Upgrade CPU or RAM?

Simple question, I am willing to spend extra money on a laptop.

Should I upgrade from a 2.53GHz to a 2.93GHz proc for about 427USD, or should I upgrade the ram from 4GB to 8GB DDR2?

What would be more immediately noticable for things like Photoshopping, web browsing, program startups, and boot times?

 

8GB of RAM will pretty much be useless unless you are constantly reaching the very upper limits of 4GB - and the only reason why you would be doing that is if you are running multiple virtual machines. In short, adding RAM will, in your case, not help with the things you listed at all.

Your CPU is also plenty powerful for the tasks you listed. There is no need to upgrade. It will provide very very little (and unnoticeable) benefits in certain cases, but with your uses, it would not be worth it. In short, the CPU is not worth the money either.

I would suggest you use the money on a high-quality SSD - that would significantly boost boot/shutdown times and speed up program startups. People with SSDs have even reported boot times of 30 seconds (Vista) and shutdown times of 5 seconds.

None of these upgrades will improve your web-browsing experience, though, that really depends on your internet connection.

 

What processors exactly are you looking at? All things being equal, let's break it down this way. For $427 you will have an extra 400Mhz of processing speed. Personally, this is a rip-off due to the fact you are not going to notice a difference of 400Mhz unless you run synthetic benchmarks.

By and large, the RAM, hands down, as long as your OS is able to access 100% of it.

 

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor P8700 (2.53GHz) [subtract $427.50]

or

Intel® Core™ 2 Duo Processor T9800 (2.93GHz)


And even though I may come across as one, I'm not a casual user. I'm a graphic designer, I run dozens of windows simultaneously, and am often working with very large high-res images. Additionally, I don't want to run out of horsepower a few years down the road.

Right now, my XPS 1640 (2.53, 4GB ram) is plenty fast, but I figured if I'm saving 500 USD on a laptop switch (this thing is way too hot) I figure I might be able to get some extra juice.

I totally forgot about the SSD and now realize that it would probably make the biggest noticeable difference for the same price. The only problem is getting a 256 (or larger) with my laptop, which sadly only offers 128's. There's no way I'm paying an extra 600 for 128GB SSD. Where's a better place to buy an after market 256??

 

In photo and media developing you will be happier with the faster processor. However $427.50 is very steep for that upgrade. You may be able to find the T9800 for even less than that on ebay.
Than sell your P8700 for like $200 and you have yourself one awesome upgrade.

An SSD will speed application loading, but it may not deliver as much performance as you think.

K-TRON

 

An SSD, Get the intel one with 160gb, Honestly having more than 4gb of ram is not a high noticeable performance ugrade, I upgraded because I run insane math calculations, run several windows at the time, gaming, I run like 3 or 4 virtual machines at the same time, I use my lappy for heavy engineering programs... But in real day to day use is like no more than a 10% performance gain even if you disable the HDD indexing or paging thing...

Seriously think about the SSD, I had an m1330 with one and hell that was FAST.

 

So many mixed reviews. To SSD or not...I don't know what to believe.

 

a vote for SSD also, will make the biggest difference in your comp. Started a month ago and im already on my 3rd one, will never go back to platter drives