very large db performance question

Hello All,
We will have a very large database to store
microarray data (may exceed 80-100G some day). now
we have 1G RAM, 2G Hz Pentium 4, 1 CPU. and enough
hard disk.  

I never touched such large database before. I ask
several dbas if the hardware is ok, some said it is
ok for the query, but I am not so convinced. Because
I check the mailing list and learned that it is not
unreasonable to take several minutes to do the
query. But  I want to query to be as fast as possible. 

Could anybody tell me that our hardware is an issue
or not? do we really need better hardware to make
real difference?

Regards,
William


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