-= Which is more important: CPU speed or More RAM? =-

[J Crew]

alright, well i wrecked my new truck today... but not very bad. just a minor fender bender, but this sets me back on my computer upgrade. my wife is freaking out since it's so close to x-mas and we are on a tight budget.

i'm still going with the gigabyte 7vax motherboard, but i'm thinking about dropping down from a athlon 2400 xp to a 2100 xp. and keeping 512 mb ddr333 ram.

or going with a 2200 xp and dropping down to 256 mb ddr 333 ram.

which one should i go with? thanks for any advice

[snowmoon]

Above a minimum ammount of ram ( somewhere between 128-256 for most people ) a faster processor will help you the most for video related activities.

[hwoodwar]

I really think the two options you presented the faster processor will give you better performance increase (ie faster encoding times.) Right now on the system I'm typing this on, I am doing a 2-Pass VBR encode using TMPGenc on a Pentium 4, 512meg system and approx 192 meg of ram is being used, while CPU usage is near 100 percent. So, it seems like 256meg should be fine. That being said although I do expect a performance boost between a 2100 and 2400meg CPU, I really don't think that boost will be significant since you are only increasing the processor speed by 14 percent.

[Mirror_Image]

CPU

[i-on-s]

Well if money is tight why not wait till money isnt so tight? seems like a logical reason.

[rhegedus]

Get the best CPU you can afford. You can always buy extra ram at a later date.

Better still, if you go for the Pentium option, you can overclock it by 10-20% quite easily, thus saving a bit of cash.

Regards,

Rob

[vcdninja]

go for the cpu. as long as you arent under 256megs of your ddr memory you will be fine

[Innershield]

I upgraded from 256 to 512 and saw no improvement

[JamesB69]

I feel that it depends on what you are doing. Encoding videos, yes processor. Multitasking or office applications memory will help a lot. Either way it should be a good system. The way i see it the difference in the processor is a very small percentage of what the total speed will be, since you are only talking like 100 mhz difference between the 2100 and 2200 while you are talking about doubleing the memory.

Your call though. If budgets tight just go with 2100 256 still be faster than what i use.

[crahak]

RAM doesn't help a lot for this, it's all number crunching. Go for CPU power. 256 megs is fine nowadays. I have 512 on another, and no matter how much stuff you do with it at the same, it basically is no faster anyways.

[disturbed1]

I'd have to say memory when dealing with that small of a mhz difference.

I've got 1500 mb and use a consistent 400-500 megs running CCE, a few IE's, virual desktop manager, and some others.

Throw Avid, Sound Forge, Photo Shop, and Maestro in the mix, then it's all gone.

My newsreader (BNR2) barely opperates on my 1.7 with 256mb ram, it alone can eat upto 500mb's opening several groups.