PC performance is the sum of its parts. If your PC did not get any kick out of more RAM, then it has to mean that the bottleneck was something else - in your case, a faster disk.
Logically, had you replaced the disk first, you would have seen an increase in performance, and if you upgraded RAM after you would have seen another boost in performance.
Disk speeds are important, and a 10k rpm disk is going to have better data throughput than a 7200 rpm disk. However, the faster a disk platter goes, the more noise the unit makes. You might want to take that into account also.
I have been using 7200 rpm disks for years, and their performance is quite sufficient to not worry about hard disk speed for a personal system.
Of course, if your choice is the best, go for a 10k disk, by all means. But remember that SATA is a better data bus than ATA, so your SATA disk at 7200 rpm has a good chance of getting better performance than a 10k rpm ATA disk.
For me, I prefer SATA for one reason : a dedicated bus per disk. Plus, it frees the ATA lines for dedicating one to each optical unit I have.
Pascal.