Which is better, more RAM or higher processor clock speed ?

What is your answer if someone ask you on which one is better for overall system performance, adding more RAM (physical memory) or get a new processor with higher clock speed ? and of course when someone saying this question to you, definitely he’s looking for a more general computer usage rather than just for specific usage

If it’s for me the answer is definitely RAM, but why ? if you ask me. The answer is really simple, because nowaday application tends to use more memory, even the operating system itself already takes more than 64MB of RAM when started (fresh install of windows xp and could be more for windows vista), and this is true especially to those who’s running to many background application that can be considered as resource hog such as have Norton Antivirus, Nokia Software, etc.

But what if your computer mostly used to encode video (not editing video), or just to watch movie or anime with some post-processing feature from FFDshow ? then … the answer is upgrade your processor, even better if you upgraded it into a dual core processor, because post-processing or encoding task require much more CPU power compared to RAM usage

But what if you’re a gamer ? … the answer is depend on whether you’re already using :

• Good graphic card (any graphic card that has Direct X 9 hardware acceleration) and is not an on board graphic card
• Above 2 GHz Processor Clock Speed (Single / Dual Core)

Then you can be sure if you choose to upgrade your system ram (by adding another stick) to at least 2 GB, you are going to get noticable performance from your computer