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xray328

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 2, 2010
89
0
I'm going to upgrade the 1.42 Ghz emac we just bought from 256mb to 1Gb. Is that over kill? Is 512Mb enough? I've always heard the more the better, I think 1GB is only like $40. Does it matter what brand I buy? It's PC2700 333mhz, right?

Thanks!
 

Giuly

macrumors 68040
I'm going to upgrade the 1.42 Ghz emac we just bought from 256kb to 1Gb. Is that over kill? Is 512kb enough? I've always heard the more the better, I think 1GB is only like $40. Does it matter what brand I buy? It's PC2700 333mhz, right?

Thanks!
1GB(Gigabyte)=1.024MB(Megabyte)=1.048.576KB(Kilobyte)

For the RAM: Every MB of memory helps. If you can, upgrade it to 2GB.
 

666sheep

macrumors 68040
Dec 7, 2009
3,686
291
Poland
Go for 2GB, especially if you'll want to run Leopard on it. Brand in general doesn't matter that much but avoid no name RAM. Brands like Hynix, Crucial/Micron, Corsair, Kingston, Patriot, Nanya, Samsung, Apacer are confirmed to work (at least by me ;)). It has to be low density RAM. Google how to differentiate between low and high density sticks.
 

CubeHacker

macrumors 65816
Apr 22, 2003
1,243
251
It all depends on what you plan on doing with it. However I would consider 1gb to be the absolute minimum these days.
 

r.j.s

Moderator emeritus
Mar 7, 2007
15,026
52
Texas
I think 1GB is required for everything. My friend even put in 1GB of RAM in his 450MHz Blue and White Power Mac G3 :apple:

1GB is not enough for much anymore, but in this case, I think it is enough for that ancient eMac.
 

drewdle

macrumors regular
Apr 26, 2010
201
1
Nanaimo, BC
I run four to six programs simultaneously on my iMac with 1Gb of memory and half the processor you've got there, mind you I'm running Tiger presently, and I'm quickly running out of available current software. Leopard would be fine on that machine, but 2Gb of memory would work better for that.
 

MacHamster68

macrumors 68040
Sep 17, 2009
3,251
5
it will run with 1 gb no problem at all ,
but it will run far better with the full 2 gb it can take and it even helps with youtube watching ;)
the eMac especially the 1.42 models are very much underrated , because lots of people think "its got a crt screen so its totally ancient and therefore must be damn slow no matter what you do ", but thats a myth the eMac 1.42's are from 2005 and they shipped until mid 2006 so are only 4 -5 years old
maxed out they can even perform as well as the early 1.6ghz and 1.8ghz iMac G5 (if these are left in original spec , certainly they can outperform the eMac if they got maxed out too ), but the eMac is less likely to overheat, its heatpipe is massive
and the fan is really effective to cool that processor and the crt down and it is overclockable to 1.92ghz and according users who have done that it still wont overheat
so get the 2x 1 gb pc2700 and let the eMac fly, you owe it to him
 

dandeco

macrumors 65816
Dec 5, 2008
1,181
992
Brockton, MA
1 GB of RAM in an eMac is definitely NOT overkill, if you do quite a bit of photo or video work, or you are using Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. My 1.42 GHz eMac has 1.5 GB of RAM and it works just fine, with Mac OS X 10.5.8 on it. I may swap one of the 512 MB modules with another 1 GB module soon, but I'm not sure if a step up from 1.5 GB to 2 GB of RAM would be such a drastic change in performance.
 
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