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Buying Advice: More RAM?

dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
I was wondering if I should upgrade my 2.3GHz Power Mac G5's RAM- from 1 to 2GB.

I mainly use it for the internet (Mac Rumors mostly), e-mail, iTunes (lots and lots of iTunes), M$ Word & PowerPoint, and gaming (Doom III, rise of nations, etc... My sister also uses it on occasion (when I let her), mainly AOL & GarangeBand.

I also use Virtual PC 7 w/ XPee Home Edition.
When I run VPC it uses about half of my RAM- leaving a paltry 512MB free which in turn gets used by Mac OS and my running apps- leaving me with like 12MB of RAM free! VPC feels rather sluggish, so upping my RAM would allow me to give this app some more memory, hopefully increasing performance.

I was looking at buying 1GB (2x512MB chips) of RAM from Crucial.com to stick in my G5.


Any thoughts/advice are appreciated! :D
 
Cooknn

Cooknn

macrumors 68020
Aug 23, 2003
2,111
0
Fort Myers, FL
dmw007 said:
I was wondering if I should upgrade my 2.3GHz Power Mac G5's RAM- from 1 to 2GB
Click to expand...
I just increased my Dual 2Ghz Power Mac from 1 to 2GB last week. All I can say is Do it!. I just ordered 2GB for my son's G5 1.8Ghz iMac as well :eek:
 
Sdashiki

Sdashiki

macrumors 68040
Aug 11, 2005
3,529
11
Behind the lens
More RAM is always better.

Only in the "distant" pass was it not worth it. Now that you can load 4-8GB of it into a machine and the costs have dropped, its definetely worth it just for the speed increase/multitasking it allows you to do.

I remember when 128MB of RAM was $500. Even $1000 before that.

RAM is relatively cheap for what it does. To get the same "speed" increase you used to have to upgrade the whole machine.
 
wdlove

wdlove

macrumors P6
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
If you can afford more RAM, the I'd purchase extra. The 2 GB RAM should provide a noticeable improvement in performance.
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
Thanks everyone for your responses! :)

I guess that tonight I will have to order an additional 1GB of RAM for my G5.

Second question-
Is there a better brand of RAM for my Power Mac G5 (ie- in terms of speed, performance, stability, etc...)? I was going to go with RAM from Crucial since they seem to be one of the better manufacturers to go with. Would there be any difference between RAM from Crucial and say OWC's brand of RAM?

Thanks Again! :)
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
wdlove said:
If you can afford more RAM, the I'd purchase extra. The 2 GB RAM should provide a noticeable improvement in performance.
Click to expand...

Sounds good wdlove! I was hoping that going from 1GB to 2GB of RAM would provide a noticeable increase in performance.

Guess that I have no other option than to buy more RAM (yay)! :D
 
wdlove

wdlove

macrumors P6
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
dmw007 said:
Wow, I am sure glad that the price of RAM has since fallen.
Click to expand...

You should go with Crucial RAM. Most members on the forum recommend them. ;)
 
P

purdueboiler87

macrumors member
Aug 5, 2005
82
2
Clearwater, FL
I added 2 gigs and then I saw they had 512 (Centon brand) chips at CompUSA for $35 after rebate. I know everyone talks about what memory is best but I haven't had any problems. I added another 2 gigs to get me to 4.5. I saw the biggest increase in performance going from 512 to 2.5 gig.
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
purdueboiler87 said:
I added 2 gigs and then I saw they had 512 (Centon brand) chips at CompUSA for $35 after rebate. I know everyone talks about what memory is best but I haven't had any problems. I added another 2 gigs to get me to 4.5. I saw the biggest increase in performance going from 512 to 2.5 gig.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear that you received a nice performance boost when you upped your RAM. Hope I see the same thing! :)
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
Its here!

The RAM from Crucial has finally arrived and is now installed in my Power Mac G5! :D

So far, so good. Performance seems to be better/smoother. I have not noticed a huge jump in performance as my G5 was plenty fast before the upgrade. Still, my Mac seems to have even more spunk now that it has 2GB of DDR SDRAM in it. :)
 
IJ Reilly

IJ Reilly

macrumors P6
Jul 16, 2002
17,909
1,496
Palookaville
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM. (Or so they say.)

Anyway, I'm the resident contrarian when it comes to RAM. I think the reason most people feel like they never have enough is because they rarely log out or reboot their Mac. If they did this occasionally, all those nasty virtual memory swap files would be deleted and they'd notice a big improvement in performance immediately. So they finally shut the Mac down to install a bunch of RAM -- and bingo! a huge speedup! It must be the extra RAM! Ah, not necessarily...

Ironically, if you frequently run RAM-gulpers like VPC, you're still going to get swap files, and you're still going to slow down, and you're still going to need to log out or reboot to get it back. The only real difference is, you probably won't need to do it quite so often.
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
yenko said:
:p Do It! Do It! Do It!
Click to expand...

Well, I went and "did it", and I am glad that I did.

Seems that the move from 1GB to 2GB yielded better/smoother performance.
If anyone else is in a similar situation of deciding whether or not to buy more RAM, I say to go ahead and do it;

More RAM = Faster Mac! :)
 
dmw007

dmw007

macrumors G4
Original poster
May 26, 2005
10,635
0
Working for MI-6
IJ Reilly said:
You can never be too rich, too thin, or have too much RAM. (Or so they say.)
Click to expand...

Well, all three seem to be true statements IJ Reilly.

IJ Reilly said:
Anyway, I'm the resident contrarian when it comes to RAM. I think the reason most people feel like they never have enough is because they rarely log out or reboot their Mac. If they did this occasionally, all those nasty virtual memory swap files would be deleted and they'd notice a big improvement in performance immediately. So they finally shut the Mac down to install a bunch of RAM -- and bingo! a huge speedup! It must be the extra RAM! Ah, not necessarily...

Ironically, if you frequently run RAM-gulpers like VPC, you're still going to get swap files, and you're still going to slow down, and you're still going to need to log out or reboot to get it back. The only real difference is, you probably won't need to do it quite so often.
Click to expand...

I restart my Power Mac G5 almost daily so that helps keep the RAM/swap files from getting overly bogged down.

Very true about people not rebooting their Macs/PeeCees often enough to speed them up and complaining about how they now need more & more RAM. Good call IJ Reilly! :)
 
wdlove

wdlove

macrumors P6
Oct 20, 2002
16,568
0
dmw007 said:
Well, all three seem to be true statements IJ Reilly.



I restart my Power Mac G5 almost daily so that helps keep the RAM/swap files from getting overly bogged down.

Very true about people not rebooting their Macs/PeeCees often enough to speed them up and complaining about how they now need more & more RAM. Good call IJ Reilly! :)
Click to expand...

Happy t hear the latest news of increased performance. I usually restart mine once a week.
 
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