Has anyone maxed out the ram on a 1.8 or 2.0 G5?

i've heard that above 2GB there's really no added performance increase

crowdaddy said:

I am just wondering what kind-of performance increase you experienced with the full wammy of ram in your system. Thanks!

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mmm.... 8 gigs drooll.......

I remember not too long ago some dude was selling his maxxed out Dual 2.0 G5 chock full o' 8 GB Ram.

thehuncamunca said:

i've heard that above 2GB there's really no added performance increase

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think it was on barefeats or somewhere else, but 8 gigs of RAM make G5 scream. It's Power, and lot of it.

Actually I'd like to see that fact, re: 8 Gigs of RAM makes the G5 scream. I'm a avid Barefeats reader, never saw that, searched for it and there was no such thing, I can ask Rob-Art, the man himself if you'd like. To those who said that anything over 2 GBs really doesn't have that much gains, you're 100% correct. I have 2.5 GBs in a 1.8 and a 2.0 DP and I know people who've gone much over that and your bench scores don't change much. I'm not an engineer so I don't know why that is, 2 Gigs or, 2.5, is enough, beyond that you're wasting your money.

I come to you with facts from MacAddict, turn to page 51 of the December 2003 issue, lower corner has tests with varying amounts of RAM, a Photoshop file, and the results. For those of you who don't have MacAddict, here's what the graphs show, 2 GB and above is PLENTY for almost anything. I say almost because when they get up to a 200 MB Photoshop and above the speed graph flatlines at 2.25 (about), that is, no speed increase from then on. My own tests and feedback from other's confirm this, take a 500 MB file and it wont move that much faster with that much RAM.

It's not that 8 GB of RAM ISN'T any better than 2 GB, don't mistake me, just that performance vs. money spent drops off after 2 GB considerably. If someone has over a grand to plunk down on RAM, knock yourself out, others like to buy other things with their money that is better spent. Go to thechipmerchant.com, plunk down under $300 for 2 GB (four sets of 512s) and you'll be right as rain.

I really think that having more ram may well improve the performance above the 2gb if you are doing things that need it. It appears from what people have said that more than 2gb has little or no effect on photoshop, but that might be due to the way in which photoshop is written. I would imagine that if you are using the mac for other activities that are more server based, such as running a java web app, which tend to be very memory hungry then it may make a difference.

I tend to often have several java servers running doing different things and am nearly always over the 2GB limit, requiring virtual memory. I just wish I had a G5 and the chance to go over 2GB (or even over the 1GB I have at the moment)

Peter

... i just read once - i think it was macbidouille - that someone stuffed 2gb modules in its g5 and got 16 gb ram without problems (well, the problem is only, those 2gb modules are hard to find and very expensive)
.a

From what I have read the OSX can only use 2gb per an application. So I guess if you are working with really large files in PS, ID, and AI at the same time you gain in performance.

having all ram slots full will improve performance. Would that be 2 gig, 4 or 8. IF its full, it will go faster than if you just had 2 dims. At least, thats what I have read on some highend maya forum. Its because the G5 use the ram the same with RAID controler use HD. It strips the information across all slots and can thus retrieve it faster.

But I dont know how big is the performance gain, so maybe its minimal and you better save the empty slots for futur expension.

my friend purchased his Dualie with 2GB installed, and I helped him put in 2gb more.
the difference running FCP? a bit faster, it was noticable.
PS7? much faster.
everything else we tried... not much.

Mantat said:

having all ram slots full will improve performance. Would that be 2 gig, 4 or 8. IF its full, it will go faster than if you just had 2 dims. At least, thats what I have read on some highend maya forum. Its because the G5 use the ram the same with RAID controler use HD. It strips the information across all slots and can thus retrieve it faster.

But I dont know how big is the performance gain, so maybe its minimal and you better save the empty slots for futur expension.

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I don't think so, the dual channel memory is probably only using two DIMMs at the same time -- at any time.

Because the memory is switched, only two DIMMs are active at the same time.

If you look around, you won't find too many consumer level machines using DDR that include 8 DIMM slots.

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Now because Apple is using 128-bit RAM, those two DIMMs are read at the same time -- so yes it is like a two DIMM raid.