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pb flies with 512mb ram upgrade...

londonweb

londonweb

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 14, 2005
260
0
london
I just wanted to share some good news - I upgraded the ram in my 15in pb today from the stock 512 to 1gb, and it has transformed it.

I know I'm sort of stating the obvious, but I've had this thing a week and was on the verge of returning it- it has the lines thing, which i feel I can deal with, but it was so sluggish and laggy in general use that I didn't feel at all like I'd bought what is supposed to be among the fastest laptops currently available. I do a lot of flash and design work, and since I was migrating from a dual processor Pentium 3 pc, I was expecting massive improvements which unfortunately didn't come.

I'm happy to say that the Ram upgrade has improved things a lot, but I think it does raise questions as to the performance of the pb out of the box- if it can't perform to an adequate level with the stock memory, shouldn't they be bumping it up a bit? I know ram upgrades always help and there is an option to upgrade upon purchase, but in my opinion the performance with the standard 512mb is simply not up to par.

Anyone else agree?
 
I don't. I agree entirely that if you're doing heavy Flash and design work that it's not going to run as well as you'd like on 512MB, but for baseline use 512MB should be fine--the machines at my workplace, for example, cover all the basics (Word, Excel, Eudora, Camino, and a bit of data analysis) on under 400MB.

Shipping anything with 256MB at this point is sort of insulting, as Tiger just doesn't run properly at that level, but 512MB provides perfectly acceptable baseline performance in "non-pro" apps and that, I think, is exactly what the base RAM should do--enough to get started. If you run stuff that requires more, THEN you pay extra for it.

Same as a desktop G5--base RAM is 512MB and if my app is processor-bound (say, I'm doing video compression), that'll do it. If I'm going to run a lot of iMovie and Garage Band, then I probably want to add a gig or two. If I want to run Motion or some scientific monster, then even 1GB will be sluggish, and I probably want to spend the money for 8GB or more, but that doesn't mean it should ship with that much.

Besides, with what Apple charges for RAM, so long as "stock" is at all passable I'd rather save the money and buy it myself.
 
i agree. a RAM upgrade makes a huge difference when you are running more than 4 or 5 apps at a time.
 
My new 1.42ghz iBook shipped with Tiger. I don't think i can downgrade to Panther if I wanted to. (Hey, can I?)

I've resisted Tiger because of CPU suck and fear of spinning bballs.

Got 'em today while on eBay, open M.Word document and I think that was it.

AND I'VE STUFFED IT WITH 1.5gbs of RAM.

So, what gives? I radicallly dislike Tiger and have not opened widgets and don't see any speed bump in actual surfing or usage.

I feel whiny. But I still love the 'book. Just wish I could offload Tiger for my trusty old 10.3.9 that didn't beachball me.
 
I'm upgrading to 1.5 GB soon and cannot wait! I know I am going to see a serious boost in performance, especially since I work in so many apps at once.
 
California said:
My new 1.42ghz iBook shipped with Tiger. I don't think i can downgrade to Panther if I wanted to. (Hey, can I?)

I've resisted Tiger because of CPU suck and fear of spinning bballs.

Got 'em today while on eBay, open M.Word document and I think that was it.

AND I'VE STUFFED IT WITH 1.5gbs of RAM.

So, what gives? I radicallly dislike Tiger and have not opened widgets and don't see any speed bump in actual surfing or usage.

I feel whiny. But I still love the 'book. Just wish I could offload Tiger for my trusty old 10.3.9 that didn't beachball me.
Click to expand...

I've always found tiger both faster and more stable than panther. Don't know what to tell ya...

