Macs and RAM.............

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right okay, i have just purchased my self a mini mac......and i notice that all macs ship with a lot less memory compared with their pc counterparts, are they more efficent at managing memory than pcs or is thier another reason for this?
 
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pscl227 said:
right okay, i have just purchased my self a mini mac......and i notice that all macs ship with a lot less memory compared with their pc counterparts, are they more efficent at managing memory than pcs or is thier another reason for this?

Yep, i would say they are, however the 256 that comes with some of them is really rather stingy and I would recommend a minum of 512 for normal work.
 
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James said:
Yep, i would say they are, however the 256 that comes with some of them is really rather stingy and I would recommend a minum of 512 for normal work.

yer, well i got a 512MB module sitting here waiting for my mac mini.............just have to get my hands on a putty knife now!...........mean like even the top end dual processor g5's only come with 512MB memory as standard
 

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I thought only apple could install ram on the mac mini.
 
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Macman said:
I thought only apple could install ram on the mac mini.

nope it appears that it will be a rather easy job upgrading the mini mac with ram, and even with the bluetooth/wireless modules if you could ever get your hands on them...........presuming that all the motherboards have the headers for them
 
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pscl227 said:
nope it appears that it will be a rather easy job upgrading the mini mac with ram, and even with the bluetooth/wireless modules if you could ever get your hands on them...........presuming that all the motherboards have the headers for them

My only concern would be that, if Apple does state that RAM must be installed by them, opening the mini and installing it yourself might void the warranty. I would just double-check with Apple before performing the installation.
 
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Padawan said:
My only concern would be that, if Apple does state that RAM must be installed by them, opening the mini and installing it yourself might void the warranty. I would just double-check with Apple before performing the installation.

apprently as long as you dont damage it whilst upgrading it, it is still covered
 
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what kind of ram are you putting in yours?

it looks like it's just 184 pin, pc2700 RAM. I found a gig on pricewatch for less than $100. even if i pay the shop down the street $40 to install it, i'm still in warranty, and i've saved about $200, plus whatever i get for the 512mb i get with the mac mini.

thoughts?
 
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briang said:
it looks like it's just 184 pin, pc2700 RAM. I found a gig on pricewatch for less than $100. even if i pay the shop down the street $40 to install it, i'm still in warranty, and i've saved about $200, plus whatever i get for the 512mb i get with the mac mini.

thoughts?

I would make sure that the RAM is guaranteed to work with the mini. Macs can be picky about memory, so I only purchase from places that test and guarantee the RAM to work in my machine.
 
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Padawan said:
I would make sure that the RAM is guaranteed to work with the mini. Macs can be picky about memory, so I only purchase from places that test and guarantee the RAM to work in my machine.

yeah, that ram said that it was very picky. here's my next question. the web site says it takes pc2700, but when i look at the my mac info, it says pc3200. so is mac lying to us, or what? i've ordered 1gb of pc2700 from newegg (buffalo tech i think for $165) and i'm going to have compusa install it, but should i get the pc3200? i figure, with a FSB of 167, it only operate at pc2700 anyway.

thoughts?
 
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briang said:
yeah, that ram said that it was very picky. here's my next question. the web site says it takes pc2700, but when i look at the my mac info, it says pc3200. so is mac lying to us, or what? i've ordered 1gb of pc2700 from newegg (buffalo tech i think for $165) and i'm going to have compusa install it, but should i get the pc3200? i figure, with a FSB of 167, it only operate at pc2700 anyway.

thoughts?

Depending on price offer and availability, Apple might aswell put PC3200 RAMs in the Mac mini, but they will run at PC2700 speed.
As you already mentionned, it's the 167MHz FSB (DDR 333) which sets the memory speed (DDR3333 = PC2700)
 
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briang said:
yeah, that ram said that it was very picky. here's my next question. the web site says it takes pc2700, but when i look at the my mac info, it says pc3200. so is mac lying to us, or what? i've ordered 1gb of pc2700 from newegg (buffalo tech i think for $165) and i'm going to have compusa install it, but should i get the pc3200? i figure, with a FSB of 167, it only operate at pc2700 anyway.

thoughts?

As I've posted ad nauseum elsewhere the FSB figures are pretty meaningless as it is the RAM driver speed that matters. If Apple specify that it needs 3200 RAM then you should either buy that or get the best named 2700 RAM that you can (low end 3200 RAM is cheaper than high end 2700 anyway).

