Faster four-year-old imac

[stace1973]

Hi
I have a four-year-old G4, 800mhz processor and a paltry 256mb memory. I'd love it run faster in Adobe apps. Have seen a selection of memory upgrades available but not sure whether they're worth the £100-or-so being asked.
Any tips? Is it worth upgrading? Will I notice the difference? Or just invest in a new mac!?

 

[Chaszmyr]

Adding additional RAM would definitely make the machine faster, but personally for £100 I'd say it's not worth upgrading the memory. If a new iMac is too pricey, maybe look into selling it and buying a used Intel iMac?

 

[tersono]

256mb is barely enough RAM to run just the operating system, let alone major apps. Frankly, I haven't had that little RAM in a Mac since OS X first appeared... 512mb is a minimum and even my old G4-400 had 1gb in it.

Of course, if you can afford it, a new Intel Mac with 2Gbs (or more) RAM will wipe the floor with your G4 - no matter how much memory you throw in there, but you would certainly get a major improvement by upgrading your existing machine to 1gb RAM.

Ultimately, it's down to what you can afford - but an 800Mhz G4 is getting a little past it now - a Mac Mini would be an affordable way to get dramatically better performance.

 

[stace1973]

Thanks for the tip.
Must admit I'm coming close to just buying a new one - but I love this one to bits! It's a dome with tilt screen - my fave of all apple designs.

 

[Genghis Khan]

i strongly recommend an intel mac...you have no idea how fast a new iMac is compared in PowerPCs

and you can still use the old iMac

although i do see where you're coming from, if i could put a modern hardware inside that case i would...it is a classic

 

[scienide09]

My wife's old iMac is the same model (with a 17" display), and we upped the RAM a few months ago. There was a notable performance increase. However, these days it's mostly a backup computer. She still uses it for web browsing, iTunes, and we both use it to charge our iPods (usb 1.1!), but all of the heavy lifting is done by our MBP.

I paid about $100 CDN (about £50) for a 512MB RAM stick. You're looking at double that? You might want to hold out, save what you can, and purchase new or refurbished. Any Intel Mac will outrun your trusty iMac, even if you upgrade to the full 1GB that machine can take.

 

[Applespider]

What kind of RAM is it that it takes? It might be worth hanging around here til you reach your 100 posts and then asking in the Marketplace if anyone still has any? It's the kind of thing that is now so old that people upgrading their Macs because their old one has died might not even think of selling it.

One reason that it will be dearer from the usual RAM websites now is because it's relatively rare now. You might want to think about looking on eBay to see if there's any second-hand stuff going cheaper.

 

[stace1973]

Good idea. I'll take a look on ebay to see if there's anything available.

It takes SDRAM - 512mb is the most I've seen. I don't think it would take much more than that anyway!

I know just how old a machine it now is, but it's been a real workhorse for me with Photoshop. I'd hate to scrap it.

 

[scienide09]

Yeah, I was only able to find 512MB sticks for it. One RAM slot is user accessible. The other is not considered user-accessible by Apple, but your warranty is long gone so if you're willing to crack the case, you can do the second as well.