Ram or Processor

I'm more curious to know if the extra 4GB of ram (going from 4 to will make up for the slower processor

What does running just fine mean? I've personally noticed when adding more RAM that it improves performance.

I'd really appreciate a direct answer to my question,

thanks,

Wade

At 256MB it ran.
at 512MB it ran fine.
at 1GB it ran a little better.
at 2GB we couldn't tell if it was doing any better.

Now you want to go from 4GB to 8GB?

Don't pay for that!
Bob

Thanks, that answers the question

I appreciate it.

For gaming the processor is a bigger factor and for multi-tasking memory is a bigger factor. The thing about memory is the less you use of the page file which is a file on your hard dive. The speed of using the hard drive versus memory is significant.

If I may jump onto this thread...
I'm in the process of refining laptop specs for a lenovo and was considering upgrading from 2GB to 3GB of RAM. If I'm following what you're saying, do you think it would be more worthwhile to spend the money to upgrade the processor from
Intel Core 2 Duo Processor P8600 (2.40GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2)
to
Intel Core 2 Duo processor P8700 (2.53GHz 1066MHz 3MBL2

I'm pretty new to this and while I understand the extreme basics of processor architecture I have no idea how much of a difference is present between those two. I will not be gaming but do tend to run programs that can get sluggish on my current laptop (photoshop etc).

Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks

Since they are identical expect for speed we can take liberty with the analysis and state this.

1 Second CPU time on the 2.4GHz CPU may drop to 0.95 seconds on the faster CPU. Not exactly time that a human would notice.

I'm surprised this class machine is not fitted with the usual 4GB RAM.

Is this some black friday special?
Bob

HI Bob-

No, it's just a setup from Lenovo. Using their 15% off coupon it comes out to under $800 which seems like a pretty good deal to me.

Thanks for your input!

My Acer 4720 laptop has an Intel Core Duo processor T5250 ( 1.5GHz, 667MHz, 2MB L2 cache ), RAM is listed at 1GB DDR2.

Does increasing RAM to 2GB or 3 GB make any sense if the processor can only handle 1.5GB?

Thanks for any insight!

Then quite honestly you're not doing your processor or your pocketbook any help by upping the RAM ante.

For some, the decision to bump up RAM really sits best when they look to upgrade PCs and go with the 64-bit OS.

Cheers,
Ron
Windows Outreach

Thanks for the advice!

You can put as much RAM as your OS will support; It has nothing what so ever to do with the processor frequency. However, if you've got a 32bit OS, then you can only use up to 3GBs of RAM. I've got a 1.73GHz AMD CPU in one machine and 3GBs of memory; it works fine. Now, that said, you probably won't need more than 1.5GBs of memory anyway, unless your a heavy user. AND, the CPU that you listed doesn't sound too great it's self, so you'll be limited by that as well, no matter how much memory you put in the machine.

with Duo and Quad core processors. When comparing processors you comparing clock speeds and memory is a capacity and not speed per say. More memory means that you have faster cache so your system stores data in memory and not on your hard drive. Retrieving from memory is MUCH faster then retrieving from your hard drive.