CPU and RAM for me?

I'm looking at upgrading my notebook.

Currently have an Acer Aspire with 1.7 Ghz Pentium M and 1024 Mb RAM.

It's a nice machine but I'm after something lighter and want to combine a performance upgrade too.

I've been looking at my performance in Task Manager.

For my 'normal' usage (mild photoshop processing whilst browsing a couple of internet sites and listening to music) my peak RAM is about 400 Mb. The computer runs well but I have to wait a little while for some tasks.

I just did a harder test but still not atypical usage... running a dvd, heavier photoshop processing, internet and adaware scan. My RAM usage peaked out at 1090 Mb, but CPU usage was at 100% for ages, with the page file usage at 1024 Mb.

Does all this mean that (a) I would probably not see a huge perfomance increase from 2048 Mb ram and (b) would a Core 2 Duo processor blow my current one away?

 

Photoshop is one of those magic programs where you'll see an immediate speed and performance boost from when you step up to dual-core or more than a gigabyte of RAM. If you're working with HDTV-sized frames (1920x1400 or whatnot) or even larger images, or using a lot of filters, you'll really see the difference.

What's really great about dual-core is that you can multitask like friggin' mad and not see any slowdown until you try doing video compression while also running audio decompression.

Add a speedy SATA hard drive to that equation (standard equipment these days) and you'll see even better performance.