What should I invest in for a new PC for MS/UB LARGE designs?

[dbur]

I'm looking at a very large complex design that I'm sure will bring MS & UB to their knees.  If I upgrade my PC, what features should I invest in?

• How many cores will MS/UB use?  Is it worthwhile to go to 6?
• I assume the more RAM the better.  I'm thinking 8GB.
• I have a performance monitor and I can see if my cpu cores are maxed out, or my disc drive is maxed out (IO transfer rate), etc.  I see the disc drive maxed out a lot.  What forms of drive configurations will help the most?  I'm thinking SATA3 in maybe a stripped RAID configuration.
• sometime MS will freeze for a while, even though my performance monitor does not show any resources maxed out.  What's up with that?  

Please advise if you know what features are the most benefit for MS/UB, or if you have info on the best way to set up a fast disc drive array.

I'm currently using a dual core PC with 4GB memory (Dell Vostro 400, Intel 2.33GHz core2 Duo CPU)).

Thanks.

[Miguel_V]

Hello,

For a new computer you can always look at the most powerful dual/quad cores available in the market. A quad core won't necessarily make it bettr than a dual core, though the quad cores nowadays have better core by core performance than dual cores. That's what you are looking for, which CPU can provide you with the better performnace per core. Lots of RAM and a speedy hardrive also help.

Cheers,

[dbur]

Unfortunately MS does not seem to be designed to use the capacity of modern PC's.

There are memory limitations regardless of how much RAM is installed (32bit app).  It also doesn't use multi-cores effectively as you stated.

Performance has been improved somewhat since I started this project, but there is a long way yet for MS/UB to go to use the performance available.