[bigd22686]

i was at work the other day in the break room with a co-worker, we were looking at a best buy add. one of the laptops had 4 gb of ram and he said that good but it doesn't say the processor speed. so my question is, is there an equasion or rule on how fast your processor speed has to be compared to the ram? if the way i worded it confuses you what i mean is for example:

for every 2gb ram you need 1ghz processor speed

[wafflehammer]

no.....

[Ethan_Kaizer]

No, there's really no relation between the two numbers. A computer with a 2 GHz processor for example, could have 512mb ram, or 4 gb ram. There's no telling one by the other. However, did the ad say what type of processor? Is it AMD or Intel? Dual Core or Single Core? If it says specifically what kind, then you might be able to get a feel of the processor speed. If it tells you specifically what model processor it is (i.e. AMD 6000+), then simple research can tell you the speed.

[vernong1992]

None whatsoever, you could still put a top of the line QX9770 with 128mb of RAM.

No correlation sir.

[rkagin]

On a related idea, can a small processor bottle neck the system (compared to the RAM), or vice versa? If so, is there a good way to determine what will balance out the system? Sorry if I'm not clear with my question.

[Puddle Jumper]

A slow processor will significantly bottleneck a system. That said all modern dual core processor are fast enough for general use. Low ram can also hurt performance but ram is allot easier and cheaper to upgrade than the processor.

For ram 2gb is plenty for a system running Vista and 1gb is enough for one running xp.

[vernong1992]

Ya if you want to crazy multitask you need to have both a good amount of RAM and a decent multi-cored CPU

[Saxon]

or be ready for the x64 future as a 32bit Os will only see a max of 3.5gb so if a laptop has 4gb it will have a x64 OS. Do you have a link or name for this laptop an do you have a general idea what you would use it for.