You are talking about two entirely different problems there...
There will always be an argument between RAM and CPU, but there really shouldnt be... They do different things, and thus are equally important in their own respects.
The RAM is like a room, where a person standing in the middle, can reach everything in the entire room, form one spot. Since you can reach everything in the room, you can do everything very quickly. But, what if the thing your working on, is larger then the room... Then you need to keep some in the room, and some outside the room (on the HDD) and every time you need a part that isnt in the room, you need to go out and get that other part (access the HDD). Now, while your in that room, the speed that you can grab everything would be your Processing Power (CPU Speed), but the Bigger the Room, the more things you can do at once, but no matter how big the room is, you can only do so many things at once (thus the debate between RAM and CPU). The Bright side of this room, is the bigger the room (the more ram) the bigger the doors, the bigger the doors, the faster you can throw things into the room (i.e Load time). So, with a big room and big doors (Lots of Ram) you can load a lot of things, and load them faster too ( loading times ). But like I said, no matter how big the room, you can still only do but so much at a time, you may be able to load things faster, and if you dont have to leave the room to get other parts, then you have less lag time (i.e. You can stay on what you are doing, and not access the HDD, slowing the program down). So, yeah having a bigger room is great, but it does you absolutely no good if you can only work but so fast... Thus the only good combination is more Processing Speed (CPU Speed) AND more Ram, this way you can not only load the stuff fast and do the work fast as well.
Now, that is a very simplified explination, but it holds true quite well, your RAM is nothing but a room, where things can be done a lot faster, the CPU is how fast those things can be done while in that room, and HDD is where all the stuff if stored when not in that room.
Hopefully this can/will help some people understand the Copmuter Process a little better...