1GB or 2 GB RAM?

Hi guys,

I'm planning on getting a Macbook sometime next week. I plan to use Parallel's Workstation to run multiple operating systems at the same time. How much RAM should I have for this purpose? I study programming at Uni and soon they'll want us to start coding Windows programs in a Linux environment.

I went to a Mac store the other day, and the guy told me that I should have a minimum of 1GB RAM. But will I notice(or more importantly need) the difference between 1GB and 2GB of RAM? I don't really want to buy an extra gig of RAM if i'm not going to need it.

Thanks for reading, guys. Cheers!

My advice is to buy the coomputer with the base amount of ram and max it out with RAM from a third party supplier. The RAM sold by Apple is very pricey. There are several threads that discuss the different suppliers and brands that have worked for people. I got a good deal on a 2gb kit from www.transintl.com. others have mentioned www.newegg.com.

jhelm007 said:

My advice is to buy the coomputer with the base amount of ram and max it out with RAM from a third party supplier. The RAM sold by Apple is very pricey. There are several threads that discuss the different suppliers and brands that have worked for people. I got a good deal on a 2gb kit from www.transintl.com. others have mentioned www.newegg.com.

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Agreed, Also if you cant afford 2 1GB sticks right now just buy one and buy another when you have the cash. I am currently running my MacBook with 1 1GB stick and the stock 256MB stick and it works great, Huge improvement over the 2 256MB sticks that the laptop came with.

people are obviously going to say 2gb, more is better. but if you're broke or on a budget (like i), 1.25gb (1gb stick and included 256mb stick) is great

2 GB!! it makes it soo nice i recommend 4allmemory.com they sell OEM memory (i got samsung for my powerbook) and have never ever had a problem.

wow, thanks for the advice guys I am actually short on cash to buy 2GB of RAM straight up at the moment.

I think I found a nice trick tho I walked into a Macstore the other day and they said that they can give me a a single stick of 512MB RAM(ordering via the website forces you to get 2x256 MB RAM instead). I'll probably end up doing that and buying an extra 1GB of RAM till i get the money for the other. So then I can run two sticks of RAM, 1GB and 512MB respectively.

renegadeice said:

ordering via the website forces you to get 2x256 MB RAM instead

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There is a reason for that:

Apple said:

if both slots are loaded with an equal amount of RAM — which is strongly recommended — you can take advantage of the system's dual-channel memory architecture for an additional performance boost. With a dual-channel memory interface, both banks of SDRAM can be addressed at the same time

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people can speculate all day long as to how much ram you should purchase but what you need to do is use your computer with "activity monitor" open and see if you are ever running out of ram. if you are running out of ram you definately need more ram.

what i suggest you do is purchase 2x512 sticks to begin with and if you dont need them you can usually sell them for a small loss and pick up 2x1gig sticks so that y our ram is matched like DB said above me
-chris

Depending upon what you are doing in each operating system you are running 2gb might be a neccesity or it might not. I have noticed that even when only running a couple programs my memory was almost always maxed out when i had 512mb of ram only running osx. On my windows machine I also saw significant increases in useability when I upgraded from 512mb to 1gb. Based on this I would venture to say that 1gb for osx and 1gb for the other operating systems you would be running, coupled with the fact that there is probably also some memory overhead created by parallels would probably mean you are going to want 2gb. If you are not going to be doing much of anything in osx while you are working in windows, unix, linux etc then 1.5gb might be plenty, totally depends on how you use your system.

D3v1L80Y said:

There is a reason for that:

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Here is what I found on this subject..
http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=36682