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Thinking about upgrading memory. How much improvement can I expect?

post #1 of 5
3/18/11 at 9:10am
Thread Starter 
Hey all,

I own a 2008 Core Duo 3.06 24" iMac with two 2 Gig SO-DIMM chips for a total of 4 gigs of RAM. I won't be ready to buy a new iMac for at least another year or two and I've learned that this particular iMac will support a total of 6 gigs RAM. I run a lot of programs at the same time - Safari is constantly eating a lot of my RAM after being up only about a day or so, but in general, I want to be able to keep these programs up and running most of the time.

How much more performance will I squeeze out of an extra 2 gigs of RAM? Is it worth the upgrade?
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post #2 of 5
3/18/11 at 3:38pm
Short answer -
put in as much as you can afford.
Applications perform their operation in RAM - you may not notice a speed improvement from 4 going to 6 but the applications should run smoother.
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post #3 of 5
3/18/11 at 7:11pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by nondual View Post

Hey all,

I own a 2008 Core Duo 3.06 24" iMac with two 2 Gig SO-DIMM chips for a total of 4 gigs of RAM. I won't be ready to buy a new iMac for at least another year or two and I've learned that this particular iMac will support a total of 6 gigs RAM. I run a lot of programs at the same time - Safari is constantly eating a lot of my RAM after being up only about a day or so, but in general, I want to be able to keep these programs up and running most of the time.

How much more performance will I squeeze out of an extra 2 gigs of RAM? Is it worth the upgrade?

You're on a fool's errand. You have ample RAM. Don't get into a race with your RAM consumption. MacOS X allocates RAM among all running tasks so as to consume all available RAM. If you have ever run top from the Terminal command line, then you know that MacOS X runs a lot of tasks--most of which are headless background tasks.

So long as you keep 10% of your available hard drive capacity as free space, the physical RAM on your laptop is more than adequate for any job that your want your computer to perform. Buying and installing additional RAM will hurt nothing but your bank balance. It may even have some marginal effect on your system's performance. However, you should beware of the Placebo Effect.
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post #4 of 5
3/19/11 at 2:06am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Me View Post

You're on a fool's errand. You have ample RAM. Don't get into a race with your RAM consumption. MacOS X allocates RAM among all running tasks so as to consume all available RAM. If you have ever run top from the Terminal command line, then you know that MacOS X runs a lot of tasks--most of which are headless background tasks.

So long as you keep 10% of your available hard drive capacity as free space, the physical RAM on your laptop is more than adequate for any job that your want your computer to perform. Buying and installing additional RAM will hurt nothing but your bank balance. It may even have some marginal effect on your system's performance. However, you should beware of the Placebo Effect.

aww look I agree with you. But
the problem is we don't know what apps op is talking about.
Sheeit - these days people talk about 3D apps as if they're a web browser - lol
too many unknowns
cheers
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post #5 of 5
3/19/11 at 4:19am
Quote:
Originally Posted by nondual View Post

Safari is constantly eating a lot of my RAM after being up only about a day or so...

And overall, using a web browser does not constitute a need for more RAM.

Safari has a memory leak. Gigabytes worth. It's not using that much RAM at all, it just doesn't give it back when it's done.
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