Thank you for being a valued part of the CNET community. As of December 1, 2020, the forums are in read-only format. In early 2021, CNET Forums will no longer be available. We are grateful for the participation and advice you have provided to one another over the years.

Thanks,

CNET Support

General discussion

Mixing memory in iMac?

Jan 21, 2008 1:20AM PST

I have an iMac (20", OS X 10.4.11) purchased a few months ago and I'd like to add some more memory. It has 1GB. Is it okay to put a 2GB card in the other slot, or should they match in size; i.e., two 1GB cards, not one 1GB and one 2GB?

TIA

Discussion is locked

- Collapse -
Memory
Jan 21, 2008 5:44AM PST

It is ok to put a different size in that second slot.

Apple, and a lot of other companies, say that you will get better performance if both the slots contain identical RAM.

Increasing your RAM by 2GB is going to give you an edge and I doubt that you will even notice the difference in performance, apart from the speed boost.

Go ahead and do it.

P

- Collapse -
Doesn't pay to scrap some memory
Jan 26, 2008 9:36AM PST

Hi have a 17in C2D imac and I ran into the same problem. My mac came stock with 2- 512MB sticks so I had to scrap one. I had to either buy 2 new one GB sticks or just buy one 2 GB stick. I bought a 2 GB stick from Muskin memory and love it. It made the mac much more responsive. I have a total of 2.5 GB and my Dashboard comes onto screen immediately. I don't think matching the sticks is a big deal, just make sure you get some name brand memory for that Mac! Macs don't like the real cheap stuff! Hope this helps.

- Collapse -
Thanks!
Jan 26, 2008 10:23PM PST

Hi folks! Thanks for the replies. I put an appropriate 2GB Kingston memory stick into the available slot in the iMac and all seems great. (I have purchased Kingston memory in the past for my PCs, as well as other Kingston products, and I have always been quite satisfied.) The "About This Mac" info now says: Memory 3 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Cool.

While I don't have particularly demanding tasks (yet, at least, I'm still new to the Mac) such as editing video and so forth, I have indeed noticed the enhancement. In particular, I have Parallels installed with Win XP Pro (yeah I feel like I'm cheating when I fire it up but I have no choice because of some Windows-only custom software developed for where I work). I have an added monitor plugged in and when needing to work in Parallels and XP, I slide that over to the additional monitor. Before the memory addition, when I would click back to a Mac program from Parallels/XP, I would often get the spinning pinwheel for a few short seconds (no biggie but noticeable). Now, however, it's all instant, no pinwheel, it's as though it's one uninterrupted happy family.Happy

Bob