Should I max out my ram? I currently have 3gbs. I can pay 20 bucks or so and put a total of 4 gbs of ram. I can pay almost 70 dollars and get 6 gbs. What's the difference other than the price? I have an SSD installed btw. 
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Should I Max out my Early 2008 iMac Ram?
- Thread starter OpTic Jayex
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Hi -- I've got an Early 2008 iMac, also.
Hard to answer your question. Monitor your total memory usage with a menu-bar program like iStat Menus or even use Activity Monitor (change the dock icon with View-->Dock Icon-->Show Memory Usage).
If you use virtualization software like Parallels, VMWare Fusion, or VirtualBox to run guest OSes it's likely you could use the extra RAM. I put 6 GB in mine and that's the only time I've noticed that I really use the extra. (I'm running OS X 10.8.5 right now.) However, I'm not the type to leave iMovie, iPhoto, 103 browser tabs with flash going, etc... open all at once.
I partly maxed mine out because I hope to keep the machine for a few more years and thought that memory for an older machine might actually get more expensive as time went on. Don't know if it's the case, though.
Did you put the SSD in yourself? I put an SSD + 1 TB HDD in mine and made my own DIY Fusion Drive. So far it's been great!
Brian.
Hard to answer your question. Monitor your total memory usage with a menu-bar program like iStat Menus or even use Activity Monitor (change the dock icon with View-->Dock Icon-->Show Memory Usage).
If you use virtualization software like Parallels, VMWare Fusion, or VirtualBox to run guest OSes it's likely you could use the extra RAM. I put 6 GB in mine and that's the only time I've noticed that I really use the extra. (I'm running OS X 10.8.5 right now.) However, I'm not the type to leave iMovie, iPhoto, 103 browser tabs with flash going, etc... open all at once.
I partly maxed mine out because I hope to keep the machine for a few more years and thought that memory for an older machine might actually get more expensive as time went on. Don't know if it's the case, though.
Did you put the SSD in yourself? I put an SSD + 1 TB HDD in mine and made my own DIY Fusion Drive. So far it's been great!
Brian.
Thank you for the reply. The SSD is actually connected externally. I didn't want to fuss with the taking apart and rebuilding of my iMac so I just went external. I just don't know if I want to pay 60 bucks for 3 more gbs of ram.
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