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How much additional RAM can I add?

S

stanleyckm

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Hi all,

I would like to know how much additional RAM can I add to my imac which has been running inefficiently. My imac is bought in 2008 and the spec is included in the attached files. My friend told me that it uses DDR and the max that I can use is 2GB, which mean I can only add 1GB to my mac. Please let me know if this is correct or if more can be added. Thanks in advance.
 

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Your friend is wrong. That machine takes DDR2 667MHz RAM and it officially supports 4GB RAM, but third party it's been upgraded to 6GB (4GB and 2GB). I'd stick with a matched pair and go for 4GB.
 
G-Mo said:
Your friend is wrong. That machine takes DDR2 667MHz RAM and it officially supports 4GB RAM, but third party it's been upgraded to 6GB (4GB and 2GB). I'd stick with a matched pair and go for 4GB.
Click to expand...

This

When in doubt pop over to macsales and find your model. They'll tell you exactly how much you can have.
 
I have the 8,1 which has faster bus speed but also the same 4GB limitation from Apple but 6GB in practice. I have had 4GB in the machine since a week after I got it, until 6 months ago when I decided to put in the full 6GB. The difference is like night and day, particularly when running Aperture and iMovie. When running Aperture I'd be getting page outs like crazy, slowing down my editing process quite a bit. With 6GB that has basically disappeared.

Whatever you may lose is matched dual channel is more than made up in overhead and additional RAM. If you aren't sure if you'd benefit, just take a look at your Activity Monitor and see if you are getting a large amount of page outs. That is what will slow your machine down for sure.

If you really want to get the most out of your machine, consider replacing your HDD with an SSD. I replaced my 320GB HDD with a 1 TB a couple of years ago, and last month replaced the 1TB with a 240GB SSD. Incredible difference! Even after moving things like my iTunes library, Aperture referenced master images and my documents onto an external FW800 drive, it still flies!
 
Additional Ram for iMac

I have the 7,1 (the same specs as stanleyckm) and am confused about having 6GB instead of a balanced 4GB (2 GB in each slot). I always thought the more memory the better. Can anyone explain this?
Thanks.
 
Matched pairs of memory are not essential but perform better since the Mac Intel logic boards support dual channel memory and only matching pairs will run in dual channel mode, which is faster. That said, at some point "more" memory will out perform matched pairs in dual channel mode.
 
More RAM for iMac

So, MO, which would you do? Install 4 or 6? My new MacBook Pro (Dec 2011) has 4 GB memory, but sometimes my CAD program crashes so I wonder if I need more memory for it as well.
 
My 2011 i5, 2.7 can apparently take 32GB of RAM, where on earth do you get 8GB chips though? 😕
 
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