Re: turn processing times
 

What mobo is that rig on? If it's any good at all you could just buy a decent 2GB kit of performance RAM (will cost $50-$100) and overclock that Pentium D. It's been a while since I've seen somewhat report what they can achieve with those chips, but I seem to recall you can get up to 3.6-3.8 GHz out of them without too much trouble. Alternatively you could just spend $50-$100 on a budget dual core chip--the e2180 still has one of the best price/performance ratios on the market, and costs $70.

But all this depends on having a motherboard worth keeping...otherwise I'd probably recommend a Gigabyte DS3L for ~$90.

And of course if you're going to OC you'll want to upgrade from the stock cooler if you haven't already... the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is a good cooler for $25-$30, or the Tuniq Tower if you want to go up to the $50-$60 range.

Re: turn processing times
 

During turn processing I always see the CPU being heavily used in DOM_3... adding more RAM will do little to nothing.

Re: turn processing times
 

I was suggested a new 2GB kit because I was guessing that his existing RAM was some kind of budget model. Increasing the amount of memory is unlikely to improve performance, but depending on what he has now upgrading to something like 800MHz, 4-4-4-12 timing dual-channel modules will.

Re: turn processing times
 

Yep, faster RAM modules can do wonders in combination with a good CPU.