DDR2 800 RAM is expensive, anyone want to part with some...

[Lodestar]

why do you need 8gb of ram?

Funny story actually. When I first built my gaming PC, I held no bars back and loaded it with 6GB ram (3x2GB). 2 months in, one stick died, so I sent it to Kingston to get it repaired with a turn around ETA of 2 weeks. To deal with it in the mean time, I bought another 6GB set from Frys with the intent of returning it within the window. Come a month later, Kingston finally returns my sticks, and I can't return the Fry's RAM, so now I'm stuck with 12GB of ram. 6GB was pushing it, I see no reason to have more than that.

On the lighter side, with 12GB ram, I can encode Bluray quality video at a rate faster than 1x

So RAM is important for encoding? I use Sony Vegas, when I render, I have the option of having my GPU do most of the work - how does RAM factor into the encoding process?

[gtmtnbiker]

If more of it resides in memory, then it can process it faster without swapping parts of it out to disk. Memory is much faster than disk drives.