Quick memory question

I have a 17" CD iMac with 512MB of RAM. According to Crucial's website I can upgrade this to a maximum of 2GB. Am I right in thinking that I can do this 1GB at a time, i.e. buy 1 stick of 1GB now and another when finances are better, or would I do best to buy the full 2GB now (there's only a negligible price saving buying 2x 1GB)? For what it's worth, I use the iMac for web, mail, iTunes and iPhoto. I also run Parallels with XP Pro to simply use MS Money. I do not do gaming, nor am I into video editing.

Thanks.

Hey there Pigchops,

You can upgrade either way. If funds are a little tight you can buy 1GB module now and have 1.5GB (unless your 512MB is made up of 2X256MB modules, in which case you will have to take one out in order to accommodate the new 1GB module). You should notice quite a bit of a difference there and then and Parallels should run smoother.

Later down the line you can then get another 1GB module and just pop it in alongside the current 1GB module and boom. 2GB of horsepower waiting to be crunched through.

I have the 20" C2D iMac and bought mine with 1GB RAM, It was pretty nippy but I decided to upgrade to 2GB as I use Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver quite a lot for my course and I can tell you I noticed a difference all round with the extra GB! Even things like Front Row seem to work smoother the more RAM you have.

So to summarise all this yes you are correct in thinking that you can upgrade gradually as and when you can afford it ;D

I would recommend keeping to the same make memory however, I don't know if this is just me or if there is any particular reason but I'm sure I read somewhere that paired modules seem to work better than unpaired ones (can anyone enlighten me on this?)

Hope this helps, happy mac'ing!

Chris

Cheers MrChris, that's really helpful.