RAM questions, 4*512 or 2*1024?

copsecopse
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Ok, first off, im not a mac user, but im planning on a switch when the g5 rev_B comes out! I´ve read some threads here and on other forums, and people always seem to have huge amout of ram. On windows-computers 512mb is more than enough, if you´re not into 3d-rendering and so on. Is OS X more hungry for RAM to run smooth compared to windows?



Second, should I get 4*512mb ram or 2*1024? are there any speed difference with those two setups? Im planning on a 2x2ghz g5, but we´ll se what´s up later on, with the release of the new g5.



/Copse

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    ipodandimacipodandimac Posts: 3,273member
    i'm not really an expert, but i believe windows and OS X are both ram hogs. yes, you should have lots of ram. technically i think 4 512's vs. 2 1GB should produce the same result, but i dunno--thats one of those things that almost sounds too good to be true (since the prices are so different). hopefully someone else who knows more can help you out more than this.
  • Reply 2 of 13
    billybobskybillybobsky Posts: 1,914member
    the 2X1GB are probably very very slightly faster simply because there is one less ram location that has to be accessed in the rare event that the data needed for one program is found on two chips. The main issue here is later expandability, assuming they dont come out with 2GB chips any time soon (ie the cost doesnt come down to near earth orbit), you are not going to want to replace 4 512 MB chips with 4 1 GB chips when you do attempt to max out the ram in your computer and alas that is always something that should be done before the old boy is retired.
  • Reply 3 of 13
    the pie manthe pie man Posts: 425member
    I second BillyBobSky. If you can afford it, might as well go with 2 sticks. Here is a nice little write-up on RAM and timing/latency (aimed towards the overclocker market, but the info is still valid for Macs).



    http://www.tomshardware.com/howto/20030701/index.html



    Page through that and you will find a section which describes 1 stick being faster than 2 (which you can extrapolate to 2 sticks being faster than 4 - most of PC motherboards will only take 3 sticks).
  • Reply 4 of 13
    smithjoelsmithjoel Posts: 240member
    OS X isn?t going to magically eat all of your RAM. Unless you have a lot of money to through at this, I?d get either 1*1GB or 2*512MB. You still double what you have now and can go to 2-3GB latter on when it?s cheaper and you really need it.
  • Reply 5 of 13
    baumanbauman Posts: 1,248member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by smithjoel

    OS X isn?t going to magically eat all of your RAM. Unless you have a lot of money to through at this, I?d get either 1*1GB or 2*512MB. You still double what you have now and can go to 2-3GB latter on when it?s cheaper and you really need it.



    In fact, 512MB is plenty for OS X and your standard apps. Unless you are doing some massive Photoshopping or something along those lines, you might want to reconsider getting that much RAM.
  • Reply 6 of 13
    smalmsmalm Posts: 677member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bauman

    In fact, 512MB is plenty for OS X and your standard apps. Unless you are doing some massive Photoshopping or something along those lines, you might want to reconsider getting that much RAM.



    There is a difference: 2* 1GB DIMMs will make a bigger hole in your wallet



    OS X IS faster with 1GB than with 512MB. But normally it's not a big difference. Some applications like Photoshop see a real boost with more memory - let's talk about 4GB

    If your Rev. B has 8 memory slots buy 2*512MB. If it has only 4 slots buy 2*512MB as well.
  • Reply 7 of 13
    fluffyfluffy Posts: 361member
    Well you're already going to have 2x256, so just add another 2x512 and you'll have 1.5GB of RAM, more than enough for pretty much anything. At that price level an extra $175 isn't going to break the bank and will provide a nice speed boost over the stock 512.
  • Reply 8 of 13
    nguyenhm16nguyenhm16 Posts: 203member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bauman

    In fact, 512MB is plenty for OS X and your standard apps. Unless you are doing some massive Photoshopping or something along those lines, you might want to reconsider getting that much RAM.



    512MB is right on the knife edge of not enough. I can hear it paging memory to disk and what not with just a few programs running (Word, Camino, Watson, Mail, iTunes, AIM, etc.). Load up something like the UT2K4 demo and it pages like crazy. 1GB runs a lot smoother.
  • Reply 9 of 13
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    In my opinion, Windows XP isn't usable with less than 256MB of RAM. Not much different than OS X, except that the Mac gets all sorts of eye candy. (and I, for one, like candy)



    I have a gig in my powerbook. I actually do a lot of 3D modeling on it. For Rendering, you don't need so much. The default allocation for EI Camera (rendering app) is 128MB. I cranked it up to 256MB. So 512MB is certainly enough to do quality 3D rendering. Photoshop is the real RAM hog, since big raster images can gobble up lots of RAM. If you store the images in RAM as opposed to on the disk (photoshop will do this if it sees enough RAM) you get HUGE performance gains. The ACIS models I work on rarely get larger than 6MB. A poorly built (ie subdivided) model will get huge, but if you stick to polys and splines everything is nice and fast.



    A lot of people on this forum do a lot of PS work. Hence a lot of people have a lot of RAM.



    Quote:

    512MB is right on the knife edge of not enough. I can hear it paging memory to disk and what not with just a few programs running (Word, Camino, Watson, Mail, iTunes, AIM, etc.). Load up something like the UT2K4 demo and it pages like crazy. 1GB runs a lot smoother.



    It will page no matter what, since there's protected memory and the VM system will do that. I also have a TiBook 500 with 384MB of RAM that does OS X very nicely.
  • Reply 10 of 13
    nguyenhm16nguyenhm16 Posts: 203member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Splinemodel

    It will page no matter what, since there's protected memory and the VM system will do that. I also have a TiBook 500 with 384MB of RAM that does OS X very nicely.



    Actually, no. The OS will not discard pages until it has to. Try running a 'vm_stat 5' from the terminal, and you will see. Though it seems WinXP will hit the disk for no reason no matter how much RAM you have (I have a 1GB RAM PC, it seems to hit the disk for everything).
  • Reply 11 of 13
    ast3r3xast3r3x Posts: 5,012member
    512MB isn't enough for Illustator, AIM, and iTunes...or maybe it's my 1.25Ghz PBook...man I need a G5 \
  • Reply 12 of 13
    leonisleonis Posts: 3,427member
    In general. All Adobe apps are RAM hog
  • Reply 13 of 13
    amorphamorph Posts: 7,112member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Copse

    Ok, first off, im not a mac user, but im planning on a switch when the g5 rev_B comes out! Ive read some threads here and on other forums, and people always seem to have huge amout of ram.



    One thing I haven't seen mentioned yet in this thread: The G5 architecture has a huge amount of bandwidth, which means that the more RAM you add, the faster it gets - almost linearly, if you're actually using apps that require the RAM. In tandem with that, OS X caches everything that it can in RAM for as long as possible, so the more RAM you have, the less OS X ever has to access the hard drive, and the faster everything goes.



    512MB will get you by just fine, but if you really want to see that G5 fly, throw in as much RAM as you can.
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