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galloman · May 23, 2006, 04:32 AM

Hello all

Just got my imac 20" intel core duo a few weeks ago and loving it. However, i was expecting it to be faster than my amd 64, but its not. Maybe because of the rosetta translations on certain programs and/or only 512MB of ram. I just ordered two sticks of 1gb of ram so i can run 2gb in dual channel. Hopefully this'll do the trick.

Other than the sluggishness and safari crashing (can someone help me with this?) I'm satisfied and hope to gain a lot of mac knowledge from this community.

Thanks for listening!

ghporter · May 23, 2006, 07:32 AM

More RAM is what you need. 512 is just enough for OS X on a PowerPC processor, and frankly it's slow there. 2GB will make a huge difference.

And Welcome to the MacNN Forums!

grinder · May 23, 2006, 08:03 AM

yeah, I'm suffering from the standard config of a G4 mini here. iPhoto is bugging me. I'll soon get 1GB of RAM. Anyone know a good place for cheap RAM in Germany?

Socially Awkward Solo · May 23, 2006, 02:12 PM

1 Gig is really the min you should use with a intel Mac. 2 gigs is the best in the long run though.

harrisjamieh · May 23, 2006, 02:20 PM

With 10.5, Apple should really make the OS less of a RAM hog. With them shipping nearly all machines with a base 512 MB, its absurd that the ideal amount of RAM is really 2GB. I don't see why the OS has to take so much of it - Windows can be run relativly comfortably (with a few programs and hardly any background apps) on 256 MB

Agent69 · May 23, 2006, 02:59 PM

I have a XP Home SP2 box at my house running a 1.2ghz Celeron with 256MB of RAM. With the extra services turned off, the system uses around 113MB of memory. When I use it, I often have Firefox, Foobar2000, and uTorrent running at the same time. It does bog down on Mame when I play NBA Jams, however.

Vietcious_mac:

Have you considered running XP on your Mac to see how it performs in comparison to XP on your AMD? And if your AMD rig has more memory than your Mac, you can make it a fair comparison by temporarily limiting the RAM that Windows will use by adding this line to your boot.ini:

/MAXMEM=512

galloman · May 23, 2006, 06:43 PM

Thanx for the replies.

I'll try to limit my pc box's maxmem, but I still have a hunch it'll run faster than the mac. We'll see, I'll keep u guys updated whenever I get around to it. I'm sittin here at work and my package for the 2gb of mem has arrived. Can't wait to get home and install these.

Another question, which utility are you guys using to test out the cpu temp and all that? Does it come with the mac os or is it another application?

Thanks

Helmling · May 23, 2006, 07:04 PM

Most benchmarks have the iMac's beating many systems with the same chips, so I doubt it.

Sorry to hear about Safari...mine runs great, I wonder if there's a bug in the UB version.

Anyway, i hope you're as happy with your switch as I've been; welcome to the fold.

galloman · May 24, 2006, 01:25 AM

Hello

Welp, installed the 2GB of memory... World of Warcraft runs a LOT better. Huge difference. I'm a little concerned about the memory though. How do i know if its running in Dual channel mode or not? And is there some sort of configuaration bios page i have to go to in order to check or change? The "about this mac" only shows that there's 2 GB DDR2 SDRAM and no indication on whether or not its in dual channel mode.

Thanks a bunch guys

Big Mac · May 24, 2006, 01:46 AM

Mactels (like the Macs they replace) do not have PC-like BIOS configuration modes. If the RAM is recognized and your system is running properly, that's all you need to care about.