Upgrading Speed of my iMac.

CyberDave

How do I go about upgrading the spedd of my iMac? Below is a screenshot of the 'About This Mac' window. Not sure what I shopuld be looking for. I just know it needs to be faster. Thanks.

keredern

I'm not techie :(but your RAM is very low!:eek:

You will need to check to see how much you can upgrade to.

Upgrade to the max you can & that will certainly help.

The processor also looks low in spec, e.g. my iMac is running a 3.2 GHz!



I don't know if you can upgrade your processor...I'm guessing not!!

But definitely a RAM upgrade should do the trick!:)

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CyberDave

Yeah. It's a few years old alright. Just need to know what RAM upgrade I should be looking for...

Huggles

CyberDave wrote: »

Yeah. It's a few years old alright. Just need to know what RAM upgrade I should be looking for...

Get yourself over to crucial.com and run the scan app - it will show you how many slots you have and various combinations your computer will hold. Cheap as chips too

CyberDave

Huggles wrote: »

Get yourself over to crucial.com and run the scan app - it will show you how many slots you have and various combinations your computer will hold. Cheap as chips too

Cool. Thanks.

barryj

Check out your machine on http://crucial.eu

You're probably looking at a max of 2GB - but that should be a big improvement.

- barry

minikin

link to max ram upgrade on crucial

CyberDave

Downloaded that scanner, but it doesn't seem to work. Are there any alternatives?

Sad Professor

Use minikin's link above. That's the correct RAM for your machine.

The extra RAM will make a fairly big difference.

CyberDave

minikin wrote: »

link to max ram upgrade on crucial

Thanks Minikin.

Greentree_uk

your mac is a core Duo, so it will always be pretty slow. Ram will help a bit but it really depends on what exactly you are wanting to do with your machine?! a newer hard disc will also give it a boost. your machine is 5 years old. if you had a core2duo it might be worth doing something with it but there's not much more life out of that processor. As I said, it really depends on what you want to do

barryj

Extra RAM will only speed things up if you need more than you have. You can establish the state of play for your system, by running activity monitor (it should be in your utility folder). The section for System Memory, will be of interest. You should keep an eye on this as you use your computer. If the number of page outs keeps increasing, then extra RAM will likely make a difference to you.

When there is not enough RAM to run the applications needed, then the computer uses disk instead of memory, this is called virtual memory. Basically, when the machine needs some RAM that isn't available, it saves a copy of what was in RAM to the hard disk (swaps out) and then reads that back in again (swaps in) when needed at a later stage. This works, and allows your computer to avail of more memory than it has, but because your disk speed is hugely slower than RAM, it can slow things down a lot. It's best if you can minimize this process, by having sufficient RAM for the apps you need running.

A faster disk may also benefit you, but not to the same extent as having sufficient RAM. But as pointed out, there are diminishing returns in investing much money in an old machine. Memory (RAM) is a relatively cheap investment that will likely return the most bang for buck.

- barry

jakdublin

If you have the original disks you could back up and do a clean install. Over the years you've probably installed lots of junk you don't need. I've just done it and my iMac is a fair bit faster. Be careful though, I lost my iphoto library in the process. My wife's library was there but mine vanished. Apparently it's an issue with Snow Leopard. I was able to rescue my photos from my iPad but lost the albums and other data.

minikin

CyberDave wrote: »

Thanks Minikin.

No worries, wonder would it be worth your while replacing your hard drive with an ssd drive?
Might be getting into 'good money after bad' territory there though.

Ranicand