"Worth" dropping this RAM in my Mini?

[TraceyS/FL]

OK, coming from a 3gb MBP to the poor old 1.83 1gb Mini is well, um, pulling a lot of g's

I just realized i have the Apple 1gb that came in my laptop - would it be worth it for now to drop that in the mini and run 1.5 until i can order another 1gb chip?

It's a pain to install right? I'm not afraid of the process - i've been adding RAM to computers since my Mac SE, but if it's a royal pain would i be better off waiting?

It's basically just going to be recording EyeTV. I'm apt to do the editing on the MBP - but maybe not always. But no constant surfing, no iTunes, no mail - basically, recording TV.

In the priority scale, the $27 for the other chip is WAYYYY down on my list. I need another FW drive first, and a ton of DVDs - oh and $2800 to the dentist for 2 crowns and 3 fillings (but hey, i have great teeth he says).

So basically, the $27 is a hardship right now, and will be for a few months probably. With that knowledge - do i do it now???

Thanks for the input....

Oh, i just launched Activity Monitor, i'm running about 298mb free on it while recording. So i would have more free...

 

[fhall1]

I guess I'm not understanding the math...you have a 1G mini and you said you have the 1G that came in your laptop....if you drop that in the mini, isn't that 2G?

Anyway....yes...1.5G is better than 1G...and it's not THAT big a job to open the mini...make sure you watch some of the online videos and have your sharpened putty knife in hand...it should take all of 15 minutes.

 

[TraceyS/FL]

I took the 1gb out of the laptop to drop a 2gb in to bring it to 3.

I"m assuming the 1gb mini has 2 512mb in it, so when i pull one to drop this in i'd be at 1.5gb.

I think i'll give it a whirl - the cushion will be nice to have in case i need to use it for something else.

 

[iGrant]

OK, coming from a 3gb MBP to the poor old 1.83 1gb Mini is well, um, pulling a lot of g's

I just realized i have the Apple 1gb that came in my laptop - would it be worth it for now to drop that in the mini and run 1.5 until i can order another 1gb chip?

It's a pain to install right? I'm not afraid of the process - i've been adding RAM to computers since my Mac SE, but if it's a royal pain would i be better off waiting?

It's basically just going to be recording EyeTV. I'm apt to do the editing on the MBP - but maybe not always. But no constant surfing, no iTunes, no mail - basically, recording TV.

In the priority scale, the $27 for the other chip is WAYYYY down on my list. I need another FW drive first, and a ton of DVDs - oh and $2800 to the dentist for 2 crowns and 3 fillings (but hey, i have great teeth he says).

So basically, the $27 is a hardship right now, and will be for a few months probably. With that knowledge - do i do it now???

Thanks for the input....

Oh, i just launched Activity Monitor, i'm running about 298mb free on it while recording. So i would have more free...

EyeTV does not use that much, its mostly uses the CPU and Disk depending on the Elgato hardware you have. If you have the EyeTV Hybrid then your Mac Mini's CPU is doing the encoding where as if you have the Elgato EyeTV 200 or 250, the Elgato hardware is does the encoding for you.

1.5 vs 1 is not going to be a tremendous difference, I would wait till you can max out the ram.

Also if you do have the EyeTV Hybrid, I would highly recommend you consider the EyeTV 200 or 250, it will work much better.

-iGrant

 

[TraceyS/FL]

I have the 250+ and am getting ready to buy a 2nd one to record on the MBP over the school year. ONly hardware encoding here!

The other part is that i probably don't have the down time to do the upgrade until Christmas looking at my recording schedule (which, i'm trying to ignore) - well, i have 5 hours free on Sunday morning. But i'm sure that will involve moving files off that drive to another to edit......

I'll probably still go ahead and do it right now - i have till Saturday to decide!

 

[Muncher]

Just give it a shot. What could possibly go wrong?*


*Murphy's Law - What can go wrong, will go wrong

 

[richardhunt]

I'm of the opinion, if you are eventually going to go to 3GB's then wait until then. The performace gain from the extra 512MB is somewhat lost due to the system no longer running in dual channel mode. If you were going to 2GB I'd say do it, but just to swap 1 SODimm, I would hold out.

 

[Muncher]

The performace gain from the extra 512MB is somewhat lost due to the system no longer running in dual channel mode.

Umm... I disagree. The loss of dual channel is more than compensated for by reduced page-outs. The 512Mb will make a big difference when running three or more apps.