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duke132

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 20, 2015
11
1
Hi ! I got an 20 inch 2007 iMac with 3gb of ram. I run Yosemite but it seems slow(i will get 4gb i swear). Even if I get 4gb I should consider other os or Yosemite is ok?

Thank you !
 
I run Yosemite on a 2007 20" with 4GB and an SSD without much issue for simple daily tasks. You can install up to 6GB (4+2) which would help as well, but the SSD had the greatest effect on usability. I bet it would feel insanely fast with an SSD in Snow Leopard... but I still stick with Yosemite for the iCloud integration aspect, regardless of the performance hit.
 
Agree with the other posts. Get an SSD in there and you'll notice a big improvement. I finally got round to upgrading the RAM from 3GB to 4GB recently and it also made a bit of a difference. Would have jumped to 6GB but couldn't justify the increased price as this machine will be replaced soon.
 
Your problem is lack of memory. An SSD would help speed it up too, but I can pretty much guarantee you it's memory.

I use a product named Scannerz to test systems and it comes with something called Performance Probe. I was looking at a customers system with 2GB of RAM running Yosemite and the Performance Probe showed all memory in Red or blue, with about 90% of it in the red, and the page outs and swapping were enormous. You can see some screen shots of what the probe looks like here:

http://scsc-online.com/Perf Probe.html

In any case upgrading the memory to 4GB fixed the problem and made it act more like Mavericks, so I think 3GB would be pushing it.

An SSD would speed it even more but you would have to open the unit up while RAM is easy to replace. I will say, however, that Yosemite doesn't strike me as the fastest OS on Earth.
 
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