RAM help!

groovetuber · Jun 29, 2006

Sorry to make yet another thread about RAM, but I need to some help. I recently purchased a Macbook and I am thinking about upgrading my RAM to at least 1 Gig. I do a lot of recording with my band and I wanted to get suggestions on what you think I should upgrade to. Also, what kind of RAM should I get, where are the best deals? Basically anything I need to know about RAM please inform me, thanks much!

Anthony

dohidied · Jun 29, 2006

i bought 1gb of patriot ram from newegg and it works flawlessly in my imac. your macbook takes the same ram.

http://www.newegg.com/product/product.asp?item=N82E16820220078

deus_ex_machina · Jun 29, 2006

definitely up it to at least 1GB - you'll see a jump in performance when you're recording multiple tracks at once.

groovetuber · Jun 29, 2006

Awesome, thanks for the help guys! For recording purposes, do you think that 1 gig RAM would be enough? I'm cool with that as long as I don't run into any problems with freezing or latency. Aside from making my comp run faster, is there anything else that RAM does?

deus_ex_machina · Jun 30, 2006

groovetuber said:
Awesome, thanks for the help guys! For recording purposes, do you think that 1 gig RAM would be enough? I'm cool with that as long as I don't run into any problems with freezing or latency. Aside from making my comp run faster, is there anything else that RAM does?

apart from making you life easier? Latency will be solved with RAM upgrades, less time the OS has to write to the hard drive. It will make your band efforts much easier

groovetuber · Jun 30, 2006

deus_ex_machina said:
apart from making you life easier? Latency will be solved with RAM upgrades, less time the OS has to write to the hard drive. It will make your band efforts much easier

Cool, sounds good. So I should get the patriot RAM? Seems like a pretty good price. From what I've heard and seen, RAM appears to be pretty easy to install, so that's good.

groovetuber · Jun 30, 2006

Hmmm, I just finished reading some reviews of the patriot RAM, and some people said that the RAM didn't work at 667 mhz. Was exactly does that mean, and should I be worried about this?

deus_ex_machina · Jun 30, 2006

groovetuber said:
Hmmm, I just finished reading some reviews of the patriot RAM, and some people said that the RAM didn't work at 667 mhz. Was exactly does that mean, and should I be worried about this?

Think about it this way - RAM has a clock speed at which it runs, just like a CPU. Matching RAM to the computer is most of the battle - cheaper RAM maybe slower, look at the megahertz it's listed as. If the RAM is clocked faster than listed for the computer, it will run at the computer's listed speed, thus if you get slower RAM, you might notice a difference. If your comp takes 667, look for that. I'd start there.

dohidied · Jun 30, 2006

i don't know why people on newegg are saying it doesn't run at 667mhz. mine is running at 667mhz.

juco · Jun 30, 2006

I bought some RAM from crucial today. Nice and cheap, and works a treat! :black:

groovetuber · Jul 1, 2006

I read reviews of teh G Skill RAM, which alos appers to be really good. What is this talk about buying 2 sticks though? How exactly does that work and what is ddr2 ram?

deus_ex_machina · Jul 1, 2006

groovetuber said:
I read reviews of teh G Skill RAM, which alos appers to be really good. What is this talk about buying 2 sticks though? How exactly does that work and what is ddr2 ram?

http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36152&highlight=pair+RAM
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=33075&highlight=pair+RAM

in the first thread they even discuss G Skill RAM!

ddr2 RAM is the next generation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DDR_SDRAM

groovetuber · Jul 2, 2006

Is it better to get 1 stick of 1 gig RAM, or 2 sticks of 512 mb? Any more suggestions on the RAM I should get? I'm not so sure about patriot, I don't want to run into any problems with it not running at 667. Thanks.

Noxian · Jul 3, 2006

groovetuber said:
Is it better to get 1 stick of 1 gig RAM, or 2 sticks of 512 mb? Any more suggestions on the RAM I should get? I'm not so sure about patriot, I don't want to run into any problems with it not running at 667. Thanks.

I would recommend it because if you cant afford to go with 2 one gig sticks now, you can atleast buy one now and another later if you go with 2 512s then you have to then buy 2 1gigs later.

groovetuber · Jul 3, 2006

Noxian said:
I would recommend it because if you cant afford to go with 2 one gig sticks now, you can atleast buy one now and another later if you go with 2 512s then you have to then buy 2 1gigs later.

Hmmm, good point. How will my computer be affected though if the RAM isn't matched? Maybe I'll just try and pick up 2 1 gig sitcks now.

groovetuber · Jul 3, 2006

Also, anyone have any more suggestions on the type of RAM to get. After reading some reviews on newegg, I am leaning towards Transcend, but maybe someone has a better suggestion.

mynameis · Jul 25, 2006

I finally bought a stick of Transcend for my MacBook Pro and it WORKED. Before that I have tried Crucial, Muskin, and A-DATA, which would all cause random crashing. I have only used the Transcend stick for maybe 5 hours, no crashes. All the other sticks caused crashes in under an hour.