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2 Gig or not 2 Gig, that is the question.

F

floatingspirit

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Yet another Ram thread...

I got a 1.6 G5 powermac with 512mb. I run Classic with Quark and Nisus simultaneously with OS X Nisus, Word, iTunes mail yadiyadiyada.... iPhoto has about 2000 pics too.

Am I wasting my money upgrading to 2.5 gigs versus 1.5 gigs?

I know the adage is more ram more speed, but is it worth the money for one on a slight budget? It's like 200 vs. 400 dollars at OWC. Thanks for any input, particularly personal experience with similar upgrades.
 
More RAM is always better, like you said, but for what you are doing I think 2.5G is a major waste of money.
 
floatingspirit said:
Yet another Ram thread...

I got a 1.6 G5 powermac with 512mb. I run Classic with Quark and Nisus simultaneously with OS X Nisus, Word, iTunes mail yadiyadiyada.... iPhoto has about 2000 pics too.

Am I wasting my money upgrading to 2.5 gigs versus 1.5 gigs?

I know the adage is more ram more speed, but is it worth the money for one on a slight budget? It's like 200 vs. 400 dollars at OWC. Thanks for any input, particularly personal experience with similar upgrades.
Click to expand...

EDIT: OK I was on the phone when I responded and now I get that you only have 512 currently. I thought you were trying to go to 2.5 FROm 1.5

My mistake.

1.5 works for me!! 🙂
 
I think that either will work for you, but if you really want 2.5 it certainly won't hurt. Budgetarily speaking (look, I made up a word) I'd go with the 1.5 though.
 
512MB is way too little. For what you are doing, it is at least.

1.5 GB should be great.

Simple test: Restart. Work normally for about 10 minutes. Go into the Terminal (Applications->Utilities) and type "top" but without the quotes. You will get a readout of memory and CPU usage. Look at the pageout reading. If that is more than about 5000 then more RAM could be a good idea. More than 10000 is a must. The number in the parenthesis is the current number of pageouts you are generating.

Basically, 0(0) is the best. I usually get that with my PowerBook (768MB of RAM). But a few pageouts is fine. (like, 4(0) is ok.) But if you get 204322(1331) then you need RAM. Ever see an eMac on 128MB of RAM running OS X that hasn't been restarted in a week? That's how much it pages out when you run Final Cut Pro on it. (I got that off of of my school's eMacs, in the video production lab)
 
StarbucksSam said:
Budgetarily speaking (look, I made up a word) I'd go with the 1.5 though.
Click to expand...

Yes, very clever. LOL Nice one....but I need an "either or" answer rather than a "both" answer...
 
Something that will give you an even better idea of how much to get is a program called Do I Need More Memory. It goes as far as to tell you how much you are going over what you have.

It can be found here.
 
Why not upgrade to 1.5 .... Can't you always goto 2.5 later?



Regarding Mechcozmo's remark .... I have 71272(0) ... Assuming this is good though 0 (0) is better?
 
Mechcozmo said:
That's how much it pages out when you run Final Cut Pro on it. (I got that off of of my school's eMacs, in the video production lab)
Click to expand...

Your school uses eMacs for video production? ouch!
 
If it was me, I'd just upgrade to 1GB. Is 1.5 or especially 2.5 really necessary? It doesn't seem like it would make that big a difference, but maybe it does and I just don't know how fast OS X can get 😛
 
Hoef said:
Regarding Mechcozmo's remark .... I have 71272(0) ... Assuming this is good though 0 (0) is better?
Click to expand...

Assuming that you restarted (which clears everything-- like starting at 0(0) FYI) and then did ~10 minutes of work...

Yeah, more RAM would be good to have. It doesn't have to be 0(0) remember, but lower is better. So basically, you had a total of 71272 times in which you used your hard drive as RAM-- aka, pageout, aka swapfile, aka, Virtual Memory. But you were not actively paging out, which is fine... you normally don't unless you open a program and watch.

advres said:
Your school uses eMacs for video production? ouch!
Click to expand...

700Mhz 128MB of RAM (some have 256...) and 40 GB hard drives. OS 10.1 and 10.2 on most of them, 10.3 on two. (only 12 total! rest of school is horrible WinTels...)
They are the only Macs that I know that will actively freeze up. As in, daily you can have issues with them. Sigh...
 
jamdr said:
If it was me, I'd just upgrade to 1GB. Is 1.5 or especially 2.5 really necessary? It doesn't seem like it would make that big a difference, but maybe it does and I just don't know how fast OS X can get 😛
Click to expand...

Well, the thing is, whatever I get, will become the new maximum Ram for my eventual iMac G5, so I'm thinking big. Sounds like I would be fine with one point something gigs...thanks a lot guys
 
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