I have an original xp home oem with a not so fast cpu xp2400 single core and 512 ram, it has ie 6 on it. This is just for playing and not my main system. It does not matter if I add more ram to it, pretty much the same. I do have a few more sticks lying around. Ie7 and ie 8 is a little more snappy on it but not much. Firefox still out performs both with the same setup.

Once I jump up into a dual or quad core with windows 7 the time to do things are reduced substantially. That offline. Online not see more too much difference without factoring in the internet providers speed.

On a side note I just read that the average internet speed here in the u.s. is 2.8 mbps. And in Japan the national average is 63 mbps. Talk about some speed and serious lacking here in the u.s. I hear europe is way more connected than the u.s. too. What is up with the u.s. lagging so far behind!