[raviruddarraju]

Hello,

I recently compared Panther performance on a 500Mhz G4 with 1GB RAM and a 1Ghz G4 with 512MB RAM. I notice a significant performance improvment on the slower G4 with larger memory in terms of general UI response.

Though this may be my exaggeration, but I felt there a HUGE speed difference. Is memory such an important thing, when the processor speeds are so different on both the computers?

- ravi

[Arkham_c]

If both have enough RAM, the faster machine will shine. 512MB is really not enough for OSX.

With not-enough RAM, the computer used disk space for memory. Disk space is orders of magnitude slower than real RAM, and that accounts for a larger slowdown overall.

[rjenkinson]

did you compare both systems with different amounts of RAM? how did you separate the difference between the processors from the RAM difference?

-r.

[dgbatchelor]

More RAM usually equates to significantly better performance... but it all depends on how you use your 'Book...

If you question whether or not you are suffering from "low RAM syndrome", you can monitor the virtual memory paging with the application "Activity Monitor"... You can see the amount of real memory, how it is allocated, the amount of virtual memory, and the page in/page out stats. High paging and low free memory are good "hints" that you can use more RAM.

In my experience, it is difficult to have too much RAM!