G4 Sawtooth memory Question

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I am a relative newby to the Mac world, especially the G4's. I have a 400 MHz G4 with 256MB of memory and I just bought another 256MB. The memory already installed in the machine is PC100 The new memory I just got is PC133. I assume it is OK to mix and match memry speeds in this machine as the bus is running at 100 MHz. I am sending this email from the machine after I installed the extra 256MB so I assume everything is OK. Is my assumption correct? Thanks in advance for your assistance!
 

dtravis7


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Are you running OSX? Click on the Blue apple in the top left corner of the screen and click on About this Mac. It will tell you the total Ram which should be now 512Megs. If that shows up right and the machine is stable then all is fine. PC133 will work fine in a PC100 system, but there is some higher density that will not work, but if it shows up and works, you are fine.

I have a 500Mhz Sawtooth with 1.2GB ram. 2 are PC 133 and the other 2 Dimms PC100. Worked fine for 2 years now.
 
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dtravis7 said:
Are you running OSX? Click on the Blue apple in the top left corner of the screen and click on About this Mac. It will tell you the total Ram which should be now 512Megs. If that shows up right and the machine is stable then all is fine. PC133 will work fine in a PC100 system, but there is some higher density that will not work, but if it shows up and works, you are fine.

I have a 500Mhz Sawtooth with 1.2GB ram. 2 are PC 133 and the other 2 Dimms PC100. Worked fine for 2 years now.

I am running 10.3.9. System Profiler says I have 512MB and it shows the different speed RAMs. The system seems very stable at this point. Not much faster, but I wasn't expecting it to be.

Thanks for the quick response!

Chuck
 
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slughead

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_nelsonc said:
Not much faster, but I wasn't expecting it to be.Chuck

Surely you realize that your machine can use 4x 512mb dimms, yes ?

Add another 512mb and you CAN expect a big performance increase. I have 2GB in my sawtooth & it r a w k s :D
 
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you can mix rams inside a G4, but no guarantee on the machine's stability. You can use memtest for testing purpose.
 
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kylake

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_nelsonc said:
I am a relative newby to the Mac world, especially the G4's. I have a 400 MHz G4 with 256MB of memory and I just bought another 256MB. The memory already installed in the machine is PC100 The new memory I just got is PC133.

I have memory somewhat the same in my machine. I have 512 PC 133 in the 0 slot, followed by 256 PC 100 in the 1 slot, followed by 128 PC 100 (factory ram) in the 2 slot. I did have alot of problems with the computer screen freezing and issue that some suggested was because of bad ram. Memtest showed all the ram was okay even when tested with one stick at a time in......I now think this issue was overheating all along. I am now operating with the side door open and the machine is operating more stable than it has ever been. No lockups with the door open.....I will operate like this until I do a modification to allow more airflow to the board.
 
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Everyone above has pretty much said it. Yes, you can mix and match ram speeds, but you may or may not have system stability problems. If you don't notice any problems yet, you're most likely fine. Nothing will cause actual damage to the computer, you would just get a crash once and a while.

I would expect your system to run certain things a bit more smoothly than before, perhaps the screensavers, moving/resizing your windows, etc. I noticed a jump in speed when I upgraded my macs to the newest OS X operating system, Tiger, also. Macs are much better than Windows at using ram (in my opinion), and I have noticed a difference in all of my macs by adding ram. The more the better, really. However, in reality, you have just brought your mac to where it should be for normal use. If you intend to do photo editing, or work with other media, you will want to add more ram.
 

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