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The 512MB RAM Club

C

civilizedrat

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 20, 2007
103
0
So, having spent a lot on my new (yet to be delivered) refurb MacBook 1.83Ghz and its accessories (bag, router, nano etc.) I'm broke and left with no money for immediate RAM upgrade. So, being temporarily (or indefinitely) stuck with 512MB RAM, I'd like to know if (by not having 1.25/2GB RAM) the performance will be as bad as people have suggested it is. Will the computer really be incapacitated WITHOUT the upgrade? I mean, is it immediately imperative? Will there be constant freezing, slowing down when just playing iTunes and browsing etc. Surely there must be people who haven't yet upgraded RAM. Who hasn't and what's the performance like?

Please console my empty pockets.:p

Thanks a lot guys.
 
512mb is fine... just dont expect it to do much with ppc apps. Its always best to have as much ram as your computer holds. General use of your MB wont push it (iTunes/Safari/Mail) so you'll be fine. In the time being, just save up money till you can get 1Gb +
 
you'll get along fine. just don't push it too hard or you'll start seeing a lot of beachballs. OS X multitasks better with more RAM and Rosetta likes it too. but you'll be fine.
 
like others said, you'll be fine until you're able to upgrade.

FYI, RAM prices have been coming down dramatically over the past few months. people have been posting about 1GB sticks for as low as $30. you might be able to afford more than you think.
 
You'll do fine right now I'm in the 128meg club.
amd 1.2g GPU, 128meg of ram, 30 gig H 7200 rpm, 32meg graphics card, 17" monitor, back in the day this thing was a screamer.
 
wildthing1994 said:
You'll do fine right now I'm in the 128meg club.
amd 1.2g GPU, 128meg of ram, 30 gig H 7200 rpm, 32meg graphics card, 17" monitor, back in the day this thing was a screamer.
Click to expand...

Omfg lol.. although my dad probly has 98% of people on this site beat, he has a P2 (MMX!!!) 400 mhz with some ati rage card and 128 megs of ram, with a whole 7 gigs of hard drive space
 
pianoman said:
FYI, RAM prices have been coming down dramatically over the past few months. people have been posting about 1GB sticks for as low as $30. you might be able to afford more than you think.
Click to expand...

Really?! I just looked at Crucial and 1 gig for my G4 Powerbook is still over 100. Where are they as low as 30? (I'm at 768 megs and I'm beachballin' all the time.)
 
sam10685 said:
Really?! I just looked at Crucial and 1 gig for my G4 Powerbook is still over 100. Where are they as low as 30? (I'm at 768 megs and I'm beachballin' all the time.)
Click to expand...

not sure about PB RAM. i was referring to this thread. it was for that day only but still reflects the low prices.

a search at newegg produced these results:
1GB stick for MBP for as low as $50
1GB stick for PB for $80

OWC also has some <$100 results.
 
I was stuck with 512mb on my iMac G5 2.1Ghz for quite awhile and honestly it was "slower" (in general tasks) than my Powermac G4 DP1.42 was with 1024mb.

After I upgraded to 1.5gb the change in general system responsiveness and overall speed was immense.

That said, when I had 512mb it wasn't exactly a horrible user experience; just had a lot to gain.
 
f1400 said:
Omfg lol.. although my dad probly has 98% of people on this site beat, he has a P2 (MMX!!!) 400 mhz with some ati rage card and 128 megs of ram, with a whole 7 gigs of hard drive space
Click to expand...

A good friend of mine has a P60 with 32meg running Windows 95, been in daily use since 1995, still works.

No, I don't know how he stands it either, but he seems fine with it and IE5.5 ...
 
Episteme said:
A good friend of mine has a P60 with 32meg running Windows 95, been in daily use since 1995, still works.

No, I don't know how he stands it either, but he seems fine with it and IE5.5 ...
Click to expand...

Ouch. I'm sure you can find for nothing anywhere a PentiumIII based machine that would be 10x faster.

The guy must ENJOY pain.
 
I have the CD MacBook 1.83GHz with 512MB RAM. It's fine. Slow with Office open, but CS3 runs ok.

I'm ordering 2Gb RAM tomorrow though, so my time in the club will be shortlived. :D
 
It just means when you break the 1GB boundary it'll feel like you've just bought a new laptop for hardly any money (in comparison to buying a full new laptop).
 
I'm excited about breaking away from my 512 mb. Rosetta is the only place I really have any problems ... but since I just got Adobe CS2 and my school has us do a ton of stuff in MS Office format ... (Office 2004).
 
if anyone in canada is looking for a deal on macbook ram, ncix has 1gb corsair mac ram for $59.99 each right now. I just ordered my pair as well as a 120gb seagate momentus hard drive.
 
pianoman said:
like others said, you'll be fine until you're able to upgrade.

FYI, RAM prices have been coming down dramatically over the past few months. people have been posting about 1GB sticks for as low as $30. you might be able to afford more than you think.
Click to expand...

jaw drops

WHERe???
 
ReanimationLP said:
Ouch. I'm sure you can find for nothing anywhere a PentiumIII based machine that would be 10x faster.

The guy must ENJOY pain.
Click to expand...

It's not his only machine -- he has a P3 700 he uses for Photoshop (v3 on '98 tho!) and a P2 233 that he uses for printing...

But every day, that ol' P60 gets fired up. Hasn't even been reinstalled since he got it in 1995! I don't get it...

Same guy used to own an Apple ][ with a 2xxx serial #. Had an early Mac (the original 128K model) too...
 
512MB right here. I'd love a gig but I don't see the point really as this machine is soon to be retired in favour of a C2D MacBook. Why spend £50 on RAM when I can spend £750 and get a whole new machine that just so happens to be twice as good as this one? :D
 
Press... one one thousand... two one thousand... quack

I've been running my MacBook half empty (ie. 512MB RAM) for just under a year now, and although it's not had too many protracted beachball appearances, it doesn't seem to 'zip'. A good example would be when I press the volume up/down/mute keys. It takes 2(ish) seconds before I hear the feedback 'quack' and the screen overlay appears. It bugs me when my phone rings while I'm playing music in iTunes and I try to turn the MB volume down - it seems to take ages, and because of my repeated tapping, once it does respond, the volume shoots down to zero!

I wonder if 1GB+ would improve this reaction time?
 
RichyHo said:
I've been running my MacBook half empty (ie. 512MB RAM) for just under a year now, and although it's not had too many protracted beachball appearances, it doesn't seem to 'zip'. A good example would be when I press the volume up/down/mute keys. It takes 2(ish) seconds before I hear the feedback 'quack' and the screen overlay appears. It bugs me when my phone rings while I'm playing music in iTunes and I try to turn the MB volume down - it seems to take ages, and because of my repeated tapping, once it does respond, the volume shoots down to zero!

I wonder if 1GB+ would improve this reaction time?
Click to expand...



Mine does exactly the same, it's quite annoying, especially after using memory intensive tasks. I've ordered 2Gb RAM this morning so I'll let you know once I get it and install it!:)
 
It's time for me to leave the club I'm afraid, I'm now in the 2Gb club. *runs off to update sig*





P.S. I'll post in a couple of days on the whole delay with the sound control keys, but so far there's been no delay.
 

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I bought my entry level CD Macbook last September, and just this afternoon decided that I finally need to upgrade my RAM.

Don't sweat it. 512 is a lot better than people let on.
 
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