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1gb or 2gb of ram for iMac G5

E

Estic

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 12, 2004
30
0
I ordered my iMac G5 on aug. 31 with 256mb ram and plan to have 2gb or 1gb when it arrives. The system is going to used mainly for about 4500 pictures (and growing) in iphoto and photoshop editing of raw files. Should I just stick to 2gb of ram or I'm I throwing away my money? Will I see a difference between having 1gb vs 2gb of ram? This will be the most ram I have ever had in one system and want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Thanks
estic
 
NusuniAdmin

NusuniAdmin

macrumors 6502a
Nov 19, 2003
870
1
Estic said:
I ordered my iMac G5 on aug. 31 with 256mb ram and plan to have 2gb or 1gb when it arrives. The system is going to used mainly for about 4500 pictures (and growing) in iphoto and photoshop editing of raw files. Should I just stick to 2gb of ram or I'm I throwing away my money? Will I see a difference between having 1gb vs 2gb of ram? This will be the most ram I have ever had in one system and want to make sure I'm doing the right thing.

Thanks
estic
Click to expand...

although 1 GB of ram might be sufficient for your needs you might still have some low memory problems. Id just go for 2.
 
K

kerb

macrumors regular
Jul 26, 2004
224
0
Lancashire UK
my rule of thumb with RAM in is


put in as much as you can afford


especially true with OSX, G5 processors and the FX5200 graphics card

all take nice big chunks of RAM if it's there to optimise themselves.
 
Sun Baked

Sun Baked

macrumors G5
May 19, 2002
14,937
157
Considering...
iMac G5 Developer Note: Block Diagram and Buses

Memory bus: 400 MHz, bus connecting the main DDR SDRAM memory to the U3L IC is 64-bit if only one DIMM is installed, two 64-bit buses if two non-identical DIMMs are installed, or 128-bit if two identical DIMMs are installed (for additional information, refer to “RAM Expansion”)
Click to expand...
...putting in a matching pair of DIMMs will boost memory bandwidth.

So there are other factors to consider on the iMac G5 besides, more is better.
 
spaceballl

spaceballl

macrumors 68030
Nov 2, 2003
2,892
285
San Francisco, CA
I wouldn't put 2gb in yet. Put 1gb in, but make sure to just use one dimm so that you have room for expansion. The iMac comes standard w/ a 7200 rpm harddrive. That combined w/ a gig of RAM will make your pics load plenty snappy. Granted, they won't load too quickly cuz iPhoto sucks at being fast AT ALL. Get iView Media if you want fast loading. But if you have the cash, might as well get 2.
-Kevin
 
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