Benefits of Matching DIMMs on a Rev a iMac G5?

[Redline13]

My parents have a rev. a iMac G5 with 256mb of ram. They are going to be installing tiger on it and and they are going to be upping the ram. According to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300082 there is a benefit of using matching DIMMs. How signifigant is this benefit in real world use? I was going to suggest to them that they buy a single gig stick but might it be better to purchase two sticks of 512? The drawback is that if a couple of years down the road they decide to max out the ram they will have to buy two single gig sticks instead of a just one.

 

[plinden]

My parents have a rev. a iMac G5 with 256mb of ram. They are going to be installing tiger on it and and they are going to be upping the ram. According to http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300082 there is a benefit of using matching DIMMs. How signifigant is this benefit in real world use? I was going to suggest to them that they buy a single gig stick but might it be better to purchase two sticks of 512? The drawback is that if a couple of years down the road they decide to max out the ram they will have to buy two single gig sticks instead of a just one.

Some benchmarks to help you decide:
http://www.barefeats.com/imacg5d.html

Basically, pure memory benchmarks show a considerable benefit, but little or no gain in real applications. His conclusion:

THE REAL WORLD VERDICT: AVERAGING 8 TESTS, NETS 0% GAIN FROM MATCHED PAIRS.
The gains or losses shown in each application above are within the "margin of error," as they say in the political polling biz. That's why we averaged the 8 tests. As you can see, zero gain overall by using matched pairs.

WHETHER PAIRS MATCH OR NOT, BUY AS MUCH MEMORY AS YOU CAN AFFORD
Whether you use one stick or two, matched pair or mis-matched, the more memory in your iMac G5, the less thrashing it has to do on the virtual memory hard drive scratch area. Did you know that just booting OS X gobbles up over 500MB? If you run apps like Photoshop and Motion, both are memory hungry. In fact, unless we had 1.25GB or more in the iMac G5, it would not render all 300 frames of our Motion template.

Since it comes with one 256MB DIMM, I suggest you add at least one 1GB DIMM. It should cost the same as two 512MB DIMMs (depending on who you buy from). Then later, when you can afford it, buy another 1GB DIMM and give away the 256MB DIMM to a local school or church who unwittingly bought their iMac G5s with minimum factory configuration.

 

[Redline13]

Awsome. Thanks.