Which would be better

[SanDRocK]

k my brother wants to upgrade his computer and he's not sure what to get first a new CPU or more Ram
which do u guys think would make a bigger difference?

PIII 733MHz
or
256MB CL2 PC133 SDRam

his current CPU is a Celeron 533MHz and his Ram is 128MB SDRam(if he ups to a P3 he'll only be able to use 64megs of ram cause the other 64meg chip is only pc100) He'd get a faster CPU but his Mobo only supports upto 733

which do u guys think would make a bigger preformace increase

[Enigma1982]

Well..................
If I am your brother I will change CPU and mobo together..........
to AMD Duron and he still can use both ram even PC100...........
Upgrade ram is not best way to choose............
I upgrade ram from 128 to 256 mb but seem no diferrence in usual program...........and it help me a bit in games

[SanDRocK]

1 or the other, he can get either 1 of those the p3 or the 256MB chip for free so......

[cluthu]

>1 of those the p3 or the 256MB chip for free so
If that's the case I think he should go with the P3, since they cost a good deal more than a stick of RAM does right now.

[SanDRocK]

ya he works at this computer store in my neiborhood and he gets a free piece of comp eq a year so.....as long as its no more than 200$ the p3 was like 209 so i guess he'd pay like 9 bucks but still......

[Enigma1982]

If in this case I choose pentium3 too.....................
Anyway some ram PC100 can run FPS 133 try that ram first........

[Dan]

If only he had an ABIT mother board, most of them will let you select the memory bus speed diffrent from the board speed.. When i first got my PIII EB, i had to set the memory bus speed at 100mhz untill i had enugh to get a pc133 256 stick of the good stuff...

[SanDRocK]

the board my brother currently has is a gigabyte 6VA7+ Apollo Pro board with a VIA chipset, it has 2 dip switches 1 for the CPU speed and the other for the FSB speed

[mr2000jp]

there is some thing you should check out at your brothers computer.
the motherboard: does it support the 133 fsb speed?
if it does then go on and get a 733 (the lowest cpu speed that works at
133 fsb)
if it doesnt then go on and get a 700 mhz only cuz it runz at 100 fsb to match your motherboard,
and about the ram you can set the speed at 100mhz only, for either cpu's 733 or the
700 so you can use the whole 128MB's of ram which is a lot better than having
only 64 MB ram at 133mhz.
i think this will give him a good boost at emulation speed,
the 256MB of ram is not needed by him unless he needs to run multi programs at the same time
and i mean lots of them , or if he was a graphics desighner.
good luck...

[SanDRocK]

ya it can do 133MHz FSB but the highest CPU speed that it can handle is 733MHz (according to the mobo's manual)
how can i adjust the ram speed? just change to 100 FSB?