2 GB Stick of RAM? When did this happen?

[BiikeMike]

Wow imagine having 2.25 GB of ram in my 12" Powerbook That would be sweet. But realistically would that much ram be utilised effectively or is it just overkill?

I think you would be limited by your 4500 rpm hard drive. I opted for 1 gig of ram in my powerbook because there is always a bottleneck somewhere, and on these notebooks, its the hard drive.

I don't think that the extra ram would make that big of a difference, because, the only time you would need that much ram is doing large photo editing or video editing type tasks. For these tasks, you are constantly writing to the HD. With how slow the HDs are in the Books, I don't think the extra ram would be worth it.

Thats just my opinion, I could be totally wrong

 

[BornAgainMac]

Where did you get your ram?? I don't think I've seen a reputable RAM place sell 1gb sticks for less that $150 or so a piece.

$150x8 = $1200 plus at least a hundred for the drive, so $1300. Isn't the 2gb stick $1000?

OWC Memory. Good quality. I purchased 2 GBs for my PB and 8 GBs for my Powermac G5 and never had any problems. Memory was at a all-time low during the summer ~$100 per stick. I noticed it would cost me over $1,000 for the same memory today. The cheapest I saw for 8 Gbs was just under $700 before climbing over $900. Even crucial.com memory was under a grand during the summer.

http://eshop.macsales.com/

 

[RatVega]

I think you would be limited by your 4500 rpm hard drive. I opted for 1 gig of ram in my powerbook because there is always a bottleneck somewhere, and on these notebooks, its the hard drive.

I don't think that the extra ram would make that big of a difference, because, the only time you would need that much ram is doing large photo editing or video editing type tasks. For these tasks, you are constantly writing to the HD. With how slow the HDs are in the Books, I don't think the extra ram would be worth it.

Thats just my opinion, I could be totally wrong

You're not wrong, Mike.

A PowerBook is only going to benefit from increased RAM to the extent that it needs to hold data (that big Photoshop image...) in memory. The speed of the disk, the graphics board, and the processor make a "match" at much lower RAM size.

In a dual G5 PowerMac, things are different because it has four times the processing bit-width in addition to clock speed increase. BTW, in low-end tasks (Finder, iLife, etc.), you only see the difference in clock rate. It's the "heavy lifting" where you see the big difference. Running Apple ProApps such as Final Cut Pro, Motion, Compressor, or Shake is where you see the need for RAM (and disk, and graphics.)

I've seen my RAM allocation for Final Cut go from a nominal 120MB to over 2.5GB when rendering a complex timeline. This is because when both processors are heavily tasked, the system requires more RAM buffer for data to "feed the beast."

Motion is perhaps the most overall demanding app, it will try to saturate the entire system when heavily tasked. Then you need all you can get of everything.

But as was written in a previous post, that's not what 98% of the Mac users are doing. My son's G5 iMac rocks on a gig of RAM and the upgraded disk.

 

[BiikeMike]

Rat, how do you find out how much ram your mac is using at a given time?


I'm all about using Final Cut Studio, I just don't think I can effectively do it on my Pbook, for the very reasons you stated. I REALLY want to play around with Motion, but I think it would kill my "tiny" processor and my slow harddrive.

I really thought about going with the 2 gigs of memory in my new Pbook, but then I decided against it, because I really wouldn't be able to utilize it.

 

[joecool85]

Rat, how do you find out how much ram your mac is using at a given time?


I'm all about using Final Cut Studio, I just don't think I can effectively do it on my Pbook, for the very reasons you stated. I REALLY want to play around with Motion, but I think it would kill my "tiny" processor and my slow harddrive.

I really thought about going with the 2 gigs of memory in my new Pbook, but then I decided against it, because I really wouldn't be able to utilize it.

In the applications folder, go to the utilities folder, then open activity monitor.