Ram upgrade worth it?

[7254278]

Hey all,
I have 768MB of ram on my ibook running tiger. I wanted to speed it up a bit. Is it worth buying a 1GB stick bringing it to 1.25 GB of ram? WIll I notice a big difference in WoW(especially in raids), FM 2006, Maya and Garageband?

 

[Bear]

More memory woulod speed up some of those, however a new PowerBook or iBook with more memory would be an even better bet.

WoW is probably limited most by the video board.
Maya is limited by memory and possibly the video board. And limited by the processor speed.
Garage Band only needs more memory if you have a lot of things going on.

 

[itsbetteronamac]

You might notice a little bit of a speed increase, but not a huge one. Is it worth the hundred dollars? I say yes if your not going to be buying a new computer for a while. Notebook wise, adding more RAM is really the only way to improve you computer's performance. There are some exceptions, but in most cases you stuck with the hardware you got. So, when I got a new powerbook i got what apple calls the "ultimate" powerbook. (Everything Maxed out, except for the RAM wich is at 1GB.)

 

[CanadaRAM]

Yes.


But define "big difference"...

 

[7254278]

Lower rendering times in maya and a 4-8 FPS increase in wow and maybe something higher then 10 FPS in raids

 

[7254278]

No other opinions?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Lower rendering times in maya and a 4-8 FPS increase in wow and maybe something higher then 10 FPS in raids

Extra quantity of RAM will make little or no difference to the frame rates in games - those are mainly bound by video card speed, as long as you have enough RAM to run the program.

Maya however is reputed to be a RAM hog and RAM, then processor speed, would be the determining factor.

 

[powerbook911]

I just upgraded my Powerbook from 768 to 1.25 GB.

What I notice, things do feel a little snappier. The biggest difference is when I'm doing something processor intensive, believe it or not. For example, when I'm encoding in handbrake, or I am making a DVD in Toast. Those aren't applications that use a particularly high amount of memory. However, previously, my system would really lag, when I tried to do other things, while doing those intensive tasks. Now, I can do whatever I want, and the speed is there.

I'm happy I upgraded.

 

[shadowmoses]

I'd say its probably wrth it, but you can see for yourself.....keep an eye on activity monitor when you are using your iBook normally and see if free RAM ever drops really low, if the answer is yes then its time to upgrade the RAM,

Shadow