n00b question - CPU vs. RAM

[postalblue]

Howdy,

My family's looking to buy an iMac and now's probably the perfect time considering this morning's refresh. But either way, this question doesn't directly apply to Macs.

Say you're buying/building a computer. Base specs - 2.8 ghz and 2 GB RAM (DDR2). What is going to increase overall performance most: boosting the processor to 3.06 ghz or doubling the RAM to 4 GB.

My instinct says the RAM will make the most significant impact, but I'm coming from a Windows background and I get the feeling OSX has better memory management than Vista.

Thanks,
Andrew

 

[Uberhoser]

Ram FTW

 

[dragabain]

Agreed ram FTW. See if you can overclock the processor.

 

[Shedimus]

Agreed ram FTW. See if you can overclock the processor.

Its a mac so thats almost definatly out of the question lol
Yeh go for the RAM caz at a random guess the 3.06Ghz one i a Celerom??

 

[grieve]

Ram and PC

 

[postalblue]

From what I understand, the processors in the iMacs are all Penryn and very new. I'll tell them to spend the extra cash on the RAM rather than the processor. Thanks for your help everyone!

 

[KyleSTL]

Its a mac so thats almost definatly out of the question lol
Yeh go for the RAM caz at a random guess the 3.06Ghz one i a Celerom??

Nope. It's actually a 1066FSB Core 2 Duo mobile processor on 45nm node.

Ram will have a much more sensible impact on your computing.