Upgraded Ram = Worse Performance????

[mozzatron]

Hey

I have a mid 2010 iMac (2.8GHz)

It had the standard 2 x 2GB (4GB) 1333 MHz DDR3 stock ram, and i have just upgraded to 4 x 4GB (16GB) 1333 MHz DDR3 third party ram.

Before i changed it over i opened an Ableton project that i knew was CPU hungry and it was hovering around the 45% mark, yet after the upgrade to 16GB it's now hovering around the 60% mark????

Please tell me i'm doing something wrong otherwise i'm going to be miffed if it's dodgy ram!

[EdRyan]

It is odd. Even if one of the RAM sticks was bad, in theory you should still get better performance by putting the same overall amount memory into one controller.

I'd take the new RAM out and test them in turn...

[kitekrazy]

Hey

I have a mid 2010 iMac (2.8GHz)

B (4GB) 1333 MHz DDR3 stock ram, and i have just upgradIt had the standard 2 x 2Ged to 4 x 4GB (16GB) 1333 MHz DDR3 third party ram.

Before i changed it over i opened an Ableton project that i knew was CPU hungry and it was hovering around the 45% mark, yet after the upgrade to 16GB it's now hovering around the 60% mark????

Please tell me i'm doing something wrong otherwise i'm going to be miffed if it's dodgy ram!

Is it compatible? Ever since DDR2 some hardware just doesn't work well with all 3rd party RAM.

[mozzatron]

When i check my iMac info it shows that 16GB is installed. Someone on another forum said that the additional ram wouldn't make a difference on the CPU usage.

Is there some kind of test i can run to see if the ram is dodgy?

[fishmonkey]

yep:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/05/03/memtest-mac-ram-test/

and there is this GUI frontend too:

http://osxdaily.com/2011/07/13/test-def ... -mac-os-x/

however in general you can test more of the memory from the command line in single user mode.

[mozzatron]

Still haven't resolved this

And now when i open a project that i have just started the audio stutters as though the CPU is maxed out (Although the CPU is only at about 25%). I only have a few clips loaded into session view. Sometimes it does this but other times when i open the project it plays fine.

Anyone got any ideas cos this is driving me nuts!!!!

[fishmonkey]

simple. if you think it's the RAM, put the original RAM back in. test again.

[antarktika]

Also, unless you're running the 64-bit beta, that ram (>4) isn't even going to be addressed anyway!

[fishmonkey]

when running 32 bit apps, having more than 4GB of RAM is still a good thing if your operating system is 64 bit.