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Upgrade Memory on Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz for Leopard?

B

Boevieke

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 31, 2007
5
0
Gent, Belgium, E.U.
Hi everyone,

First of all, I'll try to explain my question in my best english :)

So, I'm asking myself if it's worth the money to upgrade the memory on my powerbook G4 1.33Ghz 12 inch from 768Mb to 1.25GB?
I've just upgraded to leopard and sometimes my little powerbook slows down enormously. Will there be any big difference in performance if I go for the memory upgrade?

Please enlighten me with all your knowledge and expertise! ;)

Thanks in advance!
 
I bumped my 1.25 PB G4 from 512 to 1.25GB and it makes the machine run much smoother - less swapping to disk. And this is on Tiger. If you plan to keep the 12" for more than a couple of weeks, do the upgrade - it is a cheap ($90) price to pay for about the only thing you can do to speed up your machine. The only other thing would be to put in a faster hard drive. I noticed a big difference going from a 4200 to a 5400rpm drive. I wish I had done a 7200...
 
You may see a bit of a boost. Question, did you upgrade to Leoaprd, or did you do an archive and install, or a fresh install???

I tried the upgrade & install and wasn't happy with the performance. I had previously backed up my Tiger install to an external disk just in case. So after being unhappy, I did a fresh install and migrated my files over manually. I was pretty pleased after that. She's still a little slow here and there, but I am hoping future Leopard updates will iron out the kinks.

Plus, DDR-1 SODIMM for the Powerbook is dirt-cheap these days.
 
£65 ($130ish) on Crucial.com for a 1GB chip, I checked earlier.

It's tempting, but it's quite a bit of money to invest into a laptop that old, at least in my case. YMMV - depends how heavily you use it.
 
$57.99 GSkill PC-2700 DDR SODIMM 1 gig

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231141

20-231-141-02.jpg
 
Ah... £49.99 from ebuyer with free delivery, or £45 for the "Extra value" version (hmmm)

Much more tempting!

No doubt you can get it dirt cheap on eBay but I wouldn't touch that place with a 10ft pole, full of fake rubbish.
 
I did a leopard archive and install, could that really make a difference?

Meanwhile I've been looking out for nearby computershops in Gent, because I'm not that keen on buying online and certainly not through ebay.
The cheapest price that I could find was 93 euros (around 120$?) for an Apple compatible module from Kingston. It's the system specific ram module for the Powerbook G4 and such. So I think I'll order that one. It's certainly my intention to use my powerbook for another year at least. For the record, I already got a 5200RPM HDD, that's already fast enough I think.

What do you guys think?
 
Long as you get PC2700 SODIMMs, unbuffered, CS2.5, you should be fine. You can't usually get hold of any other type anyway. No need to pay extra for the "Tested on Apple" label, it's standard stuff.
 
I always max out the RAM on my hardware, so my 1ghz G4 PowerBook has been at 1.25gb for years. I put Leopard on it in December and it runs fine. I don't use the computer for any heavy-lifting though. Just MS office and surfing and the like. I have an Alu iMac for the other stuff.

If you need the machine for more intensive tasks, you might just want to keep the money and put it towards a new computer. Your hardware is aging. More RAM will help, but fact is that Leopard needs a little more horsepower than a G4 can provide for an optimal experience. It runs fine, just not as well as it does on newer hardware.
 
PowerBook G4 1.25 GHz Memory Compability

If you would like some advice from someone who have tried to replace the memory in a Powerbook G4 1.25 GHz for some time now (I've tried 3 different memory sticks). All memory sticks just doesn't work.

Apparently the Powerbook models, 1.0, 1.25 and 1.33 GHz needs memory that supports "bus slewing". Otherwise these Powerbooks will freeze after some time (in my experience, 1-10 minutes after booting).

Crucial CT405707 for example is said to work. I haven't yet tried it.
 
Boevieke said:
Hi everyone,

First of all, I'll try to explain my question in my best english :)

So, I'm asking myself if it's worth the money to upgrade the memory on my powerbook G4 1.33Ghz 12 inch from 768Mb to 1.25GB?
I've just upgraded to leopard and sometimes my little powerbook slows down enormously. Will there be any big difference in performance if I go for the memory upgrade?

Please enlighten me with all your knowledge and expertise! ;)

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

i have a 1.33 ghz 12'' Powerbooks

with 512mb ram

running Leopard...

it works really well
 
Eric Lewis said:
i have a 1.33 ghz 12'' Powerbook

with 512mb ram

running Leopard...

it works really well
Click to expand...

Doesnt apple "recommend" 1gb of ram? I dont know foe sure.

On a side note, i had tiger running on my 500mhz G3 iBook with only 128mb ram, not running fast, more like walking :D
 
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