Computer Choices leave me confused...?

Question

I need to upgrade my computer.
Right Now I have a 1.7ghz Celeron Processor
and 256MB of RAM.

I cant upgrade both...but my choices are...

2.4ghz Pentium 4 Processor
or
1GB of RAM

???

I want to play games (Doom 3 at medium settings) and i need to obviously update!!

My system specs.
1.7 Celeron Processor
256MB of RAM

I cant upgrade both so....
these are my choices....
2.4ghz Pentium 4
or
1GB of RAM

What should i get first

P.S. Someone once told me that the processor helps with framrate and memory helps it when it comes to loading and to load less often....is this true?

Answer 1

With that little ram, the choice is certianly ram. It will provide the best value and speed increase. Your computer is probably running out of ram and using swap. These days xp uses 128 MB + and browsers routinely consume 50+ So your computer becomes really slow when ram is consumed. The speed difference between 1.7 ghz and 2.4 would only be realized in processor intensive applications, which you would not be able to run with that little ram anyway. So ram definitely.

Answer 2

I am running Pentium Class systems that are 233Mhz to 1.5 Ghz, but most are in the 350Mhz to 550Mhz speed range, so I wonder what it might be like to have a 2.4Ghz system.

Hey, when you run the 'Nixes that run upto 50X faster, and have upto 4,000 open applications without crashing, you forget the need for faster CPUs.

The boot might take 30 seconds longer, but, the stability and speed of the systems, with their thousands of games and programs, all FREE, and free of the "114,000 Microsoft Virus Definitions", is worth it all!

I spend the money on larger internal second hard drives, and external drives. As long as my systems have 256 to 512Mb RAM, all is well!