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Worth Jumping to 2gig of Ram?

alienmac

alienmac

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 22, 2006
31
0
San Diego
I own a Powerbook 1.67GHz currently with 1 gig of Ram. I am wondering if 2gig will make my laptop "snappier". What I mean by that is, panels and applications opening faster. An all around quicker feel I guess. I just feel like there is a slight pause after every command. Is this slight pause a "mac" thing?

Does anybody here have 1st hand experience going from 1gig to 2gig's?
I do have the 7200 rpm harddrive, I use Photoshop and Flash. No games or Video Editing. If you guys think its a somewhat noticeable difference, I will head out and buy it today.
 
that much ram only makes things quicker that are opening for a second time.

check with the activity moniter on the ram usage youve got at the moment, if it fills out, buy a new stick
 
HGW said:
that much ram only makes things quicker that are opening for a second time.

check with the activity moniter on the ram usage youve got at the moment, if it fills out, buy a new stick
Click to expand...

Where can I find the activity moniter? I'm having trouble locating it.
 
alienmac said:
I own a Powerbook 1.67GHz currently with 1 gig of Ram. I am wondering if 2gig will make my laptop "snappier". What I mean by that is, panels and applications opening faster. An all around quicker feel I guess. I just feel like there is a slight pause after every command. Is this slight pause a "mac" thing?

Does anybody here have 1st hand experience going from 1gig to 2gig's?
I do have the 7200 rpm harddrive, I use Photoshop and Flash. No games or Video Editing. If you guys think its a somewhat noticeable difference, I will head out and buy it today.
Click to expand...

Photoshop & flash are both ram hOgZ :p so yea, bumpin/maxin da ram WILL make a big difference, as will having a 7200rpm HDD. But if you can, get an external Firewire HDD to use as a PS Scratch disk ( and set your prefs to use it), it would help even more......

And no, the pause is not a mac thing per se, just an unfortunate side effect of ever increasing memory demands of both applications and the OS as well. Are you running 10.4.7 ? And have you done any routine maintenance ?

Not too long ago, I went from 1 GB to 2GB in my sawtooth DP/450 and it made a world of difference in everything, especially PS, but then again, I run everything from 3x SATA Raptor HDDs too....... :D
 
I went from 1GB to 2GB on my MBP, and it was totally worth it. I'm not sure that my experience applies to you though. I find it helps the most when using PPC apps because Rosetta is such a resource hog. If you find that you tend to leave lots of applications open, and switch between them rather than closing and opening them, you might find it's worth it.

Not sure if this helps, but that's what I have found.
 
When I went from 1GB -> 2GB of RAM in my 2.3GHz DP Power Mac G5 I thought that I noticed a decent increase in speed/the snappiness of the machine. :)
 
buffalo said:
Where can I find the activity moniter? I'm having trouble locating it.
Click to expand...


the location was given above,

but just a easy tip to remember. if you are having trouble finding anything, simply open up spotlight ( cmd + spacebar ) and type in what you are looking for, it will located it for you, and even show you where it is :)

oh and yes, you will notice a difference in photoshop. i upgraded from 1Gb to 2Gb on my previous powerbook, and i certainly felt a difference.

im going to get a second 1Gb stick for my current PB. i only wish i had a 7200rpm drive like you ;)
 
AGoglanian said:
the location was given above,

but just a easy tip to remember. if you are having trouble finding anything, simply open up spotlight ( cmd + spacebar ) and type in what you are looking for, it will located it for you, and even show you where it is :)
Click to expand...

Dang- forgot about the usefulness of Spotlight. Thanks!

It says I have 173mb free memory with AIM, Mail, Safari, and the Activity Moniter open. Is it finally time to stick more than the stock 512 RAM in my G5 iMac.
 
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