Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

1. Is Crucial good memory? Yes. I've ordered from them a few times and appreciate that they take the worry out of memory: no problems picking the right type, the right amount, and the prices are fair.

2. Is it easy to add memory to the Mac Pro? The Crucial site
shows pictures of the memory bay and its empty slots. I would
imagine all I need to do is open up the back, find the memory bay,
and insert the memory chips. That simple? It should be that simple. I recently added memory to my wife's 3-yr old dual-G5 system and it was as you describe.

3. Will the added 2-4GB of memory (bringing me to 5-7GB) cure the
slowdown and spinning beachball problems I am experiencing due
to the amount of startup programs? Will this be the cure?
4. Will the added memory increase bootup and file loading times as well?

3&4 I don't know. But I'll note that memory is no cure if you're CPU limited. This is out of my league, but you might need to figure out if you're CPU limited or RAM limited. But $181 will answer that pretty quickly

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

You can use the Activity Monitor to gauge your need for new memory and new CPU. (run it while you're trying to do real work, or at least mimicking it)/


If most of your memory is Free or Inactive, you don't need more RAM. If most of your CPU is idle, you don't need a new CPU.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

From those shots Ron, you are barely touching the CPU, but running close on RAM. So, more RAM should be your solution. Also, depending on how many RAM slots you have available, you may actually end up removing smaller cards to install bigger ones. Meaning, you may not get the RAM gain you expect. I think Pros come in 4 and 8 RAM slot configurations. You can use System Profiler and go to Memory to find your RAM capabilities.

More RAM should not make the computer start slower, but all those startup items will.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Mac Pros have two separate riser cards which provide quad-channel memory. That means that -- in theory -- the best memory performance is to use sets of four memory sticks of a given size. Pairs are allowed, but not as good.

If you have 3GB, that means you have two 512MB and two 1GB, which has not been optimal these past 21 months. You can get two more of each, for a total of 6GB. Put each pair of the 1GB on the bottom half of each riser card (near the gold "finger" connections") and each pair of the 512s on top.

One of the few times more memory is slower is if you put the machine to sleep. The Mac will copy the contents of RAM onto the hard drive in case the power goes out. You're "not supposed to" move the computer while it's doing this. This is really only an issue if you have a laptop.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Ron,

You're not going to screw up. If you've never had your machine open, it's time to do so and marvel at the clean layout of your machine. Simple maintenance, like adding/removing a drive or memory (on those mentioned riser cards) is done in mere moments.

The memory cards are easily removed and modules on the cards added, just look for the right orientation, but seriously, without rushing at all, taking your time, finding the right orientation of the modules, a RAM upgrade will not take longer than, say, 10 minutes. It really is THAT easy.

What Ken was alluding to by saying you weren't running in the optimal configuration just means that these machines run best when populated with four identical modules, while you are currently running with two different pairs of memory. So yes, there is a slowdown associated with that configuration; however, I'd bet good money that the slowdown we're talking about here is not noticeable to you or any ordinary user, outside running benchmarks.

I'd wager and say that while the additional memory will do you good, the beachballs are caused my the (combination of) the various software items you have running automatically at startup. To see whether that's true or not you could create a new user without all those startup items and see whether you get to see the beachballs as often as on your current account.

Hope this helps,

-Christian

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Ron, it should be fairly obvious by looking at the memory slots. You should be able to see 2 banks of four slots, with some visual break between them. If you have all 4 cards in one bank, you just need to move one matching pair to the other bank and add the 2 matching pairs to their respective bank. If you get the cards mixed up, you won't hurt anything so long as you keep matching pairs together. You can then use System Profiler to confirm you got 4 matching cards in each bank (or riser). What happens with having two different pairs of memory in one riser is a miniscule loss of speed, but I'm pretty sure that is all. There is also a good chance if you look closely at the edge of each slot that you will find a designation. Most likely a letter for the riser and a number for the slot. So, an example might be k 1-4 for one riser and j 1-4 for the other.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Ron, changing memory on Macs (except iMacs) has been extremely easy for several years now. Even my 8 year old gigabit Ethernet model is incredibly simple to change.

I haven't seen inside a Pro, but I believe it is essentially the same as a G5. With them you take the side (not back) panel off and the memory slots are right there. The touchy thing is, they are typically a very tight fit, so you have to be careful to get them seated properly and fully.

Enjoy Denver. We're having nice pleasant, moderate weather.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Other World Computing (macsales.com) has a Mac Pro memory installation video available if you want to take a look.

Tech Center at OtherWorldComputing.com

-Keith

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Ron, there have been a lot of great responses and information in this thread. I would just add my voice to the chorus that it really is pretty easy (not like it was back in the Quadra 950 days ). I would imagine that it will help out your performance quite a bit, but there may also be something else going on, like a software conflict of some kind.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Adding memory is one of the joys of using a Mac. lol.

Cheap thrills.

Opening System Profiler/About this Mac afterwards is like Christmas (for some).

I have 4Gb on mine (hands me downs from the other Macs), and could do with more (swap-ups).

