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When upgrading my computer, what's more important: RAM or processing speed?
I'm currently running an AMD dual core 1.8 gHz cpu (clocks in at about 3.7) and 1.5 gigs of RAM, which I'm upgrading to 4 gigs tomorrow. I'd love to upgrade my video card, but I'm unsure (I'm a computer n00b) if I can with a laptop.
Any help would be much appreciated, and I hope this is clear...
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Comments
Well, ram allows for programs to have quicker access to data instead of accessing it from the hard drive. For example, when editing in image programs such as Photoshop or Painter it stores all the current details of the image in memory for quick access. Now if all the memory has been used up that you allow for Photoshop or Painter to use, then it will usually switch over to the swap file on a specified hard drive which slows down performance. Another example is a game, when games have no more room to store texture data on the video card it then usually switchs to the physical ram of the motherboard, and when that runs out it switchs to the swap file usually.
The Processor is the most important pipeline of all. The higher the speed of the cpu the more data it can process quicker. However, the processor is limited if it is a 64 bit running on a 32 bit OS. Though it can still push more data then a normal 32 bit processor on a 32 bit OS.
The only window OS' that can see 4gb of ram or more are XP 64bit, or the more professional editions of Vista. Though Vista is hardly worth it as it uses so much resources to just run the thing. The real question is why bother with Vista when you can just use XP and get the same sorta user interface as vista with less resources used through a open source replacement shell for windows. Also, Vista was not released with the promised features that were originally intended for it such as no more registery, a xml based file system, and others. Basically, Vista is just a intermediate build that just plain sucks, and uses up resources like no ones business. You could say Vista is like the next Windows ME
.
About the video card, I really do not know about that, since I haven't messed with newer laptops. I imagine you cannot, because laptops use smaller versions of video cards to fit in such a slim case. Those are usually not for sale in many places except to manufactures of laptops.