Railworks America

Desktop is the best choice for me. Intel is better for gaming than AMD. You can also get better videos cards than laptops. They're not suitable for gamers. Just sayin.

Ram first

I would check with DELL to see if you can upgrade anything on that lap top - they are not always easily upgradeable.
Can you clarify are you modifying your current laptop or building a new laptop/desktop and canniballising parts from your current laptop.
Regards
pH

mdurdan

Found my problem. the i3 only has 1.63gb

Something is not quite right the i3's usually run on dual channel DDR3 RAM and the specs in DELL list 6GB (unbalanced) or 8GB Dual channel DDR3 1600 Hz RAM installed in a Dell 17R.
RAM is not part of the cpu but part of the hardware like the motherboard, psu graphics card, etc.
Do you mean the cpu is rated at 1.63GHz ie cpu speed - if that is the case then you upgrade the cpu first the RAM can follow later.
pH

mdurdan wrote:Either way, what are my best options for laptop vs desktop?

Here's my spec
AMD Athlon x4 HP
6GB ram (16GB Max)
1.5 TB HD
1 GB Nvidia 550TI

I'm pretty much set.

Best option?

Recommend i5 or higher...Intel
6GB or higher DDR3
1 GB of any Nvidia video card
1 TB HD or more depend if you need it

Price? Depend how you use it. My sister bought me a desktop a year ago for 500 bucks. No monitors, I already have 2 of them. Pretty good deal from Sam's Club if you ask me. I may be wrong, there are other owebsites you can buy like from...... (psst give me a hand here)

M, you have had nothing but problems with laptops. Build a nice desktop unit you can get into and change parts. Keep the laptop for mobile browsing and perhaps some repaints (if you are board on the road).

ADAPTER RAM = RAM allocated from the Physical RAM to the video RAM this will not be needed if you have a dedicated video card.
Build a desktop but see what you need to do first from my post above.
When you run i5/i7 SB/IB cpus they are optimised for dual channel DDR3 RAM and the optimul RAM options (64-bit) are matched pairs 8 GB or 16GB (2 x 4GB or 2 x 8GB or 4 x 4GB) utilising the the first 2 default slots where possible.
IMHO 6GB RAM in this type of rig would be "unbalanced" and may not be fully optimised for dual channel cpu/RAM transfers.
Regards
pH

Let's do this in geek speak.

Buzz
Did you mean like this Geek Speak
404 411 ACK ALOL AR AWGTHTGTTA BOCTAAE CUOL CYOH . . . .
BI5 TTFN
pH7.0

mdurdan
I was trying to confuse Buzz and ended up confusing me - I just wondered if we could describe a computer upgrade in 'geek speak' and found when I only got to "C" in the geek speak dictionary that we couldn't!!
It might have been fun though LOL!
pH

Most of my games run fine on my laptop. Desktop is better... but laptops aren't as bad as some portray them to be. I love being able to take my games on the go. I can play them on my 17-inch 1600x900 display or hook it up to a big television through it's HDMI port.

There you go!

Mike, viruses don't attack RW data files so you can't contaminate another computer with them.
Your projects should not contain any executable files so you'll be OK.
The RW programs could be infected, but just reinstall RW using Steam and you'll be OK.

Here are the specs of my desktop.
Intel i3 550 @ 3.2GHz
MSI H55M-E23
EVGA GTX660 FTW
8GB Gskill ripjaws
500GB WD Blue HDD

Running RW at highest setting

If you have the disk space, do as I do: grab your Railworks folder and copy it on a different disk.
That way you have a backup of your whole installation. If you install RW on a different computer, you can then copy back selected folders such as your own routes, etc.

I make a backup on an external disk about once every 2 months.