I agree that 512 RAM is a good amount for macs to ship with except powermacs. I don't think there are too many people who are taking advantage of dual 2+ Ghz G5 CPUs and yet only using 512 RAM. Sure, a few maybe, but a very few. Ship the powermacs with a gig; 512 is a good base amount, for now, to get everyone else started.
 
well i have been living with my powerbook since this summer, and outta the box with 512, i must say that i was a little dissapointed when i started running apps like photoshop cs2 and adobe bridge...i definately need to get some more ram...how much, who knows...but im not in the mood to fork over 200 bucks for it though. I wonder what the difference would be with it maxed out compared to now with the 512
 
poolin1243 said:
well i have been living with my powerbook since this summer, and outta the box with 512, i must say that i was a little dissapointed when i started running apps like photoshop cs2 and adobe bridge...i definately need to get some more ram...how much, who knows...but im not in the mood to fork over 200 bucks for it though. I wonder what the difference would be with it maxed out compared to now with the 512
Click to expand...

I think it'll seriously improve things. Just doubling mine turned it into a different machine. For example, on Saturday I was processing images in photoshop- they were supplied to me hi-res at 16 bits per channel, and re-touching with the healing brush was bringing up the timer with every click- which for me is just a pain and takes the 'flow' out of what you're doing. I would then resize each one and then save for web, and just opening that window would take about 10 seconds. After the ram upgrade, the timer doesn't appear when retouching unless I'm using a really large brush, and the save for web window pops up almost instantly. It's as though it was running everything off the hard disk before and now it's running everything from the memory.
 
QCassidy352 said:
I've always found tiger both faster and more stable than panther.
Click to expand...
Me too! Some of the changes are so subtle, but it would be disastrous if I ever had to go back to 10.3.

In my experience I have found RAM a lot more useful than CPU speed. Back in the days of old when computers were a lot slower, adding a sufficient chunk of RAM transformed your machine ten-fold.
The same still happens today, but I just find it 'less noticeable'. Of course, having a faster CPU helps dramatically... but, yeh...
 
California said:
I feel whiny. But I still love the 'book. Just wish I could offload Tiger for my trusty old 10.3.9 that didn't beachball me.
Click to expand...

I have to chime in too and say for me Tiger is a far superior beast to Panther. I noticed speed increases across the board.

Did you do an erase and install when upgrading from Panther to Tiger?
 
munkle said:
I have to chime in too and say for me Tiger is a far superior beast to Panther. I noticed speed increases across the board.

Did you do an erase and install when upgrading from Panther to Tiger?
Click to expand...

Tiger came on this 1.42ghz 14" machine. And I did download tiger with erase and install in a 1.2 14" machine I just sold but then re did it because it didn't have all the extra apps that that machine had with original system discs.
 
dotdotdot said:
Are you still going to return it though? I'd return it if it had the lines...
Click to expand...

Have you actually seen these infamous lines? They're practically non-existent. I think everyone is making a big fuss about nothing. Anyway, this is another thread entirely.
 
londonweb said:
Have you actually seen these infamous lines? They're practically non-existent. I think everyone is making a big fuss about nothing. Anyway, this is another thread entirely.
Click to expand...

On Veterans day I went to the Jacksonville store and saw the lines on all of the floor models, so did a friend who was with me. I also got a headache from using them.

Today I was back at the same store. The displays looked crisp and clean with no problems. I'm not sure if they swapped the floor models out, but they did get an OS update to 10.4.3 between then and now.
 
More RAM does not automatically make your Mac run faster. No matter how much RAM you have, you'll eventually run out, and OSX will start creating virtual memory swap files. The only difference between having X amount of RAM or X+ RAM is the time and number or type of applications it takes to get into VM. Then you will have to reboot to clear the swap files or performance will be degraded, no matter whether you've got a half a gig or two gigs of RAM.
 
my powerbook with 1.5 GB ram indeed does fly. time taken to open apps is the same but multitasking greatly improves, this is where one sees the real benifits.
---
off topic : my imac g5 with the same amount of ram as the powerbook takes more time to start up? im a bit confused. shut down times are pretty much the same with the imac being slightly quicker. but at start up there is a significant difference, pb is much quicker. not much of an issue, cuz overall the imac does kick the powerbooks @r$e (not by that much though). all i see is that the power light on the imac blinks once and then the screen starts up. and by this time the pbs' already loading tiger up. hmmm...
 
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