OT: Does a memory upgrade 512MB->1GB make sense for OS X?

[schlesi]

Hi,

I'm owning a "Titanium" Powerbook with 512MB RAM. I'm thinking about ugrading memory from 512MB to 1GB, but I don't know, if it makes sense.

On a typical session, top says me average 50MB-90MB free memory (I don't make big Photoshop-Images or video-editing or something like that).

Does OS X (Panther) benefit from more memory (e. g. better GUI responsiveness, lesser beach-balls) under this circumstances or is it "burned money"?

What do you think? Or better: did you make experiences with RAM upgrade 512MB->1GB?

Thomas

[Black Morty Rackham]

OSX is pretty agressive in its memory managment and won't kick something out of the memory until it needs to, so the more the merrier, basically.

[DrACoNuS]

I have 640MB in my iBook and OSX is very responsive I even use final cut pro and photoshop play quake and baldurs gate II. I always have at least 5 or 10 apps open and I never notice significant slowdown I find the mach kernel scales very well for multitasking. I am however primarily booted into gentoo so 640MB of ram is overkill unless im compiling hehe.

You should realize that OSX has a lot of comonly accessed services/data loaded into that used up ram so even tho you might have less than 100MB of ram free you are actually benefiting from faster load times for applications and other OS related features.

You mentioned you dont use photoshop or do any video editing and in my opinion unless you are using multiple intensive apps, we're talking photoshop elements final cut macromedia shit.. then 1gig of ram is not required. Also remember that adding more hardware will cut into your battery life a bit too, not significantly but it remains a factor.

So unless you are noticing some pretty serious system lag (and some of it could be CPU related) then 1gig isnt going to benefit you at all.
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[Evinyatar]

I have a G4 400MHz that used to have 448MB RAM, and then I bought a PowerBook G4 1GHz with 512MB RAM. I recently got rid of my old PC and moved its 512MB RAM into the G4 to replace two 64MB modules there, so now it's got 832MB RAM, and I swear, in many things it's faster than the PowerBook now. I always keep a link to the Applications folder in the Dock and even just opening that in a contextual menu is faster on the PowerMac than it is on my TiBook. RAM really *does* make a huge difference in MacOS X. Now I'm planning on swapping out my two 256MB modules for two 512MB modules.

[schlesi]

Hi all,

thank you for your comments.

I've ordered my 2x512MB SDRAMs a few minutes ago

Thomas