If you're all about speed, look into memory because i've found that memory is probably the deciding factor in speed! If you want to spend money on mods on your comps, do so on memory.

I recently upgraded to 1024 DDR RAM, back from 512, didn't know what I was missing!

Not so much. There are three major components that greatly factor into your machine's overall speed, the processor, the memory and the graphics card. But after a point, you hit a plateau, which means you are getting excessive.

Example:
256mb to 512mb = night and day
1GB to 2GB = not so much

Memory is pretty critical, but once you have a certain amount, depending on what you do, it wont change that much. With XP, 512Mb is a minimum in my opinion, if you are going to be doing anything other than basic appliactions. 1Gb is as much as you need, unless you are doing special applications that are very RAM intensive

-C

My current computer is almost 4 years old, but I do have 1 GB of ram (instead of 512 MB)
(I think 256-512 MB was considered "standard" at the time I got it)
I run memory-intensive programs all the time (like editing 250 MB jpeg images, that one is extreme though... ),
so the extra RAM makes a huge difference.

/Irkasmork

Memory is not the only main piece to speed. There is also processor and also graphics card. It's always better to have high sizes of each of them, so that in the future, u will only have to spend a little less money on upgrading it, and if u need to play games which require hig ram, and graphics card, then it can be easily done.

hi! you guys said the there are three things that can affect speed...processor, RAM and graphics card...if i don't really games, would graphics card still matter?