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On 12/23/2011 04:04 AM, linux guy wrote:
I'm specing a new laptop, probably a Dell XPS 17, with an i7
processor. It will have an SSD and be driving 2 monitors.
The XPS 17s come in two varieties, one with 2 DIMM slots and the
other with 4 DIMM slots.
- I do a ton of browsing for research purposes and may have as many
as 20 Firefox sessions open at one time. - I use Thunderbird with
mail accounts with more than 100K messages in them. - I do some
software development in Eclipse with gcc. Compile times can be
lengthy on some projects. - I use Digikam to manage and edit all my
Nikon D7000 images, which are shot in raw - I want to get into
editing D7000 video files - I want to get into 3D CAD.
How much RAM do I reasonably require ? Is it worth paying more for
4 DIMM sockets over 2 ?
Generally, lots of RAM will help offset a slower CPU. I'm not saying
it will make your CPU faster, but having more "stuff" in memory will
make your system more responsive than having to fetch pages off the
hard drive.
I've found that, with enough memory, my old Pentium 4 running at
3.0GHz is pretty snappy. It won't compete with an i7, but it's
definitely usable. I've gotten years of use out of this old thing, and
cheap memory upgrades are a lot better than a whole new system.
I'd say get the 4 slots. You'll probably be happier, longer.
TC
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