had died. Im amazed the whole PC is still running. Shortly after I built it I found out a low table, sprite, the dogs tail, and an intake fan don't mix very well. That was a long time ago and only killed the video card.

Enough of the life story of my computer.

Thanks, I need to price out a new box. Like I said before tho, the ram is only to hold me over till I can order all my new parts.

another quick question and please forgive me but I've been really behind in trends. Is there any distinct advantage by going dual core vs. single core? Assuming if I went single I'd have a higher clock speed.

Primary uses:
DVD burning and encoding
Listening to MP3s
Photoshop work(not much tho)
Games:
AA
WoW
UT when it comes out.

Given these uses would dual core really benefit me?

I would say a dual core would benefit all gamers since the new games that are coming out use a lot of processing power also if you build a PC now I would aim it at an eventual change over to Vista. This is just my feeling but I would say to anyone looking to build a new PC and keep it for any amount of time to gear it toward DX 10 and also Vista the DX 10 is not a real big priority at the moment but in the very near future I am going to say that games will all start coming out in DX 10. Some games are being released with both DX 9 and DX 10.

i'll put it this way. single cores are out. by this time next year quad cores will be where dualies are now. there are already "budget" quads in the works. i think some cheaper ones are already on shelves. (yes, intel is calling the Q6600 a budget chip at the low low price of $835)

in about a year or so, most new games will be multithreaded and will take advantage of more than one core. there are a few out right now, i think CoD2 and Q4 are multithreaded. i know that UT2k7 (UT3) will support at least 2 cores, possibly up to 8 (i think).

even if you are just running single threaded apps only, you will still have an advantage with a dual core cpu. instead of everything hogging the same core while you're playing a game, you can have the game running on one core, and everything else on the other one. i did that for a while with UT2k4. i ran a server on one core, and played the game on the other. ping is always 0.

give me a price range and i'll throw something together for you.

Thanks everyone I'll be sure to keep the advice in mind when I build a new box. However tonight I got a PC that isn't the greatest by any means but also isn't that bad... a big step up for me.

P4 HT - 3.4
2gb DDR2
twin 160gb HDD
Radeon X800XT

Not bad for free... Well it'll cost me a new VGA cooler since the fan on the card is dead...

that's definitely not a bad rig for free. hell, i'd hit it :)