Question....Ram or CPU upgrade?

I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster cpu
on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would be
best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520 or
E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry

Memory.

$700 would buy a pretty nice machine at the Dell outlet.

You want the E520, not the E521. Right now the Intel chips are a much
better processor (price/performance) than the AMD.

Right now it looks like there is free shipping at the outlet too
(http://outlet.dell.com)

Looking right now, the MOST expensive at the outlet is $539, but the
selection is a little light. Nothing with a very fast processor.

There are, however, a number of well priced XPS410 (also known as the
Dimension 9200). A more expandable machine -- the next notch up in the
line.

I would avoid the nVidia 7300 LE video card and I would try for 2GB of
ram. ONLY look at models with Core 2 Duo. Older processors are not as
good.

Tom

-----Original Message-----
From: Carrie ]
Posted At: Saturday, June 02, 2007 9:54 AM
Posted To: alt.sys.pc-clone.dell
Conversation: Question....Ram or CPU upgrade?
Subject: Question....Ram or CPU upgrade?

I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a
faster
cpu
on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would
be
best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a
E520
or
E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry

RAM for photo work.

"Carrie" wrote in message
...
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would
be best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520
or E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry

And if you are comfortable doing it yourself, order 3rd party memory as an
upgrade after buying. It's all commodity memory these days, even with a Dell,
HP, IBM, or whatever sticker on it... Ben Myers

On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 14:48:22 GMT, "Nota Clu" wrote:

RAM for photo work.

"Carrie" wrote in message
.. .
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would
be best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520
or E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry

"Carrie" wrote in message
...
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu
on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would be
best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520 or
E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry



I'll put a different spin on it having just bought an E520 system this
week...I say go for the better processor.
The reason being it is far simpler and cheaper to upgrade your RAM at a
later date...but swapping out processors is a whole 'nother ballgame.

By this, you are saying buy the E520 with a faster processor right at the
outset? That's not a bad idea at all, provided that the incremental cost of
doing so gives a relatively useful boost in processor speed... Ben Myers

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 12:00:31 -0700, "Bob Hayden" wrote:

"Carrie" wrote in message
.. .
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu
on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would be
best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520 or
E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry



I'll put a different spin on it having just bought an E520 system this
week...I say go for the better processor.
The reason being it is far simpler and cheaper to upgrade your RAM at a
later date...but swapping out processors is a whole 'nother ballgame.

It all depends, and here's why.

If for example, for photo work which is better, more speed or more ram, then
the answer is more ram.

If on the other hand, it's a budget issue where you have limited funds right
now, but you might have some upgrade funds available down the road, then
it's better in my own opinion to invest in the faster processor at the
start. Typically CPU's are harder and more expensive to upgrade down the
road. Upgrading memory on the other hand is simple to do and is quite
affordable to do.

If it were me, I'd buy the faster processor right now. I believe the 52x
series have 4 slots for ram. If possible, choose a memory options that only
uses 2 of the 4 slots, leaving the other 2 slots open for your future memory
upgrade.

"Carrie" wrote in message
...
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would
be best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520
or E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 10:44:54 -0400, "Tom Scales"
wrote:

There are, however, a number of well priced XPS410 (also known as the
Dimension 9200). A more expandable machine -- the next notch up in the
line.

Tom

Like Tom said, definitely check the outlet. My XPS 410 was $1,079
(and then I got a deduction from that when I downgraded my warranty
from 2 years to 1 year).

It has 4G RAM, the 2.4Ghz Core 2 Duo w 4m cache, a 250 G hard drive,
good video card, firewire adapter card, etc.....

With the XPS 410 or 9200 you can easily add 3 more hard drives.

At this point I'd go with the processor speed if I were you, with a
memory upgrade path in mind that won't cause you to have to throw away
existing memory to do your upgrade.

Or just get an XPS system similar to mine and you'll be set for a long
time to come.

Posting at the top:

My thoughts are in line with Bobs as I said in another post. Faster
processor, wtih a memory upgrade path that, importantly, doesn't
require one to throw away existing RAM (if the 520's are configured
with 4 memory stots for example).

Ben has a point with the incremental cost of a faster processor gives
a useful boost. Often there are sharp price increases for one
increment up. Like $75 to upgrade to one chip, but the next one might
be $250 more.


On Sat, 02 Jun 2007 15:25:20 -0400, Ben Myers
wrote:

By this, you are saying buy the E520 with a faster processor right at the
outset? That's not a bad idea at all, provided that the incremental cost of
doing so gives a relatively useful boost in processor speed... Ben Myers

On Sat, 2 Jun 2007 12:00:31 -0700, "Bob Hayden" wrote:

"Carrie" wrote in message
. ..
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a faster
cpu
on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but what would be
best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at all.Looking at a E520 or
E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry



I'll put a different spin on it having just bought an E520 system this
week...I say go for the better processor.
The reason being it is far simpler and cheaper to upgrade your RAM at a
later date...but swapping out processors is a whole 'nother ballgame.

"for photo work which is better, more speed or more ram, then the
answer is more ram"

Only up to a point; and any modern computer running any OS with even
only 512MB of RAM is probably past that point. A ten megapixel image
with 48 bit color, uncompressed, is "only" about 80 MB. While that's
huge in terms of putting many such images on a digital camera memory
card, photo editing software works with only one image at a time, and
80MB is no big deal.



Timothy Drouillard wrote:
It all depends, and here's why.

If for example, for photo work which is better, more speed or more ram,
then the answer is more ram.

If on the other hand, it's a budget issue where you have limited funds
right now, but you might have some upgrade funds available down the
road, then it's better in my own opinion to invest in the faster
processor at the start. Typically CPU's are harder and more expensive to
upgrade down the road. Upgrading memory on the other hand is simple to
do and is quite affordable to do.

If it were me, I'd buy the faster processor right now. I believe the 52x
series have 4 slots for ram. If possible, choose a memory options that
only uses 2 of the 4 slots, leaving the other 2 slots open for your
future memory upgrade.

"Carrie" wrote in message
...
I have a limited budget of about $700 to buy a new or refurbished
system.Would it be to my advantage to bump up the ram or order a
faster cpu on a system.I realize that one may bottleneck the other but
what would be best. I do some photo work and not much gaming at
all.Looking at a E520 or E521.Appreciate any advice.Thanks, Harry