Macbook ( C2D late 2006) RAM question/help

[crispy doja]

First of all, this is my first post. I've been reading the forums for quite some time now and I've learned a lot from you guys, so thanks.

I have the black macbook C2D 2.0 GHz that came with 1 GB stock. I'm looking to upgrade the ram and I know that it can go max to 3 GB. I was wondering if the difference between 2 & 3 GB is significant enough for me to purchase? I make money off my macbook (using photoshop & dreamweaver, nothing intense) so I want it to run is best as it can.

If 3 GB is my best option, should I just buy 1 stick of 3? And if you think it's best that I stick to 2 GB, should I just get a 2x1 or 1x1 & 1x1?

Any recommendations for good online sites to purchase from?

Sorry if this has been brought up before, you guys are the best resource I have (all my friends run windows )

 

[flopticalcube]

You first have to determine if you need more RAM. Look at Activity Monitor under System Memory. If over 2/3rds of your RAM is being used by Wired and Active, then there is a good chance you do. Since you have 2 X 512MB sticks already, I would go for a 2G stick first for 2.5G total. If you need more after that you could buy either a 1G stick or another 2G stick. The extra 2G stick won't give you more RAM than the 1G but you will get the benefit of matched RAM which improves performance by around 5%.

 

[kuebby]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

I would go with the 3gb, maybe even 4 (your mb can rec 3.3). Ram is quite cheap now so if you decide to add ram it makes sense to just max it out.

 

[bigiffo]

Get 4 gb if possible, you get more speed that way through dual channel support. However only do this if speed is really worth so much to you.

 

[Neil321]

http://guides.macrumors.com/Buying_RAM