Paired RAM (2x512MB) or 1.25GB (256MB+1GB)

[Legacy]

Which would be better performing for decent use (iPhoto, iWeb, Garageband, iTunes, Adium, Safari, Firefox, Word, Dashboard widgets (x5-6), Skype, iChat running simultaneously.

 

[MRU]

The benefit of Dual Channel to the benefit of the extra 256 will probably balance each other out...

 

[ITASOR]

I would just go with the 2x 512MB. If you're like me, and it's ever slowing down from anything, you'll blame it on not getting paired RAM.

 

[jsw]

My philosophy is that RAM is always - always - much faster than disk, so the second you start swapping, you'll wish you had the extra RAM.

And the RAM/disk advantage far outweighs the matched/unmatched one.

So, for me, the 1.25GB is a no-brainer. And, of course, it's cheaper to upgrade it to 2GB at some point.

 

[Legacy]

My philosophy is that RAM is always - always - much faster than disk, so the second you start swapping, you'll wish you had the extra RAM.

And the RAM/disk advantage far outweighs the matched/unmatched one.

So, for me, the 1.25GB is a no-brainer. And, of course, it's cheaper to upgrade it to 2GB at some point.

I have 1GB with my iBook G4 and it feels okay, but I'm just worried 1GB won't be enough for a MacBook and 1.25 would make a difference , but I've heard people talking about Dual Channel benefits and I just wanted to know what would be the best thing to do..I can't afford to chuck out all the RAM and upgrade to 2GB lol

 

[jsw]

The thing is, you're losing 80MB to integrated graphics, and you're going to be running Rosetta for some things for the foreseeable future, and that'll easily eat up the rest of that extra 256MB, so I'd say 1.25GB on an MB is like 1GB on a PB.

And when I went from 1.5GB unmatched to 2GB matched on my Intel iMac, I saw no change (nothing noticeable without benchmarks, nothing at all) except beyond the point I'd've been swapping with the 1.5GB.

I'm sure matched has a performance benefit. It just can't touch the RAM/disk benefit.