More RAM = Less CPU strain

You are really asking the wrong question, what you want to know is whether adding ram will speed up whatever your PC is doing. They answers is YES!!! AND NO!!

It depends you see, if you system is 'disc bound' ie it dos not have enough fre memory to do its jobs and constantly had to access the hard drive for 'virtual memory' then it should show quite a dramatic improvement.

However if your PC is not disc bound it will make "bugger all" diference. The more things you run at once the more likely it will become diskbound. However people usually only run one application at a time (usually).

For example my old CPU struggles to play some modern video ( .wmv) as it is just not up to the job. No ammount of extra memory is likely to help (I think). I very much doubt it is disk bound as I would hear my very noisy drives crunchinig away if it was. (or drive light flashing).

The PC which I will be buyiiiig this week (Athlon 64 3200)will have a CPU about 20 times faster than wot I have now (Cyrix MII).