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maccrack · Apr 2, 2007, 03:04 PM

i have a ibook with 1.07ghz 256mb of ram 30gb hd will the 1gb ram make a huge differnece or is that over kill, and would i be wasing my money? will the preccesor be able to keep up with all that ram?

mfbernstein · Apr 2, 2007, 03:15 PM

This is a common question around these forums. Depends what you'll be doing on the computer. For normal use, a 512MB upgrade should be enough, but if an extra $50 isn't a big deal, or you expect to be using the machine for a long time, the 1GB may not be a bad idea either.

maccrack · Apr 2, 2007, 03:27 PM

will the processor be able to keep up with the 1 gb?

Frugle · Apr 2, 2007, 03:33 PM

my 1.33GHz ibook has 1.25GB and I noticed a huge increase in speed.

peeb · Apr 2, 2007, 03:55 PM

You will notice a speed difference, for sure. Whether it is worth going to 1gb over 512 depends on what you're doing. The processor will have no problem with it.

Chaoticjoe · Apr 2, 2007, 07:53 PM

You can never have too much RAM. That's my philosophy. Although there is such thing as overkill. Speaking of which, how much RAM will be recommended for Leopard? I was thinking of getting an MB with 2 Gigs when it comes out.

richwig83 · Apr 3, 2007, 10:38 AM

I might be worth checking out the pagein/pageouts in the activity monitor (after youve been running your mac for a while)!!!

If your getting lots of page outs then u need more RAM because your mac is paging, if not i doubt it would make a difference although im happy to be corrected!!!!

If the RAM is cheap enough and you have the money i guess you might as well! (or buy a new macbook)

peeb · Apr 3, 2007, 11:49 AM

Originally Posted by richardwigley

I might be worth checking out the pagein/pageouts in the activity monitor (after youve been running your mac for a while)!!!

If your getting lots of page outs then u need more RAM because your mac is paging, if not i doubt it would make a difference although im happy to be corrected!!!!

If the RAM is cheap enough and you have the money i guess you might as well! (or buy a new macbook)

That's right - ideally the sweet spot is enough not to page in and out in normal use. more will give diminishing returns, less will slow the machine down.

mfbernstein · Apr 3, 2007, 01:15 PM

I second richardwigley's comment: Pageins are where the system writes inactive (not currently in use) data from memory to disk. Pageouts are where that data (virtual memory pages) are read out from the disk into memory. So long as the inactive data being written is never read back (paged into memory), you're not 'swapping' (exchanging one chunk of necessary memory for another).

So in short, a high number of pageouts is a good indication that your system will benefit from additional RAM.

hadocon · Apr 6, 2007, 02:26 PM

But will the processor be able to keep up with the 1 gb?

peeb · Apr 6, 2007, 03:24 PM

Of course. There's no 'keeping up' to do - it's just more space to keep things in, so less work moving things around.