any update on the 512 mb matched, or add 1 gb debate?

[tivoboy]

Does anyone know if there have been further tests to test whether adding a 512 mb MATCHED stick to the intel imac, is better from a performance standpoint than simply adding a 1 gb UNMATCHED stick?

I am about to buy some RAM, don't really NEED 1.5 gb total, but if 512 mb showed a performance boost, then it might add up.

 

[AJBMatrix]

What are your computer specs first. I need to know what your computer is and mainly what the FSB speed is to tell you what type of benefit you will recieve from the Dual Channel or not. Slower FSB with faster RAM such as the PB G4 and the iMac G5 would benefit from more RAM than the Faster RAM considering that the FSB is slower than the RAM that is not in Dual Channel Mode. But if you are getting or have a Power Mac or MacBook Pro you will benifit from the Dual Channel because of the Faster FSB. The RAM not in Dual Channel is still faster than the FSB but not by much. You want a fair amount of buffer there to keep you ahead of the FSB. The whole idea is to cut down on the bottlenecks in the computing process. So you would not have a RAM bottleneck on Dual Channel Mode but if you have less RAM you may have a bottleneck on the Virtual Memory and this is much slower than the RAM bottle neck. I would suggest 1.5 or 2 in Dual Channel.

 

[topgunn]

He said he had an Intel iMac in the first line of his post.

Dual channel is not going to make a difference in real world applications on the iMac. On the other hand, Rosetta performs much better with more RAM than you would think you would need otherwise. Once everything is running native on the Intel iMacs, 1GB will be plenty for most people but 1.5GB would be better in the meantime.

 

[CanadaRAM]

1.5Gb unmatched trumps 1.0 Gb matched.

 

[AJBMatrix]

Sorry that I did not see the part that you had written that says Intel iMac. So I revise my statement. You will see a better performance with Matched that unmatched but you will see better performance with 1.5 than 1.0 So I would go with the 1.5. But I personally would just upgrade all the way to 2.0 Matched and call it complete in every possible way.

 

[nospleen]

Hello, not to hi jack the thread, but I have a quick question. If you order the new imac with the stock ram, can you remove the 512 and upgrade to 2gb's? Or, are you stuck with 1.5 as the max option. Basically, is the factory 512 removable?

 

[Todd H]

Yes, it is removable.

 

[nospleen]

Yes, it is removable.

Thanks!