RAM vs processor speed

Hey sorry if this has been discussed before but i couldnt find much with the search function but video card vs ram stuff.... but anyway

i was wondering what is more important for multitasking, ram or cpu speed?

generally, i listen to music while i have several apps open like excel, objectdock, a few windows for browsing the web, etc. is it more important that i have more ram or cpu speed for tasks like this??

i have a p-3 1.12ghz thinkpad t23 with 512mb ram
would say a p-4 @ 2.x ghz with only 256mb help me out more or not??

thanks guys

 

Although the processor is faster, the Ram is the bottleneck. You need more than 256 mb ram now-a-days. 512 I would recommend as minimum. Try to upgrade the ram on 2nd system and then you will be ok =). Also, if you are buying a new notebook fill out the FAQ, the core duo's excel at multitasking, so i would looking into one.

 

RAM. Then CPU. Especially in a notebook.

Cheers,

 

i'm not looking into buying a new one as i already have one.

i was just wondering what was more important with multi-tasking, ram or cpu speed.

what types of activities would be more important with cpu speed?

thanks for the quick reponses guys, im learning a whole lot in just a few weeks from being on this forum.

 

If you multitask a lot then 1GB RAM is sufficient (512mb absolute min). If you game I highly recommend 2GB... 1GB is ok but it uses the swap file more often.

My advice, buy a laptop with at least 1GB ram and with the fastest cpu u can afford and if you need to upgrade later its simple

RAM is so cheap these days there is really no excuse not to have 1GB.

CPU affects overall speed. RAM doesn't really make a computer faster but it prevents a computer from running slower because of bottleneck (not enough ram). So not enough ram = computer running slower

Its shown in benchmarks that 1GB is more than sufficient for most software apps (even having many opened and multi tasking), so you won't see hardly any improvement having 2GB (gaming is an exception) or even 20GB ram.

 

haha i can see it now, games in the future complete installs at 18 gb's and our hd's are going to be 10 TB's. Haha

 

i think your t23 is much better for multitasking because of the ram. the multi tasking that you mostly do is pretty much light application so a pentium 3 is decent and you wont see any slow down. upgrade to 1gb ram which i think thats max for the t23 and you can do better multi task.

assuming youre using window xp, the OS itself already used 200+mb ram even if you're not doing anything. so 256mb is no way to multitask...

the pentium 3 in that t23 is comparable to that of an early release of pentium 4, so its not that bad.

 

so what would be considered heavy use of applications just for future reference??

im guessing use of photo/video editing while playing music, browsing sites, etc.?