How much ram is too much?

[micrors4racer]

I am running a late 2005 G5 2.0ghz. Started off with the stock 512mb and I now have 6 gigs. How do I know when I reach the point of diminishing returns? I know some programs like video editors will just love ram always. My curiosity is about doing normal activities. How do I differentiate if my computer is being slow because of lack of ram while I do my daily multitasking or being slow because its just slow over all.

[itickings]

Activity Monitor (located in Applications / Utilities) is the tool you need.

Have a look at Page outs under the System Memory tab. If the page outs number is increasing during normal usage, more RAM could help.

[SmurfBoxMasta]

if you cant do "normal" things with 6GB's, then either there is something seriously wrong with you G5, or your normal stuff is way beyond what most people would consider normal..........

But since you mentioned video editing, yes you are correct that those kind of apps eat ram for lunch.... but they ALSO require very large, fast and clean HDD's, that are NOT the same drives you run your OS & apps from, for storing both their scratch files and the final rendered product.... So if that is what is slowing your machine down, then perhaps you should look into upgrading your HDD's.......

Also, most modern video apps are programmed to use the video card's GPU & vram to do most of the heavy lifting of processing & rendering edited video....so if your video card is older/out of date, that also could be causing some serious slow downs too.........

[TacticalDesire]

"Normal" activity is different for everyone. For me, 8 gigs is barely enough on some days.

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Originally Posted by SmurfBoxMasta

if you cant do "normal" things with 6GB's, then either there is something seriously wrong with you G5, or your normal stuff is way beyond what most people would consider normal..........

But since you mentioned video editing, yes you are correct that those kind of apps eat ram for lunch.... but they ALSO require very large, fast and clean HDD's, that are NOT the same drives you run your OS & apps from, for storing both their scratch files and the final rendered product.... So if that is what is slowing your machine down, then perhaps you should look into upgrading your HDD's.......

Also, most modern video apps are programmed to use the video card's GPU & vram to do most of the heavy lifting of processing & rendering edited video....so if your video card is older/out of date, that also could be causing some serious slow downs too.........

Most of the video editing software currently used on PPC was around back when PPC was still supported by apple. So, if the software is from the same era as the hardware, I don't think he'll run into too many issues on the GPU front. I do agree about the HDD's though.

[Hrududu]

I found that 4GB was almost never an issue when I was using my dual 2.0 as my primary system. When I got my quad G5, I went ahead and filled the empty slots and it now has 10.5GB in it which is way more than I'll ever use. I have CS4 and Final Cut 3 on it, but the stuff I make is very small. I never manipulate huge files in photoshop or illustrator that would really chew up that kind of RAM. Now if this thing were capable of running Lion which just burns through RAM, it may be a different story. As it is, Leopard really doesn't do too badly.

[micrors4racer]

Originally Posted by itickings

Activity Monitor (located in Applications / Utilities) is the tool you need.

Have a look at Page outs under the System Memory tab. If the page outs number is increasing during normal usage, more RAM could help.

Thanks for everyones reply looks like everything will be fine on 6GB.

What does all the info on this mean? I am used to USED memory and Free memory.



Also, I added 4GB using PC2-5300/DDR2-667

HYS64T256020EU-3S-B
(4GB KIT) (2X2GB) 2RX8 PC2-5300U-555-12-E0
2GB DIMM
(UNBUFFERED, Non-ECC)

But in system profiler it says its running at 3200, shouldn't it down clock to 4200 which is what the DIMM controller supports.



Does moving around the ram in different slots make a different? IE, the 2gb modules closer to the middle and the less capacity ones on the outer slots.

[itickings]

Originally Posted by micrors4racer

What does all the info on this mean? I am used to USED memory and Free memory.

You could try the Activity Monitor link you quoted. Good starting point.