How much will I gain by going to 640?

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tacojohntacojohn
Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
I have an iBook 500 w/ 256 RAM would it be worth the $90 to max out the RAM to 640?



I'm running 10.2 and like to play around w/ elements



Is the 500 G3 holding me back?



Any upgrade ideas? I have $400 is spend on upgrades and I'm planning on getting an airport extreme basestation (just for the wireless print server its worth the price).

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 14
    spiffsterspiffster Posts: 327member
    Oh yes it will make a difference. :cool:



    Just seeing the jump when I put 280 MB in my 300 mHz iBook, I can't imagine the difference 512 MB would make. You'll probably notice the biggest difference when you run multiple applications at once. The more RAM you have decreases the amout of data that has to be paged in an out of your hard drive. Since accessing RAM is much faster than paging the hard drive and loading back to RAM, this is what gives you the speed boots. Trust me, go for it.
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  • Reply 2 of 14
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    I've got a 500MHz iBook too and I went from 384 to 640 in September. When a lot of apps are running you'll notice a difference.
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  • Reply 3 of 14
    tacojohntacojohn Posts: 980member
    Thanks guys- I'm gonna order the upgrade then



    any other ideas how I can speed up this old book?
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  • Reply 4 of 14
    gspottergspotter Posts: 342member
    [quote]Originally posted by tacojohn:

    <strong>Thanks guys- I'm gonna order the upgrade then



    any other ideas how I can speed up this old book?</strong><hr></blockquote>

    You might want to check your RAM requirements with the Terminal:

    While doing your typical stuff, open the Terminal and type "top". This will show your most active processes and some memory statistics. If you have many pageouts, your system is swapping and can use some extra RAM.

    You can quit "top" by pressing the "Q" key.
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  • Reply 5 of 14
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    The other two upgrade options for your iBook are overclocking and a new hard drive... unfortunately, both are completely unsupported and will void any warranty you have on it.



    I know nothing about overclocking other than that you can overclock a 500 MHz iBook to 600 MHz with a 100 MHz bus. Many have done it.



    You could also get a 5400 RPM hard drive, with maybe a 40-60 GB capacity. I've heard moving up to 5400 RPM from a 4200 RPM makes a big difference.
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  • Reply 6 of 14
    tacojohntacojohn Posts: 980member
    ok



    with finder, mail, iTunes playing, and Safari running I have 47116 pageouts.



    Is that decent or bad?
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  • Reply 7 of 14
    scottscott Posts: 7,431member
    More RAM is great but it's no cure for the sluggishness that OS X can be from time to time. Don?t expect a miracle
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  • Reply 8 of 14
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Yep. No big "holy crap!" kind of thing... better though, if you like to keep lots of apps going.
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  • Reply 9 of 14
    gspottergspotter Posts: 342member
    [quote]Originally posted by tacojohn:

    <strong>with finder, mail, iTunes playing, and Safari running I have 47116 pageouts.</strong><hr></blockquote>



    I have iTunes playing, Mail opened and Safari running + DragThing & Terminal and my System uses about 392 MB (out of 512 MB) physical RAM. I have 0 pageouts.



    BTW: Each open window will eat some MBs from your RAM. Try running top and open some windows in Safari.
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  • Reply 10 of 14
    murbotmurbot Posts: 5,262member
    Pageouts do not "go away" when you quit apps. I can open all my apps, go nuts and get a million pageouts, then close everything but iTunes. Then I can say "christ, just with iTunes I have 495,827 pageouts!".



    Even with 640 MB you'll get pageouts if you're actually doing something with it. They're not the end of the world.
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  • Reply 11 of 14
    tacojohntacojohn Posts: 980member
    So would upgrading to 640 from 256 be worth it?



    Its about $90 for the RAM
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  • Reply 12 of 14
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Yes.
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  • Reply 13 of 14
    pscatespscates Posts: 5,847member
    I can surely vouch that adding RAM to an OS X machine makes a nice difference. I went from 256MB to 512MB during Christmas (can it, Murbot and EmAn ) and while not earth-shattering and life-altering, there is certainly a new level of snappiness and response that was lacking before.



    I tend to run Mail, Safari, iTunes, Illustrator, Suitcase pretty much 24/7. Add to that the occasional Photoshop, iChat, Address Book, Sherlock and iCal and yes...more RAM is really nice and there's nowhere near the delay and lag while bouncing around apps and the Finder as there was before.



    Best $90 you could ever spend.



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  • Reply 14 of 14
    emaneman Posts: 7,204member
    [quote]Originally posted by tacojohn:

    <strong>So would upgrading to 640 from 256 be worth it?



    Its about $90 for the RAM</strong><hr></blockquote>

    It's absolutely worth it.



    And Paul I'll keep my mouth shut this time
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