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Eh, I'd disagree with the above poster. Buying another 512 and adding it to what you have down the road is going to better than limiting yourself with the processor.
I'm not an Inspiron guru but I'm fairly sure the 700m can not be have it's processor upgraded.
- My vote is for the 1.6 Ghz 1GB ram option. That's what I went with (actually 1.25GB ram). I've always favored staying one or two steps down on the cpu, finding the sweet spot. I'm not as familiar with Pentium M CPU's as I am with A64's or P4's, but even with the Pentium M I can't see the performance delta between these to speeds being that great. The true performance benefit of more RAM (to a point) is decreasing the use of the HD as a swap file. The performance gain from decreased swap file usage will be much more noticeable then any gains from the faster CPU. The question now, will a 1 GB system use the hd swap less then the 512 system. A lot will depend on how many apps you normally have open and what's running in the background. In truth the sweet spot for price and performance on RAM is 512mb, and as has been stated before you can always add more RAM, but upgrading the CPU on a laptop in probably not practical. Some how I couldn't convince my self to spend the extra $200 on the CPU, but was able to justify it on another 1GB of RAM.
laffingbilly
106 Posts
473
0
Posted November 3rd, 2004 18:00
it don't think you would be able to see a difference between 1.6 and 1.8 with the same RAM. it will be cheaper to just get the 1.6 and buy extra ram. a 1gb module will be faster than 2x512MB. from a price standpoint, you can get 2x512MB for about $190 and a 1x1GB for $129, only about $30 more, but i think it will be worth it. if you need more ram, then you can add it and keep the 1gb under the keyboard. from my understanding it is better to put the larger RAM module in slot A which is under the keyboard. i would also recommend buying the computer with only 256MB ram and then buying 3rd party RAM which will save you money. You could then install the 1GB in slot A and put the 256MB in slot B (on the bottom of your computer).- it depends on if you want to play games, and use lots of things at once or if you dont. If you do, go for the 1 gb, your computer wont freeze, but if you dont, go for the other one. (if you do lots of things at once, and choose the 512 one, it will freeze alot)
- This really is not a cut and dry question.If the question is spending the money right now picking one vs the other you will be far better off going with the more RAM over the CPU. Going with the 1.8 over the 1.6 will only buy you about a 4%-7% increase in performance. While going with the 1Gig over the 512K will give you a 21%-24% in performance but that is also a loaded fact being that it depends on what you are doing with your system. If you are doing Excel type database stuff you are not going to see any diffrence but if you plan on playing games, messing with photos, watching videos then the RAM will help big time being the video card is only a 64m on board thus the more memory will allow the 64m card to use most is not all for rendering.Now the catch! Down the road a month or two if you want to upgrade you will be happy you went with the better processor being that is a mother to upgrade with the RAM is almost a no brainer. So now that I danced all around the question ... It is hard to say you are really the only one who can make the call but I hope this helps.
chaistt
797 Posts
467
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Posted October 14th, 2004 19:00