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Some people will say it shouldn't matter, and some will say it did one their own machines, and some of these are the same people If I were in your situation, I would just buy the extra 3GB and see if it works.

AnandTech compared dual- vs quad-channel and they found:

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

As for the same manufacturer debate, I have been in a situation with 25+ machines for many years and have never seen proof that the manufacturer matters. I have seen faulty RAM lead to a lot of problems though and it can happen with any brand. I happen to prefer Crucial for my after-market stuff.

Thanks for that link Ken-- interesting stuff.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

You may have to rearrange the sticks that you have now to get that. When you stand the Mac Pro up, the risers are sticking out sideways. They should look like this (with the left edge here being the motherboard):

A: 1GB 1GB 512MB 512MB
B: 1GB 1GB 512MB 512MB

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

In this case, I would order one more pair of 2GB each (4 GB more, giving you 8GB total). Then install like this:

A: 2GB 2GB
B: 2GB 2GB

Sell the old ones. Same manufacturer, in a quad-channel configuration. No lingering doubts about whether this is an optimal setup.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

It is my understanding that it will work. You just won't be operating at maximum efficiency and how crucial that is depends on the use and is open to debate.

I'm sure some others who have contributed to the thread can give you a more exact answer, but without looking it up this is what I recall.

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

Putting that much additional ram into your machine should give you a big boost. Having four identical matching sticks would give you a tiny, essentially imperceptible boost because it would be quad channel. See Ken's link above where they benchmarked the quad channel configuration vs a dual configuration. Basically, I'd say don't worry about it. Things should run much better for you right off the bat and you can always add another pair of 2 gig sticks later should you decide you need it (but even here the overriding factor should be needing more ram not just bumping to quad channel).

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

No, it's not absolutely necessary.

To understand the problem, both the amount of RAM you have and the speed of that RAM matter. The amount generally matters much more. If you have six apps that each use 1GB of memory, and you only have 4GB of RAM, then you end up swapping RAM to and from the disk -- that's the Page Out and Page In displayed in the Activity Monitor -- and swapping is slow.

Whenever the program's memory is "in place" in the RAM, then the speed at which it can read and write to that RAM matters. For example, EyeTV has to read an MPEG-2 frame of a TV show to decompress it and throw it on the screen, 30 times per second. The faster it can do that, the less chance of stutter and the more time it leaves for everything else you are running simultaneously. The measure here is bandwidth, as opposed to capacity. Now the EyeTV example is nowhere near being limited by the bandwidth, but there are a few things that are. And for those operations, if you don't have the bandwidth, then no amount of extra capacity matters.

Off the bat, I can't think of any "normal" things that are constrained by memory bandwidth. Examples for other kinds of bandwidth that do come into play: processor power can easily determine whether you can play HD content; disk transfer rate and whether you have a RAID or not matters for working with (uncompressed) HD; your internet connection regulates streaming.

So if memory bandwidth is not a limiting factor that determines that some things won't work, then the speed of your memory only means that some things run faster. Only some things, because the bottlenecks in the other cases are elsewhere.

In the benchmarks I posted earlier, the performance benefit for using quad-channel was: usually nothing, but about 15% faster in a few cases. Maybe a coincidence, but here are some benchmarks that show that if you fill all eight slots the memory runs about 15% faster. (That was for a later model Mac Pro than yours, though.)

So bottom line: you've spent good money on this system, and you're spending a little more, and there are simple steps you can take that don't make the system run slower, but might actually make it run faster.

Could you tell the difference with the things that you do? I have no idea. But here is where it sorta matters whether you're a glass half-full or half-empty kind of guy. For me, there's very clearly a "right way" to do it, and it's pretty straightforward, and I never wonder if I'm "throwing away" "free performance" because I didn't do it that way. (Of course, the memory sticks themselves aren't free, but....) On the other hand, you might say, hey it works, and even if doing it another way might be marginally faster, it's not a limiting factor in my life, so I'm not going to worry about it. Both perspectives are reasonable.

If this is confusing instead of helpful, I will stop

Re: Adding more memory to a Mac Pro

On a separate tangent, I find that my Macbook Pro (4GB of RAM) sometimes slows down in bootup speed over the course of months due to a lot of OSX updates (i.e. 10.5.2 -> 10.5.3 -> 10.5.4). What I do is defragment the drive and that has always reduced my bootup time. I don't use a fancy defragging tool. I use the free demo version of iDefrag to see how fragmented the drive is (the free version allows you to do this but not actually defrag the drive). Then I use Carbon Copy Cloner (also free) to clone my drive to an external firewire hard drive (make sure the external hard drive's firewire chipset is compatible with OSX to be able to boot from it, not all firewire chipsets are bootable). Then I boot my MBP from the external drive and clone back to the internal hard drive. Takes about an hour and a half each way, and then when I run iDefrag nearly all of the files are contiguous. And the way CCC copies files it copies the system and program files first then your personal files last, which in a way "optimizes" the data layout in your HD, in addition to defragging.

I do this about every 6-9 months. This is a low cost solution (assuming you already have the external HD, and even if you don't they are fairly cheap nowadays) in comparison to always adding RAM or a larger HD.