emac memory limit

[supremeoverlord]

hey everybody, I assume this goes in the imac category, I mean it is an emac after all.
The question is I have heard that you can put 2 chips of 1gig a piece in a emac and it will work, is this true? Does anyone here run this setup? I am looking into doing some 3D and video on my emac and the extra ram would really help. So does any one know?
thanks

 

[alexmaccoll]

the emacs will only accept 1GB
however this would be very fast!
Alex

 

[mynameis]

check crucial.com

 

[Avalon]

Depends on which eMac you have...
The last ones (1.25GHz, using DDR-RAM) can take up to 2GB, even if Apple officially only claims a maximum of 1GB. I have tested this with two 1GB/PC2700 modules and it works perfect.

The predecessors all use SDRAM, and as far as I know, will not recognise more than 1GB, even if you would put 2 1GB modules in it. 1GB SDRAMs are very hard to find, and therefore are expensive.

 

[shaun89]

Yes. i went over the limit on ram on my other computer and it works fine. Do you think they do that so you will buy a higher end machine???

And by the way, this thread should be in the Other Hardware forum.

 

[Badger]

This also happened with the original iMacs. Chip technology changed after the iMacs were tested and certified for specific RAM configurations. In the case of the 333mhz model, Apple specifies 256 MB as the max (two 128 chips). However, many but not all of the 333s, will work perfectly well with two 256 MB chips. In any case, if it's outside of Apple specs you are on your own.

 

[Avalon]

Yes, that explains it exactly. It also works for lots of other Macs...
The PowerMac 7600 for example came initially with 16MB (!!) and has 8 RAM slots. With the evolution of EDO- and FPM-RAMs (the type of memory it used), the highest ammount of memory it accepts is actually 1GB!! Which for that machine is huge.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work with all MACs...the last PowerMac G4 has 4 slots, and accepts both 512MB and 1024MB PC2700 modules (both are recognised correctly). But the maximum RAM still seems to be 2GB. I can't really afford to buy 2 additional 1GB stick only for testing purpose (actual setup: 1x512MB, 2x256MB). I've asked around in different forums (including this one) but nobody ever seems to have tried it...