iMac RAM configuration - Which Should I Buy?

[tharden3]

Hey Mac Community,

I am purchasing an iMac and I was not sure if the price difference between these two types of RAM was justified for what I would get out of it. Basically, I start with 4GB of RAM, but would like to upgrade to 8GB. They give me two options:

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 4x2GB [Add $200.00]

8GB 1066MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB [Add $600.00]

Would I get $400 more in performance for having two 4GB RAMs as apposed to having four 2GB RAMs?

Kind regards,
Tim

 

[Hellhammer]

Buy it with the stock 4GB RAM and upgrade to 8GB yourself. 2x2GB costs ~100$ from 3rd party and installing it is super easy and doesn't void your warranty.

Only difference between 2x4GB and 4x2GB is that with 2x4GB you still have 2 free slots so if you are planning to upgrade it to 16GB, you probably want to buy 2x4GB from 3rd party so you would have 12GB.

 

[Bennieboy©]

bang for buck, dont buy your ram from apple, the upgrade is very simple and you can find guides Here and on google, buy the ram from OWC or crucial

 

[IndustrialSpace]

$200 for factory install of 4 extra gigs is not expensive when you compare purchasing it 3rd party and doing the installation. I'd save the hassle and buy it from Apple.

Although, I think its ridiculous for Apple to ask for $400 more to have a 2x4 configuration with the same 8 Gigs. Outrageous!!!

 

[TMRaven]

You'd forego 100 usd just to avoid unscrewing 2-3 screws?

 

[Norskman]

Newegg.com has great prices on Apple RAM and the sticks work well in the new iMacs as well. It's a super simple upgrade so I would save the $100 and buy it third party.

 

[Hellhammer]

$200 for factory install of 4 extra gigs is not expensive when you compare purchasing it 3rd party and doing the installation. I'd save the hassle and buy it from Apple.

You can easily save 100$ and do it yourself. There are three screws that needs to be removed, that's all. See OWC tutorial here!

 

[seveej]

4 or 8

I bought my 27" i7 with the basic 4 gigs thinking I'd upgrade later. Now, 6 weeks into the experience I wonder wheher to bother, which makes me wonder.
I'm a chronic multitasker and I rarely close a program but naturally the main drain are PS CS4, aperture and bridge. Always keeping an eye on memory usage it seems there' always at least a few hundred megs (most of the time significantly more) to spare. Weird.

Is osx agressively pre-emptively freeing ram by writing it's contents to the disk or what? Thenagain I'm not experiencing the tell-tale lag.

Is there a permormance gain to be expected by upgrading to 8 gigs?

TIA,Rgds
Pekka

 

[Hellhammer]

I bought my 27" i7 with the basic 4 gigs thinking I'd upgrade later. Now, 6 weeks into the experience I wonder wheher to bother, which makes me wonder.
I'm a chronic multitasker and I rarely close a program but naturally the main drain are PS CS4, aperture and bridge. Always keeping an eye on memory usage it seems there' always at least a few hundred megs (most of the time significantly more) to spare. Weird.

Is osx agressively pre-emptively freeing ram by writing it's contents to the disk or what? Thenagain I'm not experiencing the tell-tale lag.

Is there a permormance gain to be expected by upgrading to 8 gigs?

TIA,Rgds
Pekka

If you have no slowdowns, then you probably won't see much difference. If you just have them open without any projects going on, they don't use much RAM.

Up to you, it's only 100$ but if you are fine with the current setup, why to upgrade?