Hi

Sorry to reopen the discussion , but there is something vital that I forgot to mention in all of this. The future. For instance you cant run a 64 bit program in 32 bit windows (unless you use emulators or VM), but you can run a 32 bit on 64 bit (unless its a really old technology). Besides Win 32 or 64 are around the same price anyway. This morning my Ram usage spiked to 6.5 gig. If I had 32 bit windows or less ram, that data has to go to the paging file slowing things down. Every time I open a browser tab in FireFox my ram seams to spike 100 megs. The files I download are getting bigger and bigger, the graphics are more intensive. Programs are getting bigger. Things change!

My point is that when you design a machine, building in redundancies is not false economy, at worse you may have 'wasted' a few bucks. If you have to replace the whole thing because you can't run something or worse still you persist when its painful to run something; then you wasted a whole lot more, money being just a small part, mostly you are wasting your time Enjay. For instance running a Bet selector test taking hours to complete; that's your life slipping by, being wasted. THAT is false economy; when using an SSD would speed it up or using a different program would cut it down to a few minutes.

Building a machine to fit today's specifications is one way to look at things; if you wount use it today, that's fine but what will you be doing in a years time? My argument, perhaps poorly presented, is that a good quality 'SWEET SPOT' PC makes every sense especially when running data intensive tasks.

A sweet spot machine is a machine built using the upper end of the currently mass produced (read competitively priced) technology components. NOT the most expensive, top of the range components. Top of the range is a waste of money for not a whole lot of real processing difference.

Sweet spot PC provides the best mix of speed, quality and affordability.

Best of luck with what you decide.

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Michal - Ratings2Win Pty Ltd
R2W Axis - Axis is Australia's leading horse racing software and database;
with sophisticated form analysis tools and accurate horse performance ratings for TAB meetings.
http://www.ratings2win.com.au/