How much RAM is enough?

xoolxool
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
How much ram do you consider enough. Average user? Power user?



I'd say 512 MB for novices, but at today's prices 1 GB is accessible to all. Power users should start at 1 GB and move up from there. My G5 has 1.5 GB. Now that I'm watching, if I see the Activity Monitor reporting little free RAM I must buy more.



You?
«13

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 53
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    i think 2GB is plenty for basically everyone.



    edit: 512 for average users, 2GB for power.
  • Reply 2 of 53
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    8GB





    But since no apps can address more than 2GB at the moment 8GB is overkill
  • Reply 3 of 53
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    4 GBs for me cuz i do alot of video editing
  • Reply 4 of 53
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Leonis

    But since no apps can address more than 2GB at the moment 8GB is overkill



    Not overkill!!



    That means you can only run 4 apps with 2 GB each. Let the system give Photoshop a couple gigs, C4D a gig, Final Cut Pro a gig, etc. if you're a heavy heavy user and you could "easily" use up all that memory.



  • Reply 5 of 53
    steve666steve666 Posts: 2,600member
    I have 320Mb and when I check RAM usage I always seem to have about 30Mb free no matter what I do. I may up it to 512 Mb as soon as I see a sale on memory.
  • Reply 6 of 53
    k squaredk squared Posts: 608member
    Quote:

    I have 320Mb and when I check RAM usage I always seem to have about 30Mb free no matter what I do. I may up it to 512 Mb as soon as I see a sale on memory.



    But even if you upgrade to 512, you would probably still have 30 Mb left. OS X will use as mush as it can, which is a good thing.
  • Reply 7 of 53
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    k squared is right.



    The OS will *always* keep 10-30 MB free no matter what is running. It holds this as an emergency slot for the kernel or other key system tasks.



    Also, he's right that the OS will always use up as much as you have. Mac OS X caches things left and right to make your experience faster. It does, though, automatically free up cached data if another app needs memory. It's all done automatically and makes the system run much more faster.



    This is why, for example, some apps will launch faster the second time they're opened. It's because part of the app is still retained in memory.
  • Reply 8 of 53
    steve666steve666 Posts: 2,600member
    good info. Everything seems to be running pretty snappy so Im going to stay pat for now. I also dont want to have to install RAM right now because I have a loose screw in my iMac and I dont want to have to tip the sucker over to install any more.
  • Reply 9 of 53
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    while we're on the subject... where can i get reliable, "cheap" ram from a third party for the g5? also, will anything change with the rev. b's? i hear apple's prices are a bit high...
  • Reply 10 of 53
    chychchych Posts: 860member
    Hm, looking at top, I have 560MB active, all RAM used (1G) for caching, and currently running bunches of programs open (doing some programming stuff now), so I'd say 1G is good for most users who actually do stuff with computers. I think for the simple web/mail/word processing crowd, 256MB is usable, 512MB most needed. For the video/photoshop users, 1G+ is probably needed.
  • Reply 11 of 53
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    while we're on the subject... where can i get reliable, "cheap" ram from a third party for the g5?



    http://www.crucial.com



    http://www.ramjet.com
  • Reply 12 of 53
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Quote:



    Neither of those two are particularly cheap...



    One can go to http://www.newegg.com/ , http://zipzoomfly.com/ , etc. to get better RAM for less.
  • Reply 13 of 53
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Quote:



    Also Other World Computing http://www.macsales.com



    I have bought over 1000 dollars of RAM from the in the past and I have zero problems
  • Reply 14 of 53
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    I just got some of this in the mail and it is working great. $147 bucks too. I ran Tech Tool Pro to check the ram and fond nothing wrong.
  • Reply 15 of 53
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Brad

    Not overkill!!



    That means you can only run 4 apps with 2 GB each. Let the system give Photoshop a couple gigs, C4D a gig, Final Cut Pro a gig, etc. if you're a heavy heavy user and you could "easily" use up all that memory.









    Actually Photoshop only can use 1785MB of RAM, not even 2GB



    Final Cut Pro. Right now I can see it eats no more than 1 GB RAM.



    Cinema 4D..... in general rendering takes no more than 400MB. On the biggest scene I worked on....rendering takes roughly 1.1GB RAM. But this is no good because when the app eats up this much of RAM that means you are working on a overly big scene. You really need to break down the scenes to smaller chunks and render them separately and combined all the rendered clips together in After Effects. If not the app will just crrrrrraaaaaaasssssshhhhhhh.



    After Effects....there's one time I saw it going full 2GB (on my friend's G5). That's a NTSC resolution with over 15 layers doing RAM preview
  • Reply 16 of 53
    kennethkenneth Posts: 832member
    For the current Apple line-up (expect the G5).. I suggest you to MAX it out.



    For the G5.. if you can afford it.. feel free to drop 8GB of RAM in it.
  • Reply 17 of 53
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by ipodandimac

    while we're on the subject... where can i get reliable, "cheap" ram from a third party for the g5? also, will anything change with the rev. b's? i hear apple's prices are a bit high...



    www.dealram.com
  • Reply 18 of 53
    tfworldtfworld Posts: 181member
    Put as much as you can afford in it. This is always the best suggestion. 8)
  • Reply 19 of 53
    messiahtoshmessiahtosh Posts: 1,754member
    I just got my 256 Apple chip to install today, now I'll finally have 512 and it should help with the OS, DV editing, and everything else. Should I notice a big improvement going from 256 in OS X to 512?
  • Reply 20 of 53
    mattjohndrowmattjohndrow Posts: 1,618member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Messiahtosh

    I just got my 256 Apple chip to install today, now I'll finally have 512 and it should help with the OS, DV editing, and everything else. Should I notice a big improvement going from 256 in OS X to 512?



    u should notice a big improvement-OS X loves RAM!!!



    what computer do you have? i'm asking because my friend has a G5 and it originally had only 256 MB, and it was still plenty fast, then he got 1 GB put in, and, WOW
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