More ram or faster clock speed?

looking to get the new xps 17

not sure if I should get 8gb of ram instead of 6gb

or stick with 6gb and get i5-2520M instead of i5-2410M

I will be using it for some light gaming with the 550m, the benchmarks are good for the games I will be playing, but mostly browsing the web, downloading, 720p movies, work.

or I could save some money and go with 6gb and i5-2410M, don't have a vast budget, around £850 including a 10% discount. Only a student but anything would be an improvement from my dell dimension 5150 with 1gb ram...

 

It's more convenient to get a better CPU and less RAM, since replacing/adding memory sticks in the future is simple and affordable, unlike replacing the CPU. However, for the usage you described neither additional 2GB of RAM nor slightly higher CPU speed will provide a noticeable improvement. So you can as well just save the money.

 

i just got my xps 17, stayed with the stock 4gb, and went with the 2820....then ordered better faster 8gb off of newegg.com for $90.00 its a lot cheaper to get aftermarket memory than it is to get dells memory.

the more memory you have the more web pages you can have open too!!

also remember to look into the dell coupons........i used 3 of them and saved $450.00

 

I think you will find that adding RAM in the future when more funds are available is much easier than changing CPU.
You mention 6GB vs 8GB. I drop it even further and go with an i7 and 4GB of RAM if that is all the funds you have at present. Ask for RAM for Christmas, birthday, or graduation present.

HTH

 

I'd definitely go with 4GB. You can upgrade later, and save additional money. However, if your usage pattern remains like you describe, you won't notice the difference between 4GB and 8GB or 16GB+.

That's true, but the difference is going to be something ridiculous like 800 webpages as opposed to 1800 webpages, so in reality it won't matter.

 

you definitely won't need over 4GB for those tasks

 

My advice is to get the fastest CPU you can possibly afford. If you need to reduce the hard drive, memory whatever, get the absolute fastest processor you can get.

The reason is because all the other things are easily replaced and become LOTS more affordable over a short time while a complete CPU upgrade will always be expensive and there are few people willing to buy a used low end laptop CPU for anything worth the time to package it up & sell it.

Peripherals like hard drive & ram are pretty cheap upgrades and can be reused or resold for cheap fairly easily. Also, you can buy better components than what Dell puts in stock. You are limited to DDR 1333 for your CPU (I think) but you can get low latency DDR 1333 to maximize the performance limitation. Buying an upgraded laptop hard drive makes it so you automatically can use the old one as a backup or buy an external enclosure and now you have an extra external storage medium. With memory, it's not hard to get someone to pay you $25 or so for your old ram if you install it into their aging low ram laptop.

Also depending on your level of annoyance with computers. You may notice 4GB being slightly more annoying than more. The reason is that Win7 uses around 1.5 to 2GB of ram as prefetch. This gives you only around 1.5 to 2 GB of ram that the system actually says is immiediately and freely available. If the Used Ram to unused ram ratio becomes closer to 50:50, windows will start paging the prefech stuff to the hard drive including parts of the operating system that it deams ok to do so. If you use a computer like me where your usage patterns are not that predictable, it gets annoying having constant split second delays here & there while windows fetches stuff back from the hard drive or has to write stuff to the hard drive to make more ram space for the new program you just opened. 99% of people really dont notice it, 95% dont really care about split second delays if they do notice it, but nothing is more annoying to me than not having basic usage type stuff happen immiediately.

When in important meetings, a few second delay here & there gets really really really annoying when people want answers now. Those tiny little delays in your computer give the appearance of stalling and on the spot trying to figure out what's going on & not having been prepared for the meeting in the first place. Each second of delay in opening up data is one second you dont have to analyze data when your on the spot. If any of you have been in these situations, 1 second feels like forever. & even if you arent on the spot, having a stupidly quick computer just gives the appearance of being competent and qualified for the job when your computer is hooked up to the projector. This doesnt appear to apply in your case, but I say the more ram the better.

 

First of all, 1080p screen if you don't mind the matte finish. Neither of the screens on the XPS 17 are particularly good, but the 1080p screen gives you more virtual "workspace" by making things a bit smaller. You'll notice a lot more of a difference if you get that upgrade rather than a CPU or RAM upgrade.

Now if you're willing to go to a smaller screen size, take a look at the XPS 15 and get the 1080p screen. That's a really good quality display. However, if you're not going to get the 1080p upgrade, go for the XPS 17 because the XPS 17's stock screen is still much better than the XPS 15's stock screen.