How much memory does Tiger "devour"?

[alexf]

Hi Everyone,

I am thinking of (possibly) upgrading to Tiger and was wondering whether 10.4 eats up significantly more memory than 10.3.

Now I am running 10.3.9 and have enough memory to keep me comfortable, and was wondering whether it is generally a good idea to put in a little extra RAM when switching over to Tiger to keep the speed up to par and not experience a performance drop.

Thanks!

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Hi Everyone,

I am thinking of (possibly) upgrading to Tiger and was wondering whether 10.4 eats up significantly more memory than 10.3.

Now I am running 10.3.9 and have enough memory to keep me comfortable, and was wondering whether it is generally a good idea to put in a little extra RAM when switching over to Tiger to keep the speed up to par and not experience a performance drop.

Thanks!

Looking purely at the minimum requirements increasing from 128 MB to 256 MB, I'd guess that Tiger does, in fact, use significantly more RAM than Panther. I have 512 MB RAM in my iMac, and I didn't notice any significant pattern changes in RAM usage from Panther to Tiger.

 

[ArcticFox]

I say throw in a minimum of 1GB...

 

[BWhaler]

512 Mb is the true minimum.

I'd go for a gig if you are going to have a lot of apps open or doing multimedia work...

 

[alexf]

I say throw in a minimum of 1GB...

Well, I already have 2 GB in the computer, but I work as a graphic designer and always have a wide variety of RAM-hogging apps open at the same time. In the Activity Monitor graph there is usually just a very tiny sliver of green left (and a lot of yellow and blue).

So the question is: if I do make the upgrade to 10.4 (which I am hesitant to make for other reasons), would it be worth putting in another, say, 512 MB? (that's about the max I could afford at the moment)

 

[iBunny]

I only have 768 MB of Ram in my iBook and everything works great.

According to Activity monitor, Tiger uses less ram than panther did

 

[alexf]

According to Activity monitor, Tiger uses less ram than panther did

Strange indeed...

 

[mkrishnan]

Strange indeed...

My experience (with a LOT less memory - 640MB - than you, sadly) is that, leaving iCal/Mail/FF/Terminal/iTunes running in the background and working between iPhoto and PSE3 in the foreground, I now see more beachballing when I do this than I used to under Panther. So it seems to me that there is slightly more memory usage. I'm not sure how much benefit you'd get though. I would guess that, sort of along the lines of the previous comment about the minimum requirements, the amount of RAM that "is lost" is effectively only about 128 megs.... What I'd say personally is go ahead with Tiger, and if you want to later on, put in more memory....

 

[Koodauw]

So you guys/gals recemend 1 Gig? And any notice the price drop on the 1 gig crucial ram recently, went from $370 to $190. Any idea whats up with that?

 

[jonat8]

I would definately recommend 1 gig. I bought the machine with 256Mb and while it was usable there wa SUCH a big performance boost when I upgraded to 1Gb. I don't need to worry about how many apps I have open - I can have Word, Safari, Adium, iTunes, Entourage and Elements open at the same with no problems!

J

 

[muzikool]

I just upped the RAM on my G5 from 512MB to 1.5GB. I'm running Tiger and though it ran great on 512MB, I definitely notice the difference after the upgrade. I got two sticks of 512MB Kingston for $80 on eBay.

 

[zelmo]

So you guys/gals recemend 1 Gig? And any notice the price drop on the 1 gig crucial ram recently, went from $370 to $190. Any idea whats up with that?

Wow, really good price for Crucial RAM. I've been wanting to pick up a GB stick from Crucial to trade out one of the 256MB sticks in my PowerBook and go to 1.25GB total. Seems like a great time.

Hey honey, if you're reading this, Father's Day is right around the corner...

 

[diehldun]

Wow, really good price for Crucial RAM. I've been wanting to pick up a GB stick from Crucial to trade out one of the 256MB sticks in my PowerBook and go to 1.25GB total. Seems like a great time.

Hey honey, if you're reading this, Father's Day is right around the corner...

I've been ripped off! (got 1 GB from crucial at a ridiculous price during xmas...)

Is 1.5 GB enough for Tiger? I upgraded from 512MB to 1.5 GB, and I'm wondering if 2GB was recommended??

 

[win_convert]

FOR Chrying out loud. Apple will not market something that will require their users to upgrade to 2GB of RAM. It's not good business sense, and it would be a very poor operating system to require that amount of RAM

 

[muzikool]

I've been ripped off! (got 1 GB from crucial at a ridiculous price during xmas...)

Is 1.5 GB enough for Tiger? I upgraded from 512MB to 1.5 GB, and I'm wondering if 2GB was recommended??

1.5GB is plenty for most people. I'd only recommend more if you're doing heavy video editing or audio recordings.

 

[Platform]

I just upped the RAM on my G5 from 512MB to 1.5GB. I'm running Tiger and though it ran great on 512MB, I definitely notice the difference after the upgrade. I got two sticks of 512MB Kingston for $80 on eBay.

How do you get 1.5Gig's with two 512 sticks ...unless you modded your iMac ..if so post pics

 

[thequicksilver]

My experience (with a LOT less memory - 640MB - than you, sadly) is that, leaving iCal/Mail/FF/Terminal/iTunes running in the background and working between iPhoto and PSE3 in the foreground, I now see more beachballing when I do this than I used to under Panther. So it seems to me that there is slightly more memory usage. I'm not sure how much benefit you'd get though. I would guess that, sort of along the lines of the previous comment about the minimum requirements, the amount of RAM that "is lost" is effectively only about 128 megs.... What I'd say personally is go ahead with Tiger, and if you want to later on, put in more memory....

I think I'd echo that to a tee, though my experience is with 768MB.