[profseverus]

I'm kind of confused about this.. I'm probably buying a laptop this year (keeping my fingers crossed for a Macbook) and I was just wondering:

Is it more important for a laptop to have more RAM or be of higher GHz?

Say, is it better to buy one with 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM which is 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

OR

one which has 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM and is 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo?

Please help me, I'm lost!

Thank you

[Seven_Three]

What are you going to be using it for? And how long do you want to keep it before replacing it?

If you go with the 4GB ram you'll have to use a 64bit operating system (almost all computers use 32bitn atm), XP and vista have 64bit versions, that are often difficult to work with because of compatability issues, and most programs aren't yet being designed to use 4GB ram or 64bit. 32bit operating systems can only use 3.25-3.5GB of ram, so you'll be wasting a little of what you paid for there. Also DDR3 ram is expensive.

[un4given]

better processor i think as you can easily add more ram down the line

[acsi]

Number 2

[Higgy90]

it depends on a lot of things. are you going to be running lots of applications at once? if so you need memory. if you are doing a lot of calculating / designing which requires processing power, go for the 2.4

[adamcleland15]

(Original post by Seven_Three)
What are you going to be using it for? And how long do you want to keep it before replacing it?

If you go with the 4GB ram you'll have to use a 64bit operating system (almost all computers use 32bitn atm), XP and vista have 64bit versions, that are often difficult to work with because of compatability issues, and most programs aren't yet being designed to use 4GB ram or 64bit. 32bit operating systems can only use 3.25-3.5GB of ram, so you'll be wasting a little of what you paid for there. Also DDR3 ram is expensive.

500mb+ of it will probably be used for the graphics.

[fxytimi]

You need atleast 2gb of ram and atleast a 2ghz core 2 duo to run modern programs fast

[manderton]

I would personally always go for the most RAM, as .4GHz isn't particularly noticeable in general use,

[adamcleland15]

(Original post by profseverus)
I'm kind of confused about this.. I'm probably buying a laptop this year (keeping my fingers crossed for a Macbook) and I was just wondering:

Is it more important for a laptop to have more RAM or be of higher GHz?

Say, is it better to buy one with 4GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM which is 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo

OR

one which has 2GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM and is 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo?

Please help me, I'm lost!

Thank you

Personally, I'd go for the 2GB of RAM and the 2.4 CPU

There are very few applications that require more than 2GB of RAM. So unless you're a gamer, or into video editing, you won't need more than that for quite a long time. My PC has 1GB of RAM and it's absolutely fine for everything I do with it.

[adamcleland15]

(Original post by fxytimi)
You need atleast 2gb of ram and atleast a 2ghz core 2 duo to run modern programs fast

Define 'modern programs'

No you don't need that much.

[Seven_Three]

(Original post by adamcleland15)
500mb+ of it will probably be used for the graphics.

Where do you get that from? 32bit can only allocate 3.X gig of memory addresses.

[profseverus]

I'm buying the new laptop for uni, but I'll be using it mostly to download stuff, work on word processor and edit pictures, with programs like photoshop. My current (desktop) PC has 1GB of RAM and its REALLY slow when I'm running more than 1 image editing program.. the difference is that the 2.4GHz is about £200 more expensive so I don't know if it's worth it! Whereas extra RAM is cheaper, even if it is DDR3..

[Higgy90]

(Original post by Seven_Three)
Where do you get that from? 32bit can only allocate 3.X gig of memory addresses.

yes but thats because part of it is taken by the graphics processing. the 4gb in total includes ALL memory on the pc

[fxytimi]

(Original post by profseverus)
I'm buying the new laptop for uni, but I'll be using it mostly to download stuff, work on word processor and edit pictures, with programs like photoshop. My current (desktop) PC has 1GB of RAM and its REALLY slow when I'm running more than 1 image editing program.. the difference is that the 2.4GHz is about £200 more expensive so I don't know if it's worth it! Whereas extra RAM is cheaper, even if it is DDR3..

Its not all about GHZ its about the architecture of the chip. so if you have a pentium 4 running at 3ghz. it will be much slower than a core 2 duo running at 3ghz or even 2ghz.

for ram you need a minimum of 2gb at 800mhz and thats it. unless you like to edit hd videos while playing games, which will eat up loads of ram.

[adamcleland15]

(Original post by Seven_Three)
Where do you get that from? 32bit can only allocate 3.X gig of memory addresses.

Learn something before you post again.

If the video card is integrated into the motherboard, it will use a portion of the computer RAM, instead of its own dedicated RAM.

[conroe-killed-the-k8-star]

Go for the first choice laptop - 4GB RAM will probably be more beneficial to you running Photoshop than an extra 400mhz on the CPU because the main reason why things slow down is because they are thrashing the page file on your desktop.An extra 400mhz might mean filters take slightly less time to apply for large images but the difference won't be too huge.

[ParadoxSocks]

Always go with more RAM. It's the cheaper upgrade with the most impact especially with photo editing RAM sucking programs. You'll probably barely notice the extra GHz.

[fxytimi]

You can add ram, but you cant add 400mhz. 2gb of ram will cost like 30 quid. compared to buying a whole new cpu.

[profseverus]

(Original post by fxytimi)
You can add ram, but you cant add 400mhz. 2gb of ram will cost like 30 quid. compared to buying a whole new cpu.

yes but the point is buying something that I won't need to change later on.. so, basically, what I was asking is whether 2GB of RAM are more important than 0.4GHz..

[adamcleland15]

Whichever laptop you get, it will work for what you want it for (Which I assume is general student-y stuff).

Go with whichever is cheapest