Better processor or more memory... what's more important?

6181 Views 7 Replies 5 Participants Last post by TheMatt, Jan 13, 2007

Fiona

Discussion Starter · Jan 12, 2007

Hello!
After the devastating disaster of spilling water into my laptop, I am looking into purchasing the cheapest new one I can find...
We are looking for
-functionality of university studies
-some media but no gaming

I Have been looking at Dell (I now you all scorn) and they have two computers:
AMD Turion 64 but only 512MB for $699CAN
AMD Sempron with 1GB for $709CAN

Both the upgrade to a better processor or more memory is $50... So what should I do?

If you have any other suggestions of better deals please tell me but they must be this price.

Thank you!
Fiona

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95five-0

· #2 · Jan 12, 2007

It depends on what you plan to do with the computer. What are the main things you want to be able to do? and how much at once?

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Fiona

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jan 12, 2007

Well... I need to be able to surf the net, looking for articles etc... mostly in quite large PDF format...

As far as 'media' goes, I would want to watch movies, have itunes and possible online video viewing. As well as photo storage and viewing...

I would want quite a few windows open at the same time for searching capabilities and comparison of PDF's. With itunes at the same time as well. Possibly a Word processing document too.

Thanks for the quick response, I think this is all I will be wanting to do.

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ceri sheeran

· #4 · Jan 12, 2007

Hi,

Go for the highest spec and fastest processor.

Memory can usually be upgraded fairly easily by adding or changing memory modules.

A processor upgrade is usually basically impossibly on a laptop.

hth

Ceri

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TheMatt

· #5 · Jan 13, 2007

If you are willing to upgrade in the future, go with the Turion, but if you don't want to, go with the 1 GB of RAM. The Turion and the Sempron are almost the same thing, the Sempron just has a smaller L2 cache (and no SSE3 instruction set on older chips). What are the speeds? Overall, I think the 1 GB of RAM will make much more of a difference than a faster processor.

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