Superfast machine

I wish I had the money for a SSD. I never knew about the slow down issue but it doesnt appear to be a big deal.

Id love to get my hands on one. Gotta try and find the places that sell them the cheapest, though I have a feeling that still wont be cheap enough.

SSD drives "slow down". Yes. They begin at a million times faster than disk drives and stabilize at .999 million times faster. A non-issue in this context.

A RAM drive is not the solution.

• Page File in RAM: Reduces amount of available RAM, increasing need for page operation. Self defeating.
• Config/Ini files: Lost on power cycle. Yes, some apps keep config data in temp files.
• Browser cache/cookies: Lost on power cycle.
• Ad infinitum...

The difference between smooth and superfast is likely discernable only in benchmarking. Pragmatically, unless you are editing video or RAW images, there is such a thing as wasted RAM.

A 32-core CPU running at 3000+ TeraHZ with 4 thousand GB of DDR9 RAM won't give you a "superfast PC" if you have onboard video and your goal is to play Crysis.

My point being - the definition of superfast PC begins with - What do you want the PC to do? Remember, a PC is a set of peripherals wrapped around a microprocessor, enabling a user to do almost anything fairly well. In contrast, an XBox 360 is a set of peripherals wrapped around a microprocessor, enabling a user to do one thing very well.

And, in the PC environment, what is superfast today will not be superfast this time next year.

Having said that...

SSD or HDD - You need to modify your Win7 install files. Place User Profiles on a different drive than System Files. If you do this AFTER OS install, plenty of data continues to reside at C:\Users. Also, environment variables need to be changed to place TEMP off C:\Windows\Temp. The list goes on...

Antman said:

........
My point being - the definition of superfast PC begins with - What do you want the PC to do? Remember, a PC is a set of peripherals wrapped around a microprocessor, enabling a user to do almost anything fairly well. ......

Nicely said. I never thought about that way although that is pretty obvious. A "fast" PC is very subjective to what the user has experienced in the past. Someone who has been running an old P4 single core with 512Mb RAM, old IDE hard drive, and a low end graphics card, would most likely think that same system would be a fast computer if that got more RAM and a newly installed OS (with no malware, spyware, adware, etc.). It just depends on what you are used to.

One area that people need to concentrate on when building or purchasing a new PC or laptop for running Windows 7 is the graphics adapter. The more onboard DRAM, the better. Go with at least 256MB or 512MB if you can afford it. Don't skimp on that, it can make all the difference in the world. Windows 7 runs best with tons of RAM also, so spend some money in that area as well. Run a 64-bit OS to make better use of the RAM and newer motherboard and CPU technology.

Best Video Cards
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 or 285
ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2

Best CPU
Intel Core i7 Processor 975 or 965 Extreme
Intel Core i7 Processor 950

Source: Futuremark

No need to be rude when someone's trying to help. People don't always know you or what your capacity or knowledge is, so you can politely say, "Thanks for the great info - it's all true but I already knew that, and I want to focus on this particular aspect".

Lighten up!

I almost forgot ... 16GB may not be enough. A vanilla install seems to take up about 13GB actual space, and the 16GB drive is not really 16GB in real use. I wish those marketing people would use real numbers.