24" new iMac; Leopard and RAM...observation

[snickelfritz]

I've been using my 24" iMac/1GB with Leopard for about a week now, and although the performance has been acceptable most of the time, running multiple applications such as those in CS2, can cause the system to absolutely crawl with 1GB of RAM installed. (spaces, stacks, app switching etc...are very noticeably impacted and are essentially useless features without sufficient RAM installed)
This adversely impacted several meetings I've had with clients in my office, since the system would take forever to switch from one app to another; we were left sitting there for minutes at a time, twiddling our thumbs while the system was swapping.

Installed 4GB of RAM this morning, then opened ID, PS, iTunes, Mail, Calendar, Safari, and Activity Monitor.
The difference is amazing; Leopard functions flawlessly under a heavy load now!
Well worth the $137.00 for the 4GB kit.
http://www.macsales.com/

If you've been toying with the idea of upgrading the RAM on your iMac, just do it; 1GB ain't enough for Leopard.

 

[tersono]

Agreed about the RAM, but CS2 is pretty sluggish anyhow as it's running under Rosetta. Yes, it works, but CS3 is a much better prospect =]

 

[snickelfritz]

Rosetta itself probably warrants a 2GB upgrade; combining the latency from emulation with system swapping is just not workable long-term.
Definitely upgrading to CS3 when I have a break in my current workload.

 

[ScottFitz]

I recently went up from 1 to 2gb of ram in my last gen white imac 17. I had previously encountered a bit of leopard-induced slowdown that is now completely gone. So, if you only want to sink 55 bucks into the 2gb (1gbx2) kit, it's worth it.

 

[itsmeok]

Memory upgrade

IMO, Apple should go ahead and make 2GB memory standard, if not more, for the iMacs (atleast for the ones that are $1499 and up). The MBPs come with 2GB memory, why not iMacs? I still find it weird that their desktop replacement notebooks come with higher memory than their desktops itself.