02-23-2004, 12:30 PM

i have a base ibook g4, os x, 12"- ram is something like 800mhz. Is it possible to speed this guy up? i know no...should have got the PB...but let's look ahead. If i double ther RAM, will it make a difference? Or does all this have to do with the processor? I am not sure i understand the relationship of RAM to processor....any explanations/advice for me? thanks

02-23-2004, 01:02 PM

Yes, adding RAM will definitely speed things up for you in day-to-day use, such as Web surfing, using word processors and spreadsheets, etc.

However, if it's too slow dealing with video/photo/audio edits, your processor and/or HD are probably slowing you down. If your talking about gaming, then it's either your processor or graphics card holding you back.

02-24-2004, 11:23 AM

no, i am not gaming...the issue is with Flash FX Professional...i have to wait a while for the rendering of the flash movies i am making....as well..i see it in iMovie.

still RAM?

02-24-2004, 12:03 PM

It's most likely your processor slowing you down if the rendering is too slow for you.

02-27-2004, 06:50 PM

Originally Posted by Chamorro

Yes, adding RAM will definitely speed things up for you in day-to-day use, such as Web surfing, using word processors and spreadsheets, etc.

However, if it's too slow dealing with video/photo/audio edits, your processor and/or HD are probably slowing you down. If your talking about gaming, then it's either your processor or graphics card holding you back.

256 M should be plenty for any web browser. I don't think you'd see any difference if you doubled that. For MS Office 512+ M would be better.

Serious video/photo/audio editing is VERY RAM intensive. Get as much as you can. CPU and HD matter too. Upgrading CPU on iBook is not possible. Same goes to graphics card. And with HD - you can get bigger, but not faster (I think).

Games... It depends. The bottleneck might be CPU, graphics card or RAM.

Originally Posted by mlecho

i have a base ibook g4, os x, 12"- ram is something like 800mhz. Is it possible to speed this guy up? i know no...should have got the PB...but let's look ahead. If i double ther RAM, will it make a difference? Or does all this have to do with the processor? I am not sure i understand the relationship of RAM to processor....any explanations/advice for me? thanks

OK I'll try to explain some.

CPU (processor) is the place where basically all calculation takes place. CPU needs data. Data is in L1 cache, L2 cache, RAM or HD (swap). CPU looks for it in that order (well not exactly, but I'm not going to talk about TLB here). Caches are on the same chip as CPU.
If data isn't in the caches, CPU will have to wait a long time to get it from RAM or at least 100 times longer if the data is in swap. Remember we are talking about a thing that makes 800 million operations in a second for a pipeline and I'm sure there is more than one pipeline in G4. Waiting for RAM or HD to respond is a long time.