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Originally Posted by Suave
So what would a "dual channel" memory kit (two sticks of 512 meg of RAM) refer to, if the RAM itself cannot be "dual channel"? I'm just going off what the sites are showing.
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A "dual channel kit" is just two sticks of exactly identical memory. As in, memory that's
guaranteed to work in dual channel mode. As to whether you can run 1 gig in dual channel then 512 in single channel... chances are you can't, but that would depend entirely on your motherboard, not the memory. See if you can find the manual for your mobo online and see what it says. Like others said, though, I would definitely have at least 1 gig of RAM. 512 generally won't cut it for newer games. Just for compatibility issues, I would get 1024 of the same type of RAM rather than trying to add your existing RAM to the new stuff. It just makes things easier on you.
Windows XP Pro would be nice, but it's completely unnecessary for your applications. It's just an extraneous expense.
As for the video card: the 6600 GT is good, but I would recommend getting a plain old 6800 instead. They both support the same graphics technologies, but the 6800 is significantly more powerful. I would shy away from anything but current gen cards (i.e. no Radeon 9800), mostly because of the support for newer technologies. Even though a 6600 and a 9800 look similiar at first glance, in newer games the 6600 would almost definitely outperform the older card because it's designed with the newer graphics technologies in mind. However, you're going to pay well over $100 CAD more for the 6800 vs the 6600GT. If that's too much, stick with the 6600. It's a very good card.
One last thing you might want to consider upgrading is the HDD. Instead of a bigger storage drive, you should look at the possibility of getting a WD raptor. For $150 CAD or so you can get the 10000 RPM 36 GB Raptor, which significantly outperforms any 7200 RPM drive in seek, read, and write times. It will make game loads go a lot faster, if that's a concern for you. The drive even outperforms most 10000 RPM SCSI drives, and it's significantly cheaper. You may look into getting this and adding a bigger storage drive later.
All around it's a pretty good setup. With a few tweaks it can be a monster!
One question though... why the Antec media case? Is it going to be a media PC as well? I just personally don't like the look of that case for a desktop, that's the only reason I ask. There's no problem using it, though.