[urzsite]

Hi,

Im about to order the G4 iBook, and now my dilemma is how much better the iBook will run with either 640 Ram or 1152 Ram.

The iBook is going to be used for Photoshop 8(under 100mb files) / Dreamweaver MX 2004 / Flash MX pro 2004, and I usually run these apps at the same time.

Some gaming aswell but im sure most game will run alright with 640 Ram.

How much gain would I get by choosing 1152 Ram over 640 Ram ?

Thanks in advance.

Urz

[Luca Rescigno]

You'd probably see a minor performance gain by going with 1152 MB. However, you'd see a greater performance gain if you took the money you spent on the iBook, combine it with the money you'd spend on a 1 GB RAM module, and bought a 15" PowerBook.

Putting 1 GB of RAM in an iBook just makes no sense right now because that much RAM is too expensive. If you really have enough money to buy a 1 GB RAM module you should have bought a PowerBook in the first place. Just go with a 512 MB module for a total of 640 MB.

[urzsite]

That seems logical, if the gain is minimal vs price.

i'll stick with 640mb - and just save up for something else.

[sniffer]

Originally posted by urzsite:
The iBook is going to be used for Photoshop 8(under 100mb files) / Dreamweaver MX 2004 / Flash MX pro 2004, and I usually run these apps at the same time.

That's some ram hungry applications. Actually I think you could benefit from a gig of ram, but 640 would also probably make you going quite well.
I have 640 my self which is sufficient for my usage. But if I was using the apps you are mentioning on top of everything else I usually do, I would probably gain from a gig.
It's a bit subjective question of-course, and depends a lot on your habits etc.
On the portables the hard drive is the bottleneck, so sufficient amount of ram is important. But there is hardly any gain in overdoing it either. I agree with Luca Rescigno in that the prize is to stiff to easily justify it.

[nickgold2012]

You folks need to run MenuMeters' RAM module so you have more of an idea what you're talking about when it comes to RAM usage in OS X.

OS X tends to use around 150MB-180MB on my main machine.

Apple apps such as Safari and Mail take up virtually nothing, so having those kinds of apps always running adds no real RAM burden.

Add up the RAM footprints of your development apps, and the sizes of the files you might have open for those apps simultaneously.

I think you'd find that for relatively light graphics and web development work of the sort you describe, 640MB would be plenty. But don't guess -- download MenuMeters from Versiontracker and you will know for sure.

(I am ordering the iBook G4 12" next week, with 640MB.)

[mblchris]

Originally posted by nickgold2012:
You folks need to run MenuMeters' RAM module so you have more of an idea what you're talking about when it comes to RAM usage in OS X.

Originally posted by nickgold2012:
download MenuMeters from Versiontracker and you will know for sure.

Or a good old fashioned `top -d1` from the console will tell you.