Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

12" pb – is 768MB of memory enough?

T

ToastCabbit

macrumors member
Original poster
Feb 21, 2004
73
0
Centre College
Hello, everyone!
I believe I'm going to buy a rev. C 12" powerbook fairly soon and found out it has 256 built-in with one other memory slot. Looking at crucial.com they have either 512MB for a nice, low $117 or they have 1GB for $480! :eek: You can see which way I'm leaning.

So my question to current 12" pb owners – is 768MB enough memory (which would be the 256 built in with a 512 chip), or do I need to bite the bullet and buy more? I know OS X is quite memory intensive. I currently have a 15" TiBook (1GHz with 1GB of memory) and it works great; smooth and fast. Should I expect the same results on a 12" with a faster 1.33 processor but with less memory?

Any and all advice welcome! Thanks, everyone! :)
 
Well, the stock reply is "It all depends on which apps you run."

If you're mainly doing Mail, Safari, Office, iTunes, iPhoto, etc., 768 seems to be the sweet spot in terms of performance. Even light Photoshop, Garageband, FCE, should be fine with this configuration.

If you're doing any large photo, video, or audio projects, the extra bump to 1.2GB will probably make life easier for you.
 
all im sayin is im running a powermac g4 733mhz wit 640 ram and run fcp , photoshop, illustrator sometimes and imovie , dreamweaver to and it runs fine for me . I do have anohter 512 chip coming in from crucial next week tho.
 
You can get PC2700 Samsung PB memory at OCW for $359.95.

Just did it for my PB 12" rev. B, and could not be happier. I run PS and ID quite a bit, along with all the other regular apps.
 
kirk26 said:
768MB of memory is way plenty. Don't let these guys scare you.
Click to expand...

Nobody here is out to 'scare' anyone. 768 may be 'way plenty' for you, but for someone handling very large graphics projects or audio projects, it could slow things down. Why do you think the Power Macs accept up to 8GB of RAM? Is that just for stupid people who don't know that 768mb is 'way plenty'? It's difficult to recommend the right amount of RAM without knowing what type of work will be done on the computer.

If you're just going to use Mail, Safari, and iTunes, even 512mb will be way plenty.
 
kirk26 said:
Your right, your right. With 768MB I can only open the internet and email. My bad.
Click to expand...

Excellent reading comprehension skills! That's *exactly* what I said in my post above. :rolleyes:

(BTW... you should probably study up and learn the difference between 'your' and 'you're.' It might come in handy someday.)
 
Have they fixed the "randomly drop Airport connection on machines with 1GB+ RAM" problem yet? If they haven't, it might be a good reason to stick with 768 if that's all you need right now.
 
Thanks, all!

Someone did ask if I was going to be running programs like Photoshop, etc. No, I'm not. At least not often, and never for anything really critical. So it sounds like everyone's saying 768MB should be plenty. Just wanted to be sure and now I am! Thanks for all the feedback! :) Way to go forums!
 
DGFan said:
Have they fixed the "randomly drop Airport connection on machines with 1GB+ RAM" problem yet? If they haven't, it might be a good reason to stick with 768 if that's all you need right now.
Click to expand...

The last Airport update fixed that at east on my machine.
 
Definitely seems to be fixed, I haven't dropped my connection at all.
I would go with as much Ram as you can afford. Like it has been said many times if you are just a casual computer user 768 will be fine. I have 1.25 in my 12", but I hardly ever am running anything that requires that much. It is nice to have it there when needed though.
 
I have a 12" (hehe) G4 1.33 with 768MB of RAM. It does everything I want it to do. I don't think you would be disappointed with it... if you are a graphics pro or something along that line, you should get a faster computer with a better graphics card anyway. Just get 768 and be happy with it, like me! :)
 
ToastCabbit said:
So my question to current 12" pb owners – is 768MB enough memory (which would be the 256 built in with a 512 chip), or do I need to bite the bullet and buy more? I know OS X is quite memory intensive. I currently have a 15" TiBook (1GHz with 1GB of memory) and it works great; smooth and fast. Should I expect the same results on a 12" with a faster 1.33 processor but with less memory?

Any and all advice welcome! Thanks, everyone! :)
Click to expand...

try this little app. It supposedly predicts how much RAM you need based on your typical usage.Do I Need More Memory?

Hope this helps.
 
Think about it this way. You get the 512MB or RAM now and when you eventually want to max out the RAM like most do you'll be left with a stick that you can't use. Yes you can probably flog it on ebay, but i'd rather not have to bother.

Mark.
 
256 is good.

I just bought my PB 12' and I have been running with the built-in 256MB for a couple of weeks now. The powerbook seems to have no problems running M$ office 2004, Garage Band, etc. I was surprised at the speed of E-brake (DVD backup software). It still takes 7hours per DVD backup but my PC (P4 2.0Ghz, 512DDR ram, 160GB 7200rpm) takes about the same time.

The PB with 256MB in my opinion runs just fine for everyday use but, I just bought 512 Crucial memory for $117.00. I wonder if it will make a lot of difference?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back