QuickSilver G4 + Misc. Ram Questions

[alangyssler]

I've tried searching the forums and have even googled this a couple times, and have not come up with anything useful... but please excuse the old, somewhat outdated topic, and if something similar has already been posted, please kindly direct me there, as I've not had any luck finding it myself, and graciously accept my apologies.

I have a couple questions regarding some potential RAM upgrades that I'm looking to go through in the near future with my QuickSilver G4 733 (2001 model). It currently has 768 MB of PC100 RAM, and I'm thinking of upgrading it to three 512 MB sticks of PC133 RAM, and have the following questions:

1. If I had a PC100 512 stick, and a PC133 512 stick, would the PC133 be significantly, or even marginally faster?

2. What do I have to look out for in terms of purchasing the correct RAM? I'm thinking of going the eBay route, as new PC100 and PC133 RAM is REALLY expensive through places like crucial.com and other online retailers, and Apple RAM = broke. When looking for what is compatible, I'm finding this: PC133 SDRAM (3.3V, unbuffered, 64-bit, 168-pin, 100 MHz). I think I can make sense out of most of it, except the last part... 100 Mhz. I'm a little hazy. Doesn't the PCxxx part denote the frequency? It seems like it's saying it's 133 and 100.. confused...

3. Can I mix RAM types? lowendmac.com states that my computer can take three RAM sticks, and can either be PC100 or PC133, but doesn't state whether or not they can be mixed. In the event that they CAN'T be mixed, anyone interested in three 256MB sticks of PC100 RAM?

4. 1.5GB of RAM sounds like a lot, unless you're comparing it to 16GB in the new G5. Being that my computer is 5 years old, and I'm trying to stretch it as long as I can, while still remaining reasonable, is this a worthwhile upgrade, being that it will probably cost between $100 - $150? I guess what I want to make sure of is that I'm going to see a performance increase that is significant enough to warrant dumping some cash on new RAM.

For what it's worth, I do primarily some home recording studio stuff (Cubase, GarageBand), and lots of graphic design (CS2, Quark, etc.), and the typical everyday usage stuff, too.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and again, I apologize if this has already been covered elsewhere. Thanks for reading my long-winded post.

 

[840quadra]

1. I would avoid PC100 personally, While a normal user may not detect the speed change from PC100 to PC133, you will have some applications and programs that may be quicker at some tasks, and in some cases more stable. Try to avoid mixing PC 100 and 133 on the same system. It will work, but it isn't the best thing to do.

2. MHz is the speed of the memory. So 100MHz would relate to PC100. Obviously the higher the number the quicker. I would use what Crucial states as the correct memory as the baseline, otherwise Apple has a great info page for this system http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42686

3. Yes you can, but as stated before it isn't the best thing to do as some programs will not like this. Apple native software should be fine, but I have had issues with programs like VLC, Gimp and DiVA with mixed speed memory.

4. Maxing out ram can't hurt as it will make even slow systems feel allot faster then without. My ibook G3 (sold) with 640 ram felt allot faster then it did with just 256. The system will use the Pagefile less, and you will be running more of your system off of pure memory, as opposed to much slower disk memory.

 

[alangyssler]

Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong

So, despite my intentions of selling this machine within the next year and a half, it wouldn't be a bad investment, as I would see a difference in performance. My page outs are pretty crazy right now, so that ought to go down, I assume. Also, I ran xBench, and my computer scored somewhere around 28, which sounds pretty lame to me. I assume maxing the ram, while it won't perform like a Quad G5, will still perform much better.

How do I go about figuring out where else my machine is bottlenecking? I want to make sure that I'm updating what will make a difference, and not leaving something out that will still slow things down/

Thanks for your response!

 

[Whyren]

How do I go about figuring out where else my machine is bottlenecking? I want to make sure that I'm updating what will make a difference, and not leaving something out that will still slow things down/

How much free disk space do you have on your computer? For OS X especially, that can be a huge issue. You should probably have at least several GB of disk space free to be used by OS X's virtual memory swapping.

 

[alangyssler]

Free space

I have two 120 GB hard drives, both 7200 rpm, and also use an external FW 200 GB for backups, but it's not always connected. The main drive has 87 GB free, and the second drive has about 38 GB free. I am running 10.4.3, and did a clean install a couple weeks ago.