I've put cheap RAM in PCs and had it not work then put it in Apples and it works and I've had cheap RAM that doesn't work in Apples that does work in PCs, it's all rather chaotic IMHO.

Amen-Moses
 
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pscl227 said:
right okay, i have just purchased my self a mini mac......and i notice that all macs ship with a lot less memory compared with their pc counterparts, are they more efficent at managing memory than pcs or is thier another reason for this?

PCs ship with the minimum required to "work", as do Apples. It just so happens that the minimum required to "work" is higher (about double) on Windross systems than it is on Unix ones, ask MS why that happens to be the case.

Amen-Moses
 
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Amen-Moses said:
As I've posted ad nauseum elsewhere the FSB figures are pretty meaningless as it is the RAM driver speed that matters. If Apple specify that it needs 3200 RAM then you should either buy that or get the best named 2700 RAM that you can (low end 3200 RAM is cheaper than high end 2700 anyway).

I've put cheap RAM in PCs and had it not work then put it in Apples and it works and I've had cheap RAM that doesn't work in Apples that does work in PCs, it's all rather chaotic IMHO.

Amen-Moses

sorry that you had to post that again.... from my post count, and previous posts, you may have been able to tell that i'm new to the mac thing.
 
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briang said:
sorry that you had to post that again.... from my post count, and previous posts, you may have been able to tell that i'm new to the mac thing.

It's not just a Mac thing, if you have a cheap crappy motherboard on a PC it doesn't matter how fast the FSB is, it just won't use the speed properly. It's similar to the 64 bit problem, it doesn't matter if you have a 64 bit Athlon if all you are doing is running 32 bit software, the difference between the top-end 32 bit offering (i.e Pentium 4's) and the top end 64 bit Athlons is less than 20 per cent when running the same software.

Back in 1989 I owned an Arm2 based system (the Acorn Archimedes) and had a BASIC program which created a simulated globular cluster that ran in 12 minutes. At the time the same program ran on a typical PC in about 25 minutes. A few years later I upgraded to an Arm3 chip, my system went up to 12 MIPS and the said program ran in 5 minutes, at that time a typical PC ran it in 8 minutes. Then a few years later I upgraded to a RiscPC (around 50 MIPS) which ran the program in 1 minute 7 seconds, a typical PC of that time ran it in 4 minutes. Several years on I upgraded to a StrongArm (200MIPS) and at that time the same program ran in under 10 seconds yet on a typical PC still took over a minute.

Unfortunately ARM was sold off and Acorn stopped producing computers and I ended up building my own PCs to try to keep on the bleeding edge of technology (where I'd been since 1978), In 2002 I bought an iMac (one of the first 1Ghz G4 models) purely because it out performed all my PCs (which were not only bleeding edge but bleeding expensive), since then I've kept ahead with PCs and Macs (my next purchase will be a twin 2.5Ghx G5 Xserve box most likely and on the PC front I expect to put together a >3Ghz Ahlon 64 system pretty soon) so if anyone is qualified to coment on performance issues it's me!

(oh, and to top all that I am the head performance guy on the worlds largest air traffic control system consisting of over 700 RS6000 590 servers which I am currently upgrading to PPCs ;))

btw, if you are wondering what happened to those superfast Arm CPUs they are currently employed as the RISC cores in Pentiums as well as being the main CPU in Palm systems, Jornados, Mobile Phones from about 10 different manufacturers, GM cars, modems and routers, and probably washing machines as well. In fact I wouldn't mind betting that the typical poster on these forums probably has a couple of Arm chips within a few feet of their current location.

Amen-Moses
 
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IChing said:
I found this great site on breaking down the minimac with detailed pictures and discussion on ram. Maybe some one can post it here. It also discusses the video of opening the case.
http://www.macworld.com/weblogs/editors/2005/01/miniopen/

Its at macworld.


Taking it apart doesn't look terribly hard. I would get mine stripped down so I might need to do some upgrades down the road, Where could I buy a BT adapter to install if I want it later?
 
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IChing

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That's a great question, I want a mini but will wait tell I see more stuff like this on ram, bt, and other items to improve the machine cheaply and professionally.
 

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