Improving System Responsiveness

[Ataraxia]

So I just want to get input from some of you experts here.

For those of us who run everyday things (such as Itunes,tons of windows for multitasking, Bitcomet in background, AIM, Word/Excel etc), don't encode tons of Divx or run extremely processor demanding applications like Folding @ Home etc...

To improve system responsiveness, we should
#1 Get as much RAM as we can
#2 Get the best HD performance as it will
#3 Use Vista's readyboost with the fastest flash/SD card possible

By system responsiveness I mean how fast applications load, start up speed, minimal lag between inputs etc...

So the real question, is there a large *system* responsiveness difference between two identical systems except one has a *faster FSB* + *faster clocked speeds*... much like for instance, a 2.0 Conroe on 1066mhz FSB vs a 2.93 on 1333mhz FSB.. Obviously the latter would blow the former away in areas where processor crunching is needed..

Thanks for input!

 

[jkresh]

for word processing/browsing and music the differences between those two chips would be fairly small (though the difference between a dual core and a single core would be substantial). So in terms of responsiveness first is # of cores (though for most users 2 is enough), second is ram, 3rd would be a fast harddrive, readyboost is useful but if you have enough ram (and vista 64) it doesn't relay get used much.

 

[cprince]

Don't forget to minimize the number of background tasks/processes that you don't need, and disable them from running on start up.