12" rev. a PB and 1gb ram stick

[sahnert]

This has probably been asked before, but since I can't type "12" into the search function I can't look for a similar post. I have a RevA PB (867 G4) that right now has 640 MB RAM. I Added a 512 stick to the original 128 that is attached permanently. Question is this, what would be the approximate speed increase, of dropping the 512 and picking up a 1GB stick. Would it be worth it on a RevA or should I just stick it out with 512 until I get a new computer down the road. I am slowly getting into some basic video editing and music production, all on a college student's budget. The PBook serves me well for most everything but gets a little sluggish with iDVD 4 and iMovie. How much of this is related to processor speed and how much is RAM? Also I'm probably going to attach a FW Hard Drive soon. Will this affect RAM consuption at all? Thanks for any tips.

 

[jamall]

Use your PB for a day as you normally would. At the end of the day, open the terminal and type "top" followed by return (without the quotes). At the bottom of the block of info, just before the task listing, is an item called pageouts. This is the number of times that the Mac has gone looking for a memory address and has found it in virtual memory on the disk rather than in RAM. Reading from the disk is slow compared to reading from RAM. If you don't keep too many apps open and you still have a lot of pageouts (say 100 or more) then more memory would be a good idea. If the number is low then the processor is what is slowing you down. A firewire drive will have no effect on RAM usage.

 

[sahnert]

thanks I'll try that this evening.

 

[Koodauw]

Doesn't the 12'' Rev A. PB max out at a 512 MB stick? ie. you can't have more than 640 MB of ram? Maybe I am wrong but I thought this was the case, so adding more memory would not help you at all.

 

[jxyama]

Originally posted by Koodauw
Doesn't the 12'' Rev A. PB max out at a 512 MB stick? ie. you can't have more than 640 MB of ram? Maybe I am wrong but I thought this was the case, so adding more memory would not help you at all.

no. on the apple spec sheet, it says 640 MB max because 512 MB was the largest capacity RAM that was widely available zt the time. now there are 1 GB RAM that's becoming more affordable and available. there's nothing inherent in the PB 12" Rev. A hardware limiting the max. RAM to 640 MB.

i, for one, plan on buying the 1 GB stick when the price drops below $200.

 

[Koodauw]

Originally posted by jxyama
no. on the apple spec sheet, it says 640 MB max because 512 MB was the largest capacity RAM that was widely available zt the time. now there are 1 GB RAM that's becoming more affordable and available. there's nothing inherent in the PB 12" Rev. A hardware limiting the max. RAM to 640 MB.

i, for one, plan on buying the 1 GB stick when the price drops below $200.

Oh man this is awesome. You just made my day. Thanks!

 

[bensisko]

Originally posted by jxyama
no. on the apple spec sheet, it says 640 MB max because 512 MB was the largest capacity RAM that was widely available zt the time. now there are 1 GB RAM that's becoming more affordable and available. there's nothing inherent in the PB 12" Rev. A hardware limiting the max. RAM to 640 MB.

i, for one, plan on buying the 1 GB stick when the price drops below $200.

Offically, I don't think Apple supports this, do they? I believe that offically (i.e. you talk to a Apple Genius at the Genius Bar) they will only support 640.

But you are right that there is nothing technically stopping Rev A 12" Powerbook users to going to over a GB of RAM. (which also means that 15 and 17 inch users can goto 2GB!)