[Daniel Wessel]

Ok. I've been running this whole time with 512Mb (shh... head in shame), but that was fine since I was only running iTunes, Firefox, M$, iChat, some gaming, etc.

but I finally installed iLife 05 and made my first iDVD and noticed that I did end up using all of my RAM.

so time to buy DDR2700 RAM.

question: I have four slots. One slot is occupied with a single 512 DRAM.
Can I just buy (2) 1Gb sticks from dealram? and end up with 2.5Gb?
Apple says the machine maxes at 2Gb. Logic board restriction? or available ram at the time.

will she do 4Gb Captain?

[SSharon]

Crucial also says 2gb max, but I am not convinced.
I would just get 2x512 or now. You will see a nice boost with that.

[tooki]

The maximum RAM on all G4 machines is 2GB because of how the memory addressing works (maximum 1.5GB addressable under Mac OS 9). Any more that's installed will simply be ignored.

tooki

[Daniel Wessel]

so 512mb sticks it is? or can it handle 1Gb sticks?

what about pairing?

so get another (1) 512 to match the one currently in the machine?

then (1) 1Gb stick?

or just fill out the four slots with 512s?

[Kenneth]

I would put four 512MB DDR 333Mhz RAMs on it.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by chichow

what about pairing?

so get another (1) 512 to match the one currently in the machine?

then (1) 1Gb stick?

or just fill out the four slots with 512s?

Pairing doesn't matter on the G4s. As to your options there, I would just go with whichever was cheapest (probably the four 512 MB sticks).

[Daniel Wessel]

Thanks!

[spittingangels]

The 4 512MB sticks would be cheaper for you dollars wise. Honestly though, you will see the biggest performance boost going from 512 to 1GB, than from 1GB to 2GB of RAM.

OS X just loves 1GB of RAM. 2GB just give you more headroom as far as how much more or less your Mac will have to transfer apps in and out of paged memory on the hard drive.