Bigger is better?

There's no such thing as too much, right? For most people, everything has to be bigger, better, and faster. There's nothing wrong with this. We (as Americans) were raised with the basic belief that bigger is better.

We learn at an early age to choose the Snickers bar that says "Now %15 Bigger!" The McDonald's "Super Size" is right up there with apple pie -more fries and larger drink, what else does a red-blooded American need (besides lower crime rates, a decent public education system, adequate health care, and fewer school shootings)?

Bang for the buck

Not surprisingly, we apply this same bigger is better belief to our computers. We keep on buying faster processors, install more and more RAM, and insist on that 21-inch monitor. Granted, many upgrades are worth the money, but some aren't very cost effective.

Buying the fastest processor available will give immediate results such as faster program load times and improved frame rates, but is the new processor worth it when you can get a processor that's almost as fast for significantly less money? For many people, the speed difference is worth the premium.

We don't see anything wrong with paying $1,000-$800 for a nice 21-inch monitor. If you're going to spend hours each day staring at a screen, getting a cheap monitor isn't an option.

The memory question is harder to answer. Do you really need 512MB of RAM? Maybe, but most people should be fine with 128MB. Now that we have operating systems like Windows2000 taking up 60MB, upgrading to 256MB isn't extreme at all.

The Ego

Then again, it's always nice having a faster processor and more RAM than everyone else. It satisfies the ego in a geeky kind of way. Our first reaction to news about Dell's 64MB GeForce card was, "Wow, that video card has more memory than most systems!" Of course, we had to get our hands on one for review. There's no question that the "64MB" tag alone will sell boards, but we wanted to see if the card was worth the extra money.

We immediately started working on locating a 64MB GeForce board, and ASUS came through with an AGP-V6800/64MB GeForce 256 DDR. Read on to find out more about the ASUS card, and see how much having 64MB of memory improves performance!