[KenDallas]

Hello everyone...

I have a 15" 1.67 Powerbook with 1GB Ram (2x512). I have read many posts where people notice a significant performance improvement going from 512mb to 1gb, does this hold true for people going from 1gb to say 2gb?

I wouldn't be opposed to doubling the RAM in my Powerbook and selling the 2 512mb sticks on eBay if having the additional RAM would significantly improve performance.

Thanks,
Ken.

[Lateralus]

What applications do you use?

[CanadaRAM]

RAM doesn't increase performance as much as it removes barriers to performance. Kinda like taking your foot off the brake doesn't make your car faster.

If you don't have 'enough' RAM, your machine will slow down (sometimes dramatically) as it pages memory out to the hard drive. This is doubly so on laptops with slower hard drives.

How much is enough? It is enough to hold all of the applications and data that you run simultaneously in RAM at once. If you run more apps, or larger data sets, and break the barrier of the amount of physical RAM you have, youll see it slow down. So adding RAM up to the 'enough' point gives noticeable increase in speed. Adding RAM above the 'enough' point makes little or no difference to speed, except when you run more programs at once and raise the bar again.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

[KenDallas]

Originally Posted by Lateralus

What applications do you use?

I dont use any programs that I would consider to be "memory hogs", mostly Microsoft applications, Firefox, Filemaker Pro apps, Now Up-to-date & Contact.

I personally dont think that its the applications per se that make me feel that the computer should be running faster, its just that I usually have all these apps open at the same time. I also notice quite a bit of disk activity when there should be very little.

Hope this helps.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by KenDallas

I dont use any programs that I would consider to be "memory hogs", mostly Microsoft applications, Firefox, Filemaker Pro apps, Now Up-to-date & Contact.

I personally dont think that its the applications per se that make me feel that the computer should be running faster, its just that I usually have all these apps open at the same time. I also notice quite a bit of disk activity when there should be very little.

Hope this helps.

There's a relatively objective way of determining whether your computer could benefit from more RAM. Open Terminal. Type "top" (without the quotes) and hit return. You'll see a list of running processes and various data on memory usage, processor load, etc. Look for the line that begins "VM" (it should be the 6th line from the top). On that line, look at the number of pageouts that your system is reporting. Pageouts are basically an indication that your system has "paged" something out of physical memory into virtual memory on the hard disk. If you have "enough" memory, that number should be small relative to the number of pageins. For example, right now mine reports:

VM: 4.41G + 130M 77938(2) pageins, 235(0) pageouts

This is on a Powerbook that is identical to your configuration. Comparing my pageouts (235) to my pageins (77,938) tells me that I have enough RAM.

Checking the "top" process just once isn't as useful as checking it repeatedly over time as your uptime increases (pageouts stats are cleared on reboot). If you think you may need more memory, run "top" as you go about your daily tasks. If the number of pageouts is increasing rapidly under what you consider to be a "normal" application load, then you probably need more memory.

[sonicularulus]

if you have tiger, i would suggest that you get the Dash Monitor widget. It can easily track your ram.
I use it and learned (more like proved) that 512 mb of ram isnt good enough for my power mac..I tend to run as low as 6 mb free when doing video editing...lol...but thats video editing.

[SpaceMonkey]

Originally Posted by sonicularulus

if you have tiger, i would suggest that you get the Dash Monitor widget. It can easily track your ram.
I use it and learned (more like proved) that 512 mb of ram isnt good enough for my power mac..I tend to run as low as 6 mb free when doing video editing...lol...but thats video editing.

It is important to note, however, that looking at "free memory" is only part of the picture. OS X generally likes to fill as much of the physical memory as it can, because that will make the system faster (memory not used is memory wasted). Also, even if you're actively using gigabytes of virtual memory on the hard disk, OS X will usually keep 5-10 MB of physical memory free just in case it needs it for some sort of system process (moving small cache files around and such).

[Big Fat Octopus]

Try MenuMeters http://www.ragingmenace.com/software/menumeters/

It is especially great for monitoring network activity but it also does CPU and Memory activity.

I find 768mb works great with Tiger. I run a lot of apps simultaneously and I rarely get performance lags on my 1.33Ghz PBG4

[KenDallas]

Thanks everyone for the responses. I have decided to go ahead with the RAM upgrade. In addition, I am learning that I was not using my new PowerBook the way its meant to be used. I was quitting all the applications before putting the PowerBook to sleep and reloading the applications when the PowerBook woul dwake from sleep. This obviously would cause the hard drive to load all the applications thus resulting in a perception of the PowerBook being slow.

A friend of mine, an avid Mac user told me that it was not necessary to quit all the applications before I put the PowerBook to sleep and that I could have everything running. Well, my only excuse is that some of my bad PC habbits have carried over to the Mac. So now I leave all my applications running and not having to reload the apps things feel much better.

Thanks again for all the responses.