Is there a big difference between these two CPUs?

[Mise]

They can be more than DDR3 in 3 yrs time and still be lower than they are now. And there's always the 2nd hand market.

I take your point though - doesn't work if you expect v. old stuff to become scarcer and therefore pricier.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

For stuff like RAM and HDD's I wouldnt trust the secondhand market. I like to have the manufacturer warranties for both of those because they can go bad so easily ( recent experience on that point )

 

[Zelig]

2GB + Ready Boost would probably be better. With 3GB if its a laptop, you're gonna have a 2GB and a 1GB stick which means single channel. 4GB would give you dual channel. The best possible thing is to buy the laptop with only 2GB ram ( making sure its a single, not two-stick set) and then buy a complimentary 2GB stick off newegg ( or your equivalent cheap electronics store ) that has the same speed and timings.

3gb will generally come as 2x1gb + 2x512mb, so you're not giving up dual channel with it.

With Windows XP you can even disable the paging file and just use the RAM - paging files ceased making sense for any normal use years ago as systems stared being sold with 2GB+ RAM, I've not used one for over 4 years now!

Bad idea, for a large number of reasons. (Some Linkage)

That, and even if you disable the page file, Windows pages stuff anyway, just not as well.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

3gb will generally come as 2x1gb + 2x512mb, so you're not giving up dual channel with it.

The last time I looked at laptops ( which was a week or so ago ), Most that I looked at specifically stated 3GB (1x2GB + 1x1GB ).
Now unless things changed, dont laptops also generally only have 2 slots instead of 4? Then it would basically be impossible to have the config you stated.

 

[Zelig]

The last time I looked at laptops ( which was a week or so ago ), Most that I looked at specifically stated 3GB (1x2GB + 1x1GB ).
Now unless things changed, dont laptops also generally only have 2 slots instead of 4? Then it would basically be impossible to have the config you stated.

Yeah, my mistake, I was thinking prebuilt desktops.

FWIW, single channel RAM is pretty competitive performance-wise, but unless you're very tight budget constraints and getting a motherboard that doesn't do dual-channel, you'll rarely save enough money to make not getting dual-channel worthwhile.

 

[Souron]

Bad idea, for a large number of reasons. (Some Linkage)

That, and even if you disable the page file, Windows pages stuff anyway, just not as well.

Nice link.

Apparently I need to increase the page file on my laptop.