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Originally Posted by Suave
Okay, and as far as RAM goes, could I buy a gig of dual channel RAM and still use my extra 512 meg and have everything work?
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No, you can't buy a gigabyte of dual channel RAM, because it doesn't exist. Dual channel is a motherboard implemented feature and means that the RAM slots have two seperate busses to transfer data back and forth. The RAM itself isn't any different.
You can mix different speeds too, but you will have to run the RAM at the speed of the slowest stick. So if you have two 533 sticks and one 400 stick, you'll want to run it all at 400. But yeah, there's no technical issue with that so long as you have a third slot to plug the other stick into. Also, dual channel and CAS latency 2 don't seem to like each other very much, so run the RAM at 2.5 to avoid stability issues.
As for the video card, an 6600GT will likely give you all the performance you need. You may not be able to run Battlefield 2 at 1600x1200 with all the settings maxed out, but you will be able to run it. I'd stick with that for now unless you already know that you're going to be running all the latest games and will need absolute bleeding edge performance. It's usually not worth the price of admission though, if you ask me. I could put an entire box together for what some of the top end video cards go for.