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brsboarder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 16, 2004
763
15
I am currently running on an ibook G4 800mhz I have the original 128 +512 giving me 640. I was thinking about taking out the 512 and throwing in a 1gig ram chip. I heard that although the ibook "can't support this" its only because they didn't have 1gig chips then. So, is it worth it? Will i see a decent performance increase?
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Dunno if it's worth it. It will work, but it's probably not worth the money. To test if you need more RAM, restart your machine and use it normally for a day or so. Then, check Activity Monitor to see how many Page Ins and Page Outs you accumulated. The rate at which you accumulate these helps show whether you should up the RAM.
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
I had the extra 1GB chip in my old iBook (same specs as yours) for a while and didn't notice too much of a difference. I found there were a few bottlenecks in the rest of the system such as GPU, CPU and hard drive speed that negated the positives of having more RAM in the first place. Of course, that was just me. :)
 

brsboarder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 16, 2004
763
15
what type of rate should I look for?
Right now, I have 422480 in, 543440 out, data read 17.97, data written 10.64 468.00KB/Sec, but I don't know how long this has been over

Apparently, page in/out says 356165/249997, again, dont know how long this is from
 

deadpixels

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
913
0
what type of rate should I look for?
Right now, I have 422480 in, 543440 out, data read 17.97, data written 10.64 468.00KB/Sec, but I don't know how long this has been over

Apparently, page in/out says 356165/249997, again, dont know how long this is from

my ibook g4 1.2ghz 1.25gb ram says page ins / outs = 33639 / 0 :D
you have loads of page out (stuff written to your hd instead of ram) you should see an improvement with more ram, especially if you have many apps running at the same time :)
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
The figures mean nothing without knowing the uptime. Shut the machine down and tell us what figures you get after a day's usage. That's probably the easiest way to check. :)
 

brsboarder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 16, 2004
763
15
After about 15 Hours:
52055/2389 page ins/outs

reads in 181018
writes out 98011
 

mad jew

Moderator emeritus
Apr 3, 2004
32,191
9
Adelaide, Australia
Okay, that's quite high and you'd definitely benefit from extra RAM, but I still doubt it's worth the money. It's up to you. The extra 512MB would definitely cut down on beachballs. :)
 
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