I have an i7 processor as well with 8 GB of ram on Win 7. I do not use HyperThreading (HT) therefore only have 4 wu's running at a time with boinc set to run at 100% on all 4 cores.

I can run the Windows Flight Simulator X while wcg/boinc is set to use 100% and see no impact on the Flight Simulator.

So, one difference between you and me is that I can only run 4 wu since HT is disabled. As a result, I will use less memory than when I ran with HT enabled.

The only reason I run HT disabled is so that for other applications that are limited to running on one core at a time they can get up to 25% of the machine capacity whereas with HT enabled they could only get 12.5%.

My next task is to figure out how to run a vdisk for boinc so that I can run more that 2 CEP wu's at the same time.