The only reason the iMac and iBook use PC133 RAM is because it's cheaper for Apple to make one large order of PC133 RAM (which will work with all Macs) than it is to make two smaller, seperate orders of PC100 and PC133 RAM. The PC133 RAM installed in iMacs and iBooks just runs underclocked and is no faster or slower than PC100 RAM would be on the same systems.
BTW, does anyone know why the new iMac has one desktop sized RAM slot and one laptop sized RAM slot? If there isn't room for two desktop slots, why didn't they just use two laptop slots? Although mixing these standards makes no difference in cost or performance, it just sounds like sloppy engineering. I think it has some negitive impact because it confuses people and limits some of their options when upgrading. Oh well, no computer is perfect (except the new TiBooks )
desktop ram is cheaper...if apple saves 20 bucks for each iMac they sell by using desktop ram instead of so-dimm portable sized ram and they sell 1 million iMacs....thats like 100 billion dollars saved ....anyway, apple left space in the iMac design for them to use the cheap ram, and then saved space again by forcing the consumer to up-grade with the more expensive, smaller ram...not too nice, but not too awful either...g
The reason a lack of ram makes a computer run slow in the simplest terms I can think of is: All of your programs and everything runs from your RAM if you dont hav enough RAM your comptuer swaps what tasks your not using and swaps them to your hard drive. This takes time and you will get a spinning beach ball of death. Using OS X for quite a few years now I would suggest getting the max amount of ram possible. I have 1 gig of ram and I still use all but 15 meg of it now and again.
d'oh, that's right. i had the two chips *** backwards.
yeah, the laptop one is easy. i had pics in another thread of my iMac taken apart, shows the memory. not sure where that thread is now, but oh well. the link to the guide i found online. if i find my copy, i'll e-mail it to those interested. on second thought, it's at least 20 MB, i'll just post it to my website so people could download it.
also, on the last revision of TiBooks, if you had pc100 RAM in there, even though that's the bus speed, instead of PC133, it wouldn't work.
-alcimedes
here are links to imgaes of the guts when i took mine apart.
Comments
roger
yeah, the laptop one is easy. i had pics in another thread of my iMac taken apart, shows the memory. not sure where that thread is now, but oh well. the link to the guide i found online. if i find my copy, i'll e-mail it to those interested. on second thought, it's at least 20 MB, i'll just post it to my website so people could download it.
also, on the last revision of TiBooks, if you had pc100 RAM in there, even though that's the bus speed, instead of PC133, it wouldn't work.
-alcimedes
here are links to imgaes of the guts when i took mine apart.
<a href="http://www.alcimedes.com/imac_shell.jpg"; target="_blank">Shell and just a peek inside.</a>
<a href="http://www.alcimedes.com/imac_guts.jpg"; target="_blank">The guts. (large image)</a>
it might be tough to see, but the processor and heat exchange bar are on the right hand side there.
[ 05-28-2002: Message edited by: alcimedes ]</p>