G5, Does More Ram =more Speed?

[fourthtunz]

I don't have my G5 yet, like many I'm waiting to see what kind of speedup my apps will get from it, which are Protools and final cut.
The thing is I haven't seen any places that are selling the 1 gig RAM sticks for the 1.8 and the 2.0 Macs. I'm wondering how the 1.6Mac with 4 gigs of ram would stack up against the 1.8 or 2.0 Macs with 2 gigs of ram?
I'm just wondering what would give you the best bang for the buck? Oh yeah, I'll also need an extra internal serial drive for recording audio and video.
So would the G5 1.8,2 gigs of ram and extra drive be the best way to spend $3K?
Maybe with more ram and the G5 these types of apps will be fast enough to allow us to work on the internal boot drive?
Just pondering, thanks
daniel

 

[G5orbust]

well, to answer your main question.

RAM amount does matter, but it eventually becomes overkill. A 1.6GHz G5 with 4GB of RAM will be a snappy computer, though nothing comparable in speed to a 1.8GHz G5, and definately outclassed by the dual 2GHz.

The problem here is bus speed. The 1.6GHz uses an 800MHz bus on DDR333 memory (333MHz), while the 1.8GHz runs on a bus 100MHz faster and uses RAM much zippier (as it is also dual channel) called DDR400 (400 MHz). The dual 2 GHz model uses two independent 1GHz system buses, each running off of dual channel DDR400.

So, to answer your question: No. A 1.6GHz with 4GB will not be comparible in speed to a 1.8GHz with 2GB.

 

[Chaszmyr]

Originally posted by G5orbust
So, to answer your question: No. A 1.6GHz with 4GB will not be comparible in speed to a 1.8GHz with 2GB.

Yes I believe that is true. However, I also believe a 1.6ghz with 2gb of RAM could be as fast as a 1.8ghz with 512mb of RAM, and it largely depends on how you use the RAM. Personally I have 1gb of RAM right now and less than half of it is "available" at any given time, and therefore i would get a larger performance increase moving from 512mb to 1gb of RAM than someone who made the same move who was only using 250mb of RAM at a time

 

[fourthtunz]

From what little I know about OS X I believe that it is more efficient in how it uses ram? I'm thinking more about video processing, but if your whole piece fits into ram so you don't have to access the HD I guess that would speed things up?
I would usually just buy the cheapest mac but where the ram is different you wouldn't be able to use it when you upgrade to the next Mac. I'm still hoping for the dual 1.8 at the single1.8 price

peace
daniel