Recommendation

[Gertjan]

I have the 8800, how's that model compared to the 8600?

[WoodMan]

The 8800 gtx?  I had that card for years and years, the best piece of computer I ever had!  DW will run fine on that card (I ran CoD4 in max detail on that card with no problem at all), but DW is quite intensive on CPU and RAM I think.  I'm using 4GB ram and a Quad Core Q9450 and got no problems with DW on 1400 size galaxy.  Things slow down towards end game if I zoom out to galaxy view and menus can slow up slightly, but as far as I know everyone gets those problems.

[profanicus]

ORIGINAL: vonboy
i've only seen the game eating up around a gig of ram at the most, and that is with 1400 star 20 empire late game.....games.
i'd say with xp, 2gigs is fine. with vista and 7, probably try for 3gigs (those os's eat up more ram just by themselves, so they need extra ram for everything else)

I agree, 3gb is a good sweet spot for ram and is all you need for any modern game, on any OS.

Looking at the figures there's really not that much in it with regards to OS ram usage. Unless maybe you are unlucky enough to still be running Vista ...

I believe these values were measured after fresh installs, all updates, then idled for an hour:
XP 150mb
Vista 300mb
Win 7 215mb

Given that DW doesn't use much over 1gb, 2gb should be enough on any OS.