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I have an IBM X31 with 1GB of RAM and a 1.4GHz proccessor running Windows 7 Home premium. Which would be more worthwhile to upgrade, the RAM to 2GB or the processor to a max of maybe 2GHz? Thanx in advance =)

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Please give a description of the types of activities you will be performing on this machine (types of apps, how many at once, etc). Either upgrade can be beneficial depending on what you are using your machine for. Although being that you are using Windows, I'd be leaning towards the RAM increase at this point. – MaQleod Nov 1 '10 at 17:52
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3 Answers

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It depends on your usage.

If you have several programs open simultaneously and find that the computer gets slowed down in that regard, upgrade your RAM. 1GB of memory can get filled up pretty quickly, and using swap a lot will really slow you down.

If you're using any high-CPU programs like movie/music/photo editing then you'll see faster processing performance by upgrading your CPU.

Basically, if you run many programs at once, upgrade your RAM. If you run one or only a few, upgrade the CPU.

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Movie/music/photo editing software is going to need a lot more than 1GB RAM, so I'd say a RAM upgrade is going to be more beneficial either way. – Sasha Chedygov Nov 2 '10 at 5:30
It really depends on the software. I still do quite a bit of editing on a machine with 512 MB of RAM, (Cubase, 20+ tracks) but I would probably agree that a memory upgrade makes the most sense in terms of cost and ease. – Michael Nov 2 '10 at 14:41
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With only 1GB of RAM, you're going to be swapping in and out of memory mercilessly. In addition, memory is easier to upgrade (no worries about gluing heat sinks if you're doing it yourself)

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No matter what you're doing, that's very little RAM.

Even with a faster CPU there's no where for what it's doing to go. It'd be a waste.

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