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Upgrading RAM from 2Gb to 4Gb worth it?

post #1 of 5
10/28/09 at 12:50am
Thread Starter 
My 2 years old iMac is doing great, but I was thinking about upgrading the RAM to 4GB.

It's a 20" Intel Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz with 2Gb of 667MHz RAM (2x1Gb). It doesn't feel slow, but would I get any noticeable
improvements by increasing to 4Gb?

Would upgrading the RAM invalidate my Apple Care which still has another year to go?

Thanks.
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post #2 of 5
10/28/09 at 7:42am
RAM is a user upgradable part so I believe the answer is you will not invalidate your warranty. I think your instruction manual will actually show you how to do it.

Personally I upgraded my RAM on my 3 year old MBP to 4GB within a month or two of purchase and found it to be well worth it. But I use programs like Photoshop, Logic Studio, Pro Tools, and shoot with a DSLR (hence regularly load 12-15MB RAW files vs. 2MB JPEG files) and needed the extra memory. Use macsales.com for the best chance at RAM compatibility with your Mac, and for competitive prices. They're much cheaper than Apple but not the cheapest on the web (but you may not get Apple reliability with other vendors). And my experience with their customer service has been stellar.
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post #3 of 5
10/28/09 at 8:48am
Do it. Upgrading the RAM is the single best price to performance improvement you can make. Even though your machine may not feel slow, you will certainly notice an improvement. Apple actually provides instructions for RAM upgrades, so you would not be voiding the final year of your coverage.
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post #4 of 5
10/28/09 at 9:51am
Thread Starter 
Great, thanks. I'm in the UK so won't be able to use macsales.com (looks a good site though).

I'm thinking about Crucial RAM as they have a compatibility guarantee and lifetime warranty.
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post #5 of 5
10/29/09 at 5:43pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael_K_Sr View Post

Even though your machine may not feel slow, you will certainly notice an improvement.

If you don't run a lot of apps and/or use a lot of memory, it may not be certain. 2GB is an OK amount of memory.

One thing to do is to run Activity Monitor (use Spotlight to find it) at the peak of your daily activity, with all your apps open doing something. Go to the System Memory page at the bottom. If the "Free" is anything above a few dozen MB (the system always tries to keep a little bit free), then you're not using all the RAM you have now. Adding a few GB more won't automatically make it faster.
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