Is a processor upgrade worth it?

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Originally Posted by MorseLady

Matridom I was going to have the faster processor but someone else on here said it was a waste of mopeny because it would be waiting on the DDR2 800mhz Ram.

One of the reason I chose the Mesh was for the free upgrade to 8MB from 4MB RAM but maybe I will look at Evesham and Dell again even if tehy do not offer more than 4MB RAM at the best.

I might just drive down to PC World and buy an HP or Compaq but NOT Advent off the peg, I am really confused now :confused:

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In regards to RAM, let's take an objective view rather than opinion..
Here is a review from Tom's Hardware

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The results must look disappointing for the memory vendors, as the largest performance differences we found amount to 7-8% with DivX and WinRAR, while almost all other benchmarks and applications perform alike: a 1-3% performance delta cannot be noticed at all.

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I would not worry too much about the speed of the ram.

Now, if i was buying from Mesh, here is what i would build (cost conscience)
Elite Power
System Base Price: £ 390.64
Intel® Core™ 2 Quad Q9300 Quad Core Processor(2.5GHz,6MB Cache,1333MHz) [upg £ 80.00]
Genuine Windows Vista™ Home Premium Edition with SP 1
Digital / Analogue TV Tuner PCI Card [upg £ 25.53]
New MESH Midi-TowerATX Case + 550W PSU
PCI-Express Mainboard - Core2Duo/Quad Core/Penryn ATX
4GB DDR2 800MHz Memory (2x 2GB) [upg £ 10.00]
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer
500GB Serial ATA Hard Drive with 16MB Buffer [upg £ 60.00]
LightScribe Super Format 20x Dual Layer DVD Writer +R/-R/RW/RAM [upg £ 5.00]
512MB nVIDIA GeForce 8800GT - Dual DVI, HDTV, TV Out [upg £ 125.00]
5.1 High Definition onboard sound card - 6 Channel Cinema sound
Logitech Desktop Keyboard & Optical Mouse [upg £ 10.00]
Free Microsoft® Works® 8.5 + Limited Microsoft Office Trial
Free Cyberlink Video Editing Suite - 7 titles (oem)
Multi-format Memory Card Reader (matx)
1 Year Hardware Warranty - Back to Base (UK Mainland only)

Subtotal: £723.18
vat: £126.56
Order Total: £849.74

A few subtle changes from your build.

The Processor got upgraded

Ram got moved down to 4 gigs

I got ride of the creative labs sound card. In all honesty, you will have a very hard time telling the difference between onboard and creative, save the money and go onboard.

One optical drive should be more than enough. The current drives are very fast at burning and unless you do a LOT of disc to disc copying, it won't be needed.

Upgraded the graphics to an 8800 gt 512. With some money saved in other areas, let's spend it where it counts.

Moved your second hard drive up to 500 gigs.. it's amazing how fast space disappears on you.

you'll find that these last two items are missing from my build, but they are auto-includes in 99.9% of motherboards.

6x USB 2.0 Ports (8x possible on motherboard)
Network Ready integrated 10/100 Ethernet

Finally, if you have questions regarding the build components or any other technical details, call tech support and ask them.. NOT sales ;)

Thank you very much Matridom. Although there are one or two things I would change your build and comments give me a very good idea and I am clearer about what I need now but I can't see myself needing 1TB of storage but then when I bought this computer three years ago I thought I would never nearly use up 200GB!

With regard to the sound card I like to have the extras that go with it because I am into music technology. I like having two optical drives not just for copying but for multitasking ie listening to a CD whilst using another disc for a game or something like WWTBAM requires you to insert the disc before you can play.

I have read articles online about why you can have too much memory and the upgrade to 8MB must be a sales ploy by Mesh. I am going to read up more on the topics discussed on this thread and my mind is beginning to clear and things are coming back to me. By the way Mesh do not give pre sales technical support something to think about because Evesham were very helpful both before my late Husband and myself bought our machines in 2005 and very good support afterwards.
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The on site or not warranty is not important and I do not have an issue with going into the box, only with building from scratch or replacing power supplies. I have upgraded or installed memory, cards, optical drives etc.

I have a much clearer idea of what I need now so many thanks everyone :thumbs2: