[lowrightor]

Long time Mac guy (pizza box 6100 was my first) - first time poster.

I have a reliable old G3 (350mhz) tower running the latest version of Panther. It's been great but as soon as I saw the new G5 iMac I knew it was time for an upgrade. I think I actually said "Holy S***" out loud to myself when I spotted it on Apple.com on my weekly check.

I'm going for the base model 1.6 ghz and the most intense thing I do on my computer is run Photoshop doing web development. No DVD burning, no video editing, no super intense stuff.

I have 256 RAM on my tower right now so I know I'm going with at least 512. I understand from searching (yes, I did that before posting) that getting two 256 chips MIGHT make my system quicker than just getting one 512 slot and leaving room for another 512. I would like the option of upgrading* to one gig of memory if the 512 isn't cutting it anymore. Crucial.com seems to be a popular place to get non-Apple RAM.

So what do you think I should do?

* Too bad the graphics card is not upgradable. I don't want this thread to turn into another one about the graphics card because there are plenty of threads already dedicated to that. My opinion: I would love to play the next generation of games on my iMac and was saddened to discover that for real gaming performance on a Mac I need a PowerMac. I'm unsure about the fact that my base iMac 1.6 ghz with a better graphics card could actually run next generation games better but I digress. I guess I will just get a next generation console system if I really want to play games. I always loved the quality of picture, graphics card, and the precise controls playing ony my computer. Hopefully the console systems will meet my standards. The selection of Mac games was never very good anyway.

[PBG4 User]

First off, there are only 2 RAM slots in the G5 iMac. So if you get a 256MB to match the original 256MB, you can't upgrade from there without throwing away RAM. This is something you should think long and hard about so you make the correct decision the first time.

You could buy a 512MB stick for a total of 768MB. Then if you decide to upgrade from there, you can replace the stock 256 with either a 512 (for a total of 1GB) or a 1GB stick (for a total of 1.5GB).

Personally I just went ahead and upped my iMac to 2GB RAM. Cost was $330 shipped at Newegg. This is the RAM I bought for my iMac G5. So far I'm satisfied and Newegg has a good reputation so I had no qualms buying from there. I am not in any way affiliated with Newegg, I'm just happy with their great RAM prices.

[lowrightor]

Not sure if I should get the $75 upgrade to get one 512 dimm from Apple leaving room for another from Crucial in the future OR just have it shipped with the 256 and adding one 512 from Crucial for a total of 768 RAM for $99. I guess either way I'm not taking advantage of the still untested advantages of pairing them.

[PBG4 User]

Save your money and don't buy RAM from Apple. Then when you buy more RAM, buy matched pairs if you want to activate the 128 bit buss. What this means to real-world performance I have no idea. But, there have been benchmark results bandied about showing memory throughput increasing by 30+% with the 128 bit buss compared to the 64 bit buss. Again, how that translates into real-world performance is anyone's guess but I know that any amount of RAM over the original 256MB will give you a performance boost.