Just got an iMac G4

[Peterson8765]

I just recently got a pretty awesome iMac G4 15" (1.0GHz USB 2.0) for free off of craigslist. It also came with Mac OS X Tiger, 768mb ram, and an 80gb hard drive. The questions I have are should I upgrade the ram and the operating system? I plan on buying a 1GB module so it can have 1.25GB ram, also I want to put leopard on it so it's not totally outdated. Will I see a little more speed upgrading from 768mb to 1.25gb ram?

 

[eyoungren]

Congratulations! You got a great Mac at an even better price!

Upgrades to ram will always help and with Leopard it will be useful. Leopard can work on systems with low ram but it does work best with 1GB or better.

Since you are wanting to run Leopard that answers your question about upgrading the OS. Leopard is as far as you can go as you probably know already.

Any other questions we can help with be sure to ask.

 

[DeltaMac]

I don't think there's ever a downside to adding more RAM.
You do know that there's two different RAM slots, each taking a different type of memory, right?
The SO-DIMM slot is easy to get at, just the metal shield on the bottom.
The other, which takes a full-size SDRAM PC-2700 stick, requires pulling the bottom case completely open. You do have to redo the heat sink compound if you remove the bottom case.
Anyway - both sticks can be 1 GB, to give you a max of 2GB total.
One of your sticks is 512MB, so if you think you are installing a 1 GB stick, then you would be pulling the 512MB. If you only want to get 1 1GB stick, then get it for whichever slot has the 256MB stick, and replace THAT one, so you end up with 1.5GB. Does that make sense to you?
Likely, the 256 stick is the internal (factory) stick, which is the SDRAM stick (and quite a bit more challenging to replace)
The system will work more smoothly with more RAM (might feel faster, too), but it's still the same processor.
Upgrade to 10.5 if you like.

 

[Realnanners]

Awesome ! Here

I just recently got a pretty awesome iMac G4 15" (1.0GHz USB 2.0) for free off of craigslist. It also came with Mac OS X Tiger, 768mb ram, and an 80gb hard drive. The questions I have are should I upgrade the ram and the operating system? I plan on buying a 1GB module so it can have 1.25GB ram, also I want to put leopard on it so it's not totally outdated. Will I see a little more speed upgrading from 768mb to 1.25gb ram?

I am glad yo have a iMac and I hope you enjoy it. I am here if you need any software recommendations. Let me know How I did. realnanners

 

[tom vilsack]

As deltamac said,if you do replace the internal ram ***make sure you redo the thermal compound***

Even if you don't upgrade the internal ram,a good internal cleaning can really do wonders for heat! I've done a few of these,and a good clean and redoing thermal compound (make sure you remove old stuff with good cleaning) really does help!

As your G4 has the 64mb geforce 4 (rather then just the 32mb geforce 2/4) as long as you feed it ram leopard should run okay. I might be more inclined to run Tiger,but really a personal pick....

 

[Altemose]

I just recently got a pretty awesome iMac G4 15" (1.0GHz USB 2.0) for free off of craigslist. It also came with Mac OS X Tiger, 768mb ram, and an 80gb hard drive. The questions I have are should I upgrade the ram and the operating system? I plan on buying a 1GB module so it can have 1.25GB ram, also I want to put leopard on it so it's not totally outdated. Will I see a little more speed upgrading from 768mb to 1.25gb ram?

Try checking out the Leopard Speed Improvements guide in this forum that eyoungren, Intell, and I all put together.

 

[Intell]

I hath been summoned by thy name. *Puts cheese hat on Altemose*

Why is Realnanners reviving resolved and older threads?

 

[Altemose]

I hath been summoned by thy name. *Puts cheese hat on Altemose*

Why is Realnanners reviving resolved and older threads?

Just saw how old this thread really was...

 

[eyoungren]

Why is Realnanners reviving resolved and older threads?

Because he's a newb!

----------

Try checking out the Leopard Speed Improvements guide in this forum that eyoungren, Intell, and I all put together.

Intell's cheese hats are made of Real California® Cheese.

You've got a quality hat there man!

 

[NOTNlCE]

The USB 2.0 iMac G4s WILL accept PC-3200 SDIMMs. Those are considerably more common than the PC-2700s that the iMac shipped with. I upgraded the SDIMM in my iMac G4 with a 1GB stick that was originally in one of my G5s. Sure, it runs at the stock speed, but accepts the module just fine. Don't pay extra for PC-2700 if you're going out to eBay-land.

 

[WMD]

As your G4 has the 64mb geforce 4 (rather then just the 32mb geforce 2/4) as long as you feed it ram leopard should run okay.

I also have a 15" 1.0/USB 2.0, and it has a 32MB GeForce4 MX. I think it was only the larger screen models that came with 64MB.

 

[ihuman:D]

I don't think the the GeForce4 MX has as good Quartz or CoreImage support as the FX5200. Not sure though.

 

[WMD]

It doesn't. Kind of a shame. A tweak from Altemose's thread helped noticeably, but animations are still a bit jerky.

 

[Intell]

The GeForce 4MX is an adequate GPU for general GUI things. It's QuartzExtreme is about that of the GeForce 5200, but it completely lacks CoreImage where the 5200 almost fully supports it.