RAM vs Processor? What to spend money on?

[d4v0s]

What is far more important is matching ram speeds to your proc.

make sure you at least get ddr that matches your FSB.

Also go for the quad core, I build high end systems for a living, and a dual core can only do half what a quad will. With that being said, make sure you also get a high clock quad (at least 2.8ghz) and unless your using 64 bit programs, no need to run more than 4 gigs of ram.

intel Q9550 is one of the best deals around if you can find them, I am also a fan of the amd quad cores.

[JaMail]

+1 to the SSD.. get a solid state drive and 6 gigs of ram.

[ldivinag]

quad...

you can always buy more ram and install it easier.

[Merc1138]

Faster dual core and 4GB of ram, spend the rest on the videocard or buy an SSD. The number of games(and it's mostly simulators) that can actually run more than a couple of threads, is still few and far between. Running those few threads faster is how you're going to see more performance.

No game needs more than 4GB of ram.

What exactly do you plan to do with this system? Ok fine, you said play some games, but what else? Personally I'll have a game open on one monitor, and have a tv show, music, or something else on the other monitor at the same time. That's a situation where quad core can be helpful. If you're just going to stick with 1 display and don't plan on ever running anything in the background, you don't need quad core for gaming.

An SSD drive won't improve game performance, it will make your computing experience a heck of a lot faster. Windows will load much faster, and games will load much faster(although you will be limiting yourself on just how much you can put on an SSD since we're talking about 64GB for roughly $80-$120, 128GB SSD drives are more expensive, 256GB SSDs are just so overpriced they aren't worth considering at this point). So you may still need your existing 500GB drive or whatever as a secondary to store videos and music(since loading speeds for those aren't an issue).

The other key to a better computing experience, a second monitor as I mentioned. I've had minimum of 2 monitors on any home system, or even work system(laptop currently) for years now, drives me nuts to only have 1 display. ATI hydravision and nvidia 3d surround for games spanned across multiple monitors are a separate issue.

[The Original Godfather]

I'd say it depends.



If you want something that will last you a while, then get the best processor you can now. RAM is a fairly cheap technology and can always be added later. You wont need more than 3GB if you're not running 64bit.

However, if you want the easiest and most "perceived" improvement, then I will suggest getting 4GB RAM, a dedicated video card (there's a million options these days) and a SSD.

SSD will DRAMATICALLY increase performance. However, if you use SSD and your machine is mainly for gaming, rip your games to your SSD instead of running them from the CD drive so that way you take advantage of SSD performance. If not, SSD won't do you much good for gaming, it'll only affect whatever is being accessed from that particular SSD.

[safewaysecurity]

SSD = 7 second start up

[The Original Godfather]

SSD = 7 second start up

Ya, SSD is great.


When I did sound mixing and mastering SSD made a big difference loading up uncompressed files.

Imagine loading a 3 hour mix in .WAV... that's about a 3.5GBs file... and try mixing it with 4 other files just as big at the same time.

12 GB of RAM with fast timings did help alot too.

[Merc1138]

However, if you use SSD and your machine is mainly for gaming, rip your games to your SSD instead of running them from the CD drive so that way you take advantage of SSD performance. If not, SSD won't do you much good for gaming, it'll only affect whatever is being accessed from that particular SSD.

No point. I haven't seen any PC games in years that actually run reading data from the optical drive. Installing games will install the game to your HDD(game developers quit doing it because HDD capacity began getting so high, that having a 10GB game install on your HDD wasn't a big deal). Optical drive access from games after the installation would be purely for DRM(checking to see that you have the disc for the game), rather than running the game from the disc.

So unless you pull some 10 year old PC game CD from somwhere and install it, a full install(default these days) will copy all of the needed game files to the installation folder, and in this instance that folder would be on your SSD.

[Darklyte27]

Both actually. get as much both as you can afford.

[UBFRAGD]

The other key to a better computing experience, a second monitor as I mentioned.

That's been on my to-do list for too long now.......

Here's my set-up, nothing special, I'm no power user, I like having a few browsers and some entertainment going on, photoshop and premiere pro, works great/very fast so far.

[Joe]

quad with 6gb ram.

X2 for sure

[Oshiat]

Are you replacing the motherboard? I looked at 2 lines of thought when I built my pc.
1. Decent mobo with a higher end i3/i5, good pc but no room to grow or,
2. Better mobo with lower end i7, but fully supports the newer 6 core intel chips for an upgrade down the road.
I have not found a game that isnt awesome even with graphics maxed out. I paid more that I really wanted to, but I should not have to upgrade for several years.

I7 930
6gig PC1066 ram
ATI 5770 graphics card
Asus P6X58 mobo

[dchang0]

Oshiat and the guys talking about SSD are providing sound advice. The biggest bottleneck in most machines is the disk I/O, usually limited by a cheap storage controller in a cheap chipset on the motherboard OR by slow hard drives.

I've seen huge performance gains just by installing a better SATA controller card (usually a low-end RAID card) and a pair of high-rpm drives. OR, of course, you can go with SSD, which can be wicked fast with a decent SATA controller (a lot of SSDs I have seen have been crippled by a using a cheap PATA controller with PATA to SATA bridge).

So my advice would be to:

First get the best mobo that you can afford, focusing on the built-in storage controller
Second, get the best processor you can afford after buying the mobo
Third, get a fast hard drive (those WD Raptors are fantastic, or an SSD)
Fourth, get 4GB of RAM

[Robidouxs]

Go with a high end motherboard, I have learned from experience it is better the spend the money up front since you will not have to spend down the road on peripherals which increase your software and hardware failure rates.

After taking care of the motherboard, look at CPU support. Lean towards something with support for high end CPU support and a company with a track record for updating and writing regular bios updates. The more company bios updates written, the higher the likelihood your motherboard will support additional processors down the road as they are developed.

For hard drive, get 6gb Sata. Super fast transfer rates.

USB: Go with USB 3.0, fast transfer rates.

Videocard: Your choice, spend the money up from so you don't have to upgrade until 2 generations of GFX cards have passed.

[Small Yellow]

It will be more about graphics card but quad core > dual core if ram is over 2gb. Basically if you have over 2gb it really comes down to processor. For games it goes graphics>processor (if ram is over 2gb)>then ram.