Biggest difference to the speed webpages load – RAM, GPU or SSD?

What will make the biggest difference to the speed webpages load, RAM, GPU or SSD … I recently bought a Dell Optiplex 7090 - i7 with 16gb RAM and a

Pcie 3 x 4 …. A friend who’s not very techie also bought a HP 290 G4 Micro Tower with i5 and 16gb RAM ….. his machine opens webpages before you’ve finished typing them and almost puts mine to shame.

The only thing that’s different is he has an upgraded gpu as opposed to using the onboard graphics.

They’re both new Win 11 installs, both plugged into the same router with the same network cable, the only thing I had installed on mine and not his but not open when comparing them is Office.

Options I’m considering are another 32gb RAM, upgrading the Pcie to 4 x 4 or alternatively an AMD Radeon RX 6400 gpu and am wondering which might make the most difference but don’t want to drop money on something to be disappointed and would have thought my machine should theoretically be quicker.

Any help much appreciated.

Your internet speed and they way you have your router set up can make a difference. Also, if using a wifi connection, what type of connection are you using, 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz and the distance you are from the router. Also the number of other users are on the same frequency and if anything is causing interference.

thecaretaker said:

Your internet speed and they way you have your router set up can make a difference. Also, if using a wifi connection, what type of connection are you using, 2.4GHz, 5GHz, 6GHz and the distance you are from the router. Also the number of other users are on the same frequency and if anything is causing interference.

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As I mentioned in the opening post, they're both plugged directly into the router using the same cable.

Speed of your broadband Internet connection and speed of DNS servers important as internet speed determens how fast website loads and DNS server is queried.

you can try static addressing for your connection
also CloudFlareWarp which uses cloudflare DNS servers.

that has made a lot of difference on 2 desktop systems that i have setup that way.
best of luck Steve ..

Actually, I used to notice that Firefox took a few seconds to open with my old WIn10 computer, with a 5x faster processor and Intel embedded graphics, the operation is WAY faster. I was surprised that the processor had such an impact. I have gigabit fiber, that didn't change between machines.

I think the capability of processor doing multiple tasks in background matters because isn't browsers these days pre-load your favs, most visited pages ect.. before you even click the app?

None of what you have mentioned really matters at all.

These are the main factors.

1. Internet download speed.
2. Caching of pages/info/images from previous visits etc.
3. Web Browser settings e.g. clearing cache when closing Web Browser will slow things up.

"his machine opens webpages before you’ve finished typing them"
That is primarily 2. Caching. Could be pre-loading, though I never do the latter as it wastes resources on a "maybe". All this is in your Web Browser settings.

A 4th factor maybe user limited bandwidth and/or priority settings in the Router, worth a check there. Varies with Routers so cannot be more specific. Sort of inevitable in multi user environments that someone thinks they need more bandwidth/priority than others.

DNS server speed differences are small, tested dozens at my location (UK), reliability is actually a more important factor.