In what ways does size matter with Ghz, GB Ram and GB hard disc?

E

eric.e

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I'm afraid this reveals really basic ignorance on my part but can someone please tell me what aspect of a computer's performance is affected by having more or less Ghz, more or less GB of Ram or more or less GB of hard disc memory? For instance, if a choice must be made is it better to have more Ghz or more memory (and if the latter, more Ram or more on the hard disc?) -- and Why?

As a concrete example, I have recently acquired an iBook with 1.2 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM and a 30GB hard disc. I intend to use it mainly for web browsing, email and word processing. I undersatnd that the Ghz and RAM cannot be increased but I could have the hard disc upgraded to say 160GB. But what would be the effect on performance, and would it be worthwhile?

Your thoughts would be gratefully received.

Eric
 
I don't feel like explaining computer hardware basics 101 at this moment. Google or more specifically Wikipedia will do a much better explanation than mostly anyone here could provide. As far as your HD issue 30GB is pretty small for today's standards, but if you only plan on storing a max of 25GB of data that should be fine.
 
eric.e said:
... can someone please tell me what aspect of a computer's performance is affected by having more or less Ghz, more or less GB of Ram or more or less GB of hard disc memory? For instance, if a choice must be made is it better to have more Ghz or more memory (and if the latter, more Ram or more on the hard disc?) -- and Why?

... I have recently acquired an iBook with 1.2 GHz, 1.25 GB RAM and a 30GB hard disc. ... I undersatnd that the Ghz and RAM cannot be increased but I could have the hard disc upgraded to say 160GB. But what would be the effect on performance, and would it be worthwhile?

..
Click to expand...
For your computer, you will see the most benefit by replacing your hard drive with the highest capacity drive that you can afford or the highest capacity that will fit in your case. As a general proposition, MacOS X requires that your hard drive have at least 10% of its total capacity available as free space. This give the virtual memory system sufficient space to do its job. At 160 GB, you are considering a good drive. Go for it.

There is the general assumption that you need as much physical RAM as you can afford. However, this is not true. The effect of adding more physical RAM is highly non-linear. Your OS has a minimum physical RAM specification. Exceed this value and your computer runs OK, but may experience problems with certain apps. If have more than a certain threshold of physical RAM installed, then you will experience very little improved performance by adding even more RAM.

I have a PowerBook G3 Pismo with 384 MB RAM. It works great on most apps, but gives an insufficient RAM error message while running a specific app. The machine I am using to write this has 1 GB RAM and never has a problem. As for clock speed, in my experience it is another threshold value. Your clock needs to be fast enough. Exceed some threshold clock speed and you will see very little performance improvements for incrementally higher clock speeds.

An example of sorts is the minimum specified clock speed for MacOS X 10.5. It is 867 MHz. There are workarounds to install it on slower machines. Installed successfully on a slower Mac, it works fine.
 
I had it on the dual 500mhz powermac i sold, and ive ran it on another with a 667 processor, so it can be done. But on a G3 Prismo, it probably wouldnt run leopard all that great, of course you would have to add some ram.

Anyway back on topic lol, I'd say that yes, the 30 gig thats in there is probably a 4200 RPM, so putting a bigger and FASTER hard drive in there, would increase you performance.

I guess it would also depend on what version of OS X your running, tiger runs well on older machines, it would have run great on the dual 500mhz powemac i had, but i thought that it would be cool if it was running leopard, and for some reason, some people that know its not supposed to be running leopard, really want it.

Heres a 320 gig for 90.Thats a good price too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136345
 
Many thanks to all of you for the way you have shed light on this issue. I'll definitely go for a bigger and faster hard drive.
Eric
 
The amount of memory needed is totally dependent on what you are going to do with your computer. Since you are going to use it to run web browsing, email and word processing, optimal case is to have enough memory to fit web browser, email program and word processor all at once without swapping.

However if you have less memory and you have the web browser running all the time, but do not write email or documents all the time, it might be ok to have less memory. But since there will be less memory than actually needed (when you run all the programs at the same time), you need more disk space since the operating system will put some parts of the programs started but not not just now used to the disk (i.e. the swapping).
 
Many thanks Artov.
You seem to be reinforcing the argument for more hard drive space.
Regards,
Eric
 
I just ordered a 160 gig hard drive for an ibook g3 that i bought, ill let you know how the performance incease is when it gets to my house
 
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