Time for an upgrade

The past two years have gone by like a maglev - it really dawned on my when I bought the new game Bioshock, expecting my hardware to be just around the absolute minimum requirements. No way, José.
My gfx-card (ATI x800 pro) was nowhere near even the bottom of Tom's Hardware tests. And I've hardly played anything but WoW with it...wasted my money on it back then, I did.

I find it a bit odd that games are also still pushing Moore's envelope. But then again it is only a few games that can provide the quality of content that Bioshock supposedly does.

The trick is trying to avoid wasting my money this time - a colleague just assembled a fairly nice machine for about 3000 Dkr in parts, which is peanuts. I'd like to spend a bit more maybe - but then again come 6 months and it's worth half already.

The worst thing is RAM systems - I tried to find an internet guide on it but most are 5-6 years old. Luckily, I found this table - which also shows the formula by which SDRAM is calculated. One of those things you need to study again each time you need it :)

RAM type	Theoretical max. bandwidth
SDRAM 100 MHz	100 MHz X 64 bit= 800 MB/sec
SDRAM 133 MHz	133 MHz X 64 bit= 1064 MB/sec
DDRAM 200 MHz (PC1600)	2 X 100 MHz X 64 bit= 1600 MB/sec
DDRAM 266 MHz (PC2100)	2 X 133 MHz X 64 bit= 2128 MB/sec
DDRAM 366 MHz (PC2600)	2 X 166 MHz X 64 bit= 2656 MB/sec
RDRAM 600 MHz	600 MHz X 16 bit= 1200 MB/sec
RDRAM 700 MHz	700 MHz X 16 bit= 1400 MB/sec
RDRAM 800 MHz	800 MHz X 16 bit= 1600 MB/sec