The difference in memory speeds on the Power Mac G5's

[Adre]

First of all, are these speeds noticable? I usually stick with the same hardware for years, so I'm not good for comparing them.

On Crucial's site when I search for memory upgrades on the 1.6, they have PC3200 sticks in there along with the PC2700 sticks that come in the 1.6 by default.

So, what I'm asking is is it favorable to use PC3200 in the 1.6?

 

[Lincoln]

Adre,

Both the PC2700 and the PC3200 will run at the same speed in the 1.6 G5 as it is the G5 not the memory that is the limiting factor here.

The prices for the memory are very similar up until the 512MB sticks, but the 1GB PC3200 is noticeably more expensive than the PC2700 version (not that either of the 1GB sticks are reasonably priced anyway).

IF you intend upgrading in the future to a high speed G5 (i.e. the 1.8 or the 2Ghz) then you could take any PC3200 memory with you and it will work OK.

So I guess it depends on what your log term plans are, although I would probably go for the faster PC3200 if you don't need the 1GB sticks.

Hope this helps.

 

[dragula53]

umm

I was under the impression that the front side bus of the 1.6 was 800 mhz. which means the fastest ram that it can use is DDR 400. which would make the 400 mhz ram faster than the 333 ram.

they just ship it with the cheaper crap to make you wanna buy a faster mac. and ostensibly to make the computer cheaper

so I disagree with Lincoln.

Moo

 

[An_Apple_A_Day]

Re: umm

Originally posted by dragula53
I was under the impression that the front side bus of the 1.6 was 800 mhz. which means the fastest ram that it can use is DDR 400. which would make the 400 mhz ram faster than the 333 ram.

they just ship it with the cheaper crap to make you wanna buy a faster mac. and ostensibly to make the computer cheaper

so I disagree with Lincoln.

Moo

I'm about to buy the Single 1.8 unless the price drops soon from a new product announcement which may allow me to get the 1.8 Dually.

So , for the 1.8 Single or dual, I have basically the same question. I Definitely want to load a total of 1.5gig's of ram and I definitely want it to be as fast as it will inherently go. So which ram would that be?

 

[Lincoln]

I just read through the Tech Overview on Apple's website and it doesn't say that the 1.6G5 would run faster with DDR400 memory, though it didn't say if it suppports it or not.

But as I said the difference in price is only a few pounds provided that you don't want to buy 1GB Dimms. So you may as well purchase the PC3200 (DDR400) memory.

However if you buy the 1.6 with say 256MB Ram (2x 128MB DIMMS), this will be DDR333 (PC2700). If you then go to Crucial and buy some more @ DDR400 spead then the 1.6 will run the memory up to DDR333 speeds as it the lowest common denominator.

So if a 1.6 G5 had only DDR400 memory fitted it might be faster. We need someone with a 1.6 G5 that is configured this way to tell us.

Finally, to An-Apple-A-Day; the 1.8 G5 (dual and single) comes with 512MB of DDR400 (PC3200) memory, so buy an additional 1GB of DDR400 memory from Crucial. Make sure that you get two 512MB memory chips as they must be fitted in pairs.

 

[Mav451]

When they say the 1.6G5 has a "800mhz" front side bus, it is not entirely true--or what you are probably thinking.

I believe this is more of the speed of the chipset I/O system or essentially the HT (Hyper Transport) technology that communicates with the whole motherboard.

The memory interface itself is not even close to 800mhz--which is why the Dual 2.0G5 (with it's "1ghz" front side bus) does not require DDR500--which would be extremely expensive.

*Nonetheless, buy the DDR400 for the 1.6G5. It never hurts to buy for the future--as you can see in my sig, if i had "bought" for the future, i would probably be getting a better overclock