Imac G5 ram question

[supersize]

Hello all I am a long time reader of this forum but this my first post. I just got my 17" G5 imac a couple of weeks ago and I love it. My question is, I want to upgrade the ram I now have 512mb that I got from apple and am looking to add atleast another gig or ram to it but I was wondering if it would be better to get another 512 stick so I have the 128 bit bus or should I go ahead and get a 1gig stick from newegg and then be ready to move up to the full 2 gigs later. So i guess my real question is does pairing up the ram really make that much difference compaired to adding more ram?

Thanks

[ScottN]

Supersize,

My understanding is that, although pairing the RAM has significant effect in certain specialist tests, the increase in performance in real life (i.e. on the applications you will be using) is minimal if not non-existant.

I'm ordering my iMac with the bog standard 256MB and am going to whack a single 1GB stick in there until I can afford to buy another one.

Good luck!

[cluthz]

I isn't enuff with same size on the stick.
It has to be same composion too, and same cas latency(?)
anyway, i think 1.5GB@64bit is better than 1GB@128-bit

[Makosuke]

Although the paired RAM does show nice-looking numbers in a couple of specialized benchmarks, the real-world advantage with current applications is, apparently, nil.

BareFeats did some tests and real world benchmarks on exactly this issue:

http://www.barefeats.com/imacg5d.html

THE REAL WORLD VERDICT: AVERAGING 8 TESTS, NETS 0% GAIN FROM MATCHED PAIRS.They also provide some interesting notes on picking the correct RAM for the iMac (Crucial is always a safe bet, though).