A new study by industry research group ZDTag has concluded that users of popular PC systems equipped with standard 32Mb or 64Mb memory can gain more significant performance improvements for their money by adding RAM to their computer rather than buying a new processor. The study found that a 266MHz Pentium II, with an existing 32Mb RAM, ran 50% faster by adding a further 3Mb RAM than by upgrading to a 550MHz Pentium III processor. Adding the extra RAM rather than the new processor resulted in a $542 cost saving, the report found.

Commissioned by the Council of Computing Power, formed earlier this year by four major memory makers, the report unsurprisingly found that the performance of memory intensive applications could be dramatically improved by a memory upgrade. Starting by using Adobe Photoshop 4.0 running on a 550MHz Pentium III with 32Mb RAM, the study measured a performance gain of 99% through the addition of another 32Mb. That would have cost $32, based on average memory prices at the end of August. In some case, the performance tripled when more memory was added.

Hyundai Electronics of America, Infineon Technologies Corp, Micron Technology Inc and Samsung Electronics Co are the sponsors of the Council of Computing Power, and formed it in an attempt to encourage consumers to consider memory upgrades as well as or instead of processor upgrades. The Council says it wants to help consumers and IT professionals understand the amount of random access memory needed for anything from routine to memory- intensive computing tasks, such as photo editing, scanning, adding applications or running several applications simultaneously. There is a web site at http://www.rammatters.com, including benchmarks run by an independent testing lab.

In the earliest phase of its testing, the Council says it found that PC performance increased by an average of 42% when moving from 32Mb to 96Mb RAM. The results suggested that when buying any PC with Windows 98, computer owners should install at least 96Mb of RAM to achieve optimum performance.