Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

huxbnw · Dec 2, 2003, 07:27 AM

Hey all. I have a 1 Gig TiBook and am thinking of investing in some more RAM.

Seeing as how I know next to nothing about RAM upgrades, I was hoping someone could help me with these questions:

1.) Is it worth getting a RAM upgrade for a general, non-developer user (safari, word, itunes, some iphoto, audio apps)?

2.) What brand and how much RAM should I get?

3.) What's a decent price?

Thanks a lot!

dgbatchelor · Dec 2, 2003, 11:40 PM

The last I checked, the max RAM in a TiBook is 1GB... How much do you have installed now? (There are only two memory slots.)

You can get the memory info by going to the "More Info..." in the "About The Mac" selection from the Apple menu.

huxbnw · Dec 3, 2003, 05:52 AM

512 MB SDRAM at the moment. Could I get another 512 MB?

dgbatchelor · Dec 3, 2003, 06:01 AM

There are two memory slots in the TiBook. Each can support 512MB -- or, a total of 1GB with both...

Hopefully, your 512MB is in one slot.

IMHO, you really can't go too wrong with extra memory.

Depending on the mix of programs you are running, you should expect to see the "spinning wheel" much less...

Here's a source... There are others.

http://www.crucial.com/search/srchrs...cial&submit=Go

mousehouse · Dec 3, 2003, 06:12 AM

i think your tibook will benefit from more RAM, but maybe not as much as you'd expect given your usage. it will feel a little more responsive when you have multiple apps open, but if you wantto be sure you should check out the "Profiler" under 10.3.

the tibook 1G default comes with two 256Mb modules. This means that if you want to increase your memory you're forced to remove one or both of these modules. basically you then have two options:

1) increase to 768Mb by swapping one 256 for a 512 module.
2) increase to 1G byswapping both modules.

A module goes for $90 to $120...

dgbatchelor · Dec 3, 2003, 06:24 AM

You can determine how many RAM modules are in your TiBook using the System Profiler (and selecting "Memory"... If you've got two 256MB modules, then you can follow mousehouse's advice to replace one at a time -- stepping up to 768MB by swapping out one 256MB module for a 512MB module.

If you want to see if memory is a bottleneck, you can also look at application call "Activity Monitor"... and you can look at how much "free" system memory existing when you have opened up your typical application set. You can also observe the amount of virtual memory swapping to/from disk using the same application.

When I got a TiBook like yours, I had it pre-installed with 1GB memory. I don't know what its performance is like with half of that memory...

But, YMMV based on your applications... In general, more RAM is good... next would be a larger/faster disk. (Applications like iPhoto can really slow down if you have a large library of photos and little RAM...

(I'm sitting with 512MB in a 17" AlBook running at 1.33GHz... and I am hoping that 1GB RAM modules will drop in price quickly...)

threestain · Dec 3, 2003, 06:30 AM

I have the same problem - is it worth �200 to up the memory by 512 Ram? or can you sell the old memory somehow to offset the cost?

dgbatchelor · Dec 3, 2003, 06:35 AM

Originally posted by threestain:
I have the same problem - is it worth �200 to up the memory by 512 Ram? or can you sell the old memory somehow to offset the cost?

It is difficult for any of us to assess whether or not the memory upgrade is worth the cost to you. Unfortunately, the going price for used 256MB RAM is pretty low..

threestain · Dec 3, 2003, 07:50 AM

Ok, fair point!

Right I have a TiBook 1GHz with 512mb Ram, and I do a lot of video encoding (to divx generally, but also to mov files). Will the extra ram speed this up? I thought it was a CPU limited process, but I'm probably wrong (I usually am!)

mousehouse · Dec 3, 2003, 07:58 AM

encoding is mostly a cpu-bound activity, but as the files tend to be very large a lot of memory will improve cache-ing. because of that the encoding process will not stall waiting for the harddisk delivering data to the encoding process.

also, more meory will allow you to run extra applications while encoding without resorting to swapspace or having a small filebuffer.

use the Profiler to see what your system is doing and go to 768 mem first as dgbatchelor said. for just $100 you nearly can't lose :-) if nothing else, it will improve the resell-value of your tibook.