to ram or not to ram powerbook g4 550

polemans · Post by **polemans** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 11:57 am

thinking of upgrading the ram in my powerbook 550mhz, i have 256mb at the moment. if i put in 1gb of ram will this make a marked difference? or should i just buy a new pc laptop...??
love mac but my current powerbook is getting a little tired as i'm pushing it to its limits with ableton and vst's..

any ideas?

commuter · Post by **commuter** » Sun Nov 07, 2004 1:21 pm

It wont make a difference on CPu performance..
I used to have a 1ghz Ibook and i tried the test performance with both the 256 mb stock ram and with an upgrade to 768mb of ram, and there wasn't a single difference in performance...
It's time to get a new mac or PC (centrino PC is the way to go at the moment) or wait for the new powerbook sometimes in the beginning of next year...

nils · Post by **nils** » Mon Nov 08, 2004 1:58 pm

well, the thing is there will be no "new" powerbook anytime soon...... maybe better prices and maybe little (1.6 1.7 g4??) more mhz but that won`t change the fact that pc`s outperform macs. that`s a little sad because powerbooks seem to be the most well-buildt and good looking laptops around. unfortunately they are oldguys specwise.......

sqook · Post by **sqook** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 2:17 pm

nils wrote:well, the thing is there will be no "new" powerbook anytime soon...... maybe better prices and maybe little (1.6 1.7 g4??) more mhz but that won`t change the fact that pc`s outperform macs. that`s a little sad because powerbooks seem to be the most well-buildt and good looking laptops around. unfortunately they are oldguys specwise.......

Just because your laptop has a bigger number attached to the CPU doesn't mean it's faster. If you'd had any working knowledge of computer architecture, you'd know that there are several factors to performance other than clock speed (pipelining, anyone?). I'll grant that the G4 isn't the fastest chip that mankind has produced, but as far as audio processing goes, I'll take my 900Mhz iBook any day of the week over a dell craptop.

Oh yeah, and there won't be a G5 powerbook for awhile. Last I heard, apple was still dealing with heating and size constraint issues. Besides, you never want to buy the 1st generation technology in a laptop series... best to invest in the 2nd or 3rd gen after all the problems have been uncovered by other unwitting consumers...

That being said, you should definitely get more ram for your laptop if you can afford it. OS X has a very advanced memory caching model, and you'll find that you quite a bit more performance with more memory. Plus, live itself supports loading all samples directly into memory rather than reading from disk, so this alone will help increase your performance a bit. I think that you'll find that bumping your ram up in your laptop is a much wiser investment than buying a whole new computer, at least until your laptop gets super old.

ocp · Post by **ocp** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:12 pm

I have a TiBook 550 with 1 GB of RAM and I'm not complaining.

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:29 pm

sqook wrote: Oh yeah, and there won't be a G5 powerbook for awhile. Last I heard, apple was still dealing with heating and size constraint issues. Besides, you never want to buy the 1st generation technology in a laptop series... best to invest in the 2nd or 3rd gen after all the problems have been uncovered by other unwitting consumers...

myth alert... MYTH ALERT
i love it when people hate on 1st generation apple products.
i've owned multiple first generation macs, in fact i've ONLY owned 1st Gen Apples.
the G3 iMac, G4 PowerMac, G4 Powerbook Titanium 400mhz, and G4 Powerbook Aluminum 12" 867mhz.
did i have a single problem with any of these Macs?

No

the myth that First gen apple products are more faulty than 2nd or 3rd gen is all based on hearsay. Hearsay that neglects the multiple 2nd and 3rd generation Mac problems (G3 PB melting power supplies, G5 PM hums?, G4 PM and eMac malfunctioning cooling fans, anyone? anyone?). The point is there are as many occasional problems with 2nd and 3rd generation apple products, including laptops, so its not fair to single out 1st generation macs. all of which are rare problems, none of which affected every unit in a model family. They are called Apples, not Lemons, for a reason.

toyo · Post by **toyo** » Tue Nov 09, 2004 9:54 pm

I agree with AdamJay, not only 1st gen products are faulty, but all of them can be. i have owned 6 powerbooks over the years, and there was only one that i was really happy with. currently i have a g4 alu 1.25ghz PB, which had the whitespots on the screen, a faulty harddrive and i am still waiting for a new keyboard.
but that said, lots of my pc-mates have problems as well, and some of my mac-mates never had a problem.
and yes i would definitely max out the ram, for a TiBook it's quite cheap now anyway.

dcs · Post by **dcs** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 1:29 am

While we all wait for the next generation Apple laptops, why not put together a <$1000 shuttle box Windows system? Small enough to be portable. Cheap enough to replace in a year or two. Able to run all those cool Windows-only apps and plugins.

Machinesworking · Post by **Machinesworking** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:03 am

polemans wrote:thinking of upgrading the ram in my powerbook 550mhz, i have 256mb at the moment.
any ideas?

This is a great example of what Adam Jay was saying..... the 550 and 667 from that year are the worst of the line....

polemans, just get a new powerbook. You will experience a SERIOUS speed increase from nearly any newer powerbook you get. The 400mhz AdamJay owned is faster that your powerbook, something to do with the chip, and lack of third level cache.

I owned the 667, and after a couple months with it wondered why it seemed like it wasn't any better than my old 400mhz. tower, speed tests proved it was not. The 800mhz. I replaced it with is roughly twice as fast!

good part about this is for most people the CPU performs just as good as it should, for audio it's lacking however, so you should be able to sell it and buy another used, slightly better model for not much of an investment.

What with Wormhole and all, I have thought about a dedicated PC rack, might be nice. Then again, like I need more technological distractions?

AdamJay · Post by **AdamJay** » Wed Nov 10, 2004 7:12 am

dcs wrote:While we all wait for the next generation Apple laptops, why not put together a <$1000 shuttle box Windows system? Small enough to be portable. Cheap enough to replace in a year or two. Able to run all those cool Windows-only apps and plugins.

i agree, if only to hold you over while waiting for Apple to make its next leap in technology... since Ableton live for the most part is transparent from Mac to PC (aside from menubar organization, which is an OS level thing)

i just recently configured a dedicated Studio Shuttle PC for someone and the budget was coincidentally $1,000 after shipping. and even more coincidentally, he was also wanting a shuttle to hold him over until a 2ghz G5 Powerbook.

here's what he got:
Biostar SFF
17" LCD @ 1280x1024
Athlon XP 3200
160GB WD Serial ATA HD
1GB DDR400 Ram
16X Dual Layer DVDRW
SB Audigy 24/96 PCI Soundcard
PS/2 Keyboard & Logitech Mouse

all parts from newegg, with exception of the processor coming from Portatech.com. took him 30 minutes to assemble. 2 hours after the fedex man knocked on the door he was working with ableton live.

total price = $988
Arctic Silver Thermal Paste for CPU

to ram or not to ram powerbook g4 550

to ram or not to ram powerbook g4 550

Re: to ram or not to ram powerbook g4 550