ssd or ram?

[MattMK45]

I'm thinking of giving my powerbook g4 a bit of a bump in performance by either maxing the ram up to 2gb or fitting an ssd or at least a faster hdd. I've got 512mb in their at the moment and a 60gb 5400 hdd.

I've read the transfer data rates for some hdds and ssds and they are around 4-5 times faster than my current rates! One thing though, which will I most benefit from in terms of speed and price?

 

[No ice please]

I believe you need a Parallel ATA SSD and I think they are hard to come by.

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

2gb of DDR will probably run you around $100 for name-brand memory. You can find it cheaper if you go with lesser name brands.

PATA SSDs are still expensive and you won't get price/GB as cheap as a SATA SSD. You will pay $100+ with something that is just usable for OS and a few apps. You can go with the IDE>Compact flash approach which might save a few bucks but at the cost of performance.

I'd go with the 2gb memory and the WD 320gb IDE/ATA 2.5" hard drive.

 

[VanneDC]

+1 to what Orange said

 

[mgartner0622]

Yep, RAM is the better way to go.
I recently bought 2 DDR 1GB sticks on amazon for about 50 dollars excluding shipping.
It's more bang for your buck until SSD prices go down, however once they do, an SSD as well would be wonderful.

 

[MacHamster68]

ssd is a good idea , but is still expensive ,
but more ram will boost even your existing setup so get the ram upgrade like everyone said already
and from the money you have left over because you did not buy a ssd you can get get a bigger harddrive , more ram =less virtual memory needed the effect is you do not need a faster harddrive really as its not needed so often any more