The Computer Buzz

May 8th, 2008

Nome and Paul Van Middlesworth - owners - The Computer Factory
 

RAM is more important than the CPU

The capabilities of a PC were once defined by the clock speed of its CPU.

Between 1985 and 2000, CPU clock speed (CPS or cycles per second) grew from four thousand CPS to over one billion CPS. This amazing progress in CPU technology gave rise to the tongue in cheek notion that your new PC became obsolete "before you got it home." The entire PC industry came to rely on the fact that the technological lifespan of a PC was between two to three years.

The CPU speed race, driven by the competition between AMD and Intel, continued through 2002 when CPU clock speeds hit 2.5GHz (2.5 billion CPS). Today, nearly six years later, the fastest CPUs in the latest PCs is only a bit over 3.0GHz. (3 billion CPS).

While the growth in clock speed has slowed, PC makers have continued to improve the performance of CPUs by other means. Multiple cores, higher transistor counts, faster and shorter data paths and increased onboard cache have made present day processors more efficient and improved their capabilities.

These improvements can be important to "power users" but most of us get little or no benefit from the improved processor technology. The speed of our activities is limited by factors that have little to do with CPU speed such as DVDs, printers, scanners, Internet connection speed, or our own speed in moving the mouse and punching the keyboard.

For us, a new high end PC is like having a 500 HP Ferrari engine in our golf cart. Can you say "overkill?" While the PC industry ballyhoos its advances, the truth is that for what most of us do, a six year old PC is every bit as fast as a brand new PC, especially one hobbled by the Vista operating system.

Today, the most important factor in PC performance is the amount of RAM you have available to do your work. The relationship between the hard drive, RAM and CPU is similar to the functions of a manufacturing plant. The CPU is the assembly line. The hard drive is the warehouse and the RAM is the shipping/receiving dock. Nothing gets in and out unless you have sufficient resources on the dock.

While an overfull hard drive, spyware, viruses, overloaded start-up, corrupt windows and Norton, McAffee or Microsoft security packages may bog you down, being "RAM tight" will surely keep you on the slow track no matter how clean your PC is running.

Any Windows XP PC needs to have a full Gigabyte of RAM in order to run optimally. Right now RAM is cheap. A gig of RAM will cost from 30 to 50 dollars depending on the type required. There is an exception. A Pentium PC from Dell, purchased in 2000 or 2001 may contain Intel's infamous RAMBUS RAM. A gigabyte of RAMBUS would cost far more than the PC is worth.

We told you to stay away from Dell.