disapointing Mini Ram upgrade

eas

Hello

My 1.4 Mini runs ok but can get bogged down from time to time in PS. So I decided to upgrade the ram. Not expecting a world of difference, but expecting a difference just the same. In any case I was excited the other day when I got the ram in the post.

To justify the €130 in my head, I took some timings before I changed the ram

times with 512 Megs ram - all times are averaged from 3 test results

Boot from off - 40.6 seconds
Launch PS CS - 5.4 seconds
Radial Blur - 100 %, best quality on a 900*600 image - 10.4 seconds

times with 1 gig ram -

Boot from off - 41.3 seconds
Launch PS CS - 4.9 seconds
Radial Blur - 100 %, best quality on a 900*600 image - 10.1 seconds.

arrrgg. Not the results I was looking for, some of the times seem slower!. The first two I didn't really expect to see much difference to be honest, but I did expect to see the radial blur drop by a couple of seconds at least.

After this, I noticed that the 512 card I took out was PC 3200 rated at 400 MHz and the 1 gig card put in was a PC 2700 rated at 333 MHz.

I'm not that savvy with the insides of computers, can anyone tell me if there is a big difference between the two types of ram? Am I expecting too much to see a difference in these types of tests? What should I expect from doubling ram from 512 to gig? Should I sell the mini and be done with it and go for the Imac? (don't answer that one...I already know the answer

anyhow thanks - any input appreciated.

zAbbo

You have twice as much memory but its running at a slower clock speed(333mhz )

The difference between 256 and 512 would have been quite a bit, the difference between 512 and 1gb, not so much on speed.

Your stats seem correct basing on a slower ram speed

eas

so there is that much differnce in the speed of the ram?

the reason is - I was told by the vendor that this was the ram I wanted to upgrade my Mini with - it seems that he was wrong

I may try and return it in that case.

jessy

what your trying to time has shag all to do with the speed of your RAM, its the speed of your hard disk thats slowing you down, Mini is running @4200rpm afaik which is going to be slow anyways, Speed of your RAM is 100000s faster than your harddisk.

zAbbo

the more ram he has will require less paging to disk, but you're right your are probably bottlenecked by the performance of the hardrive/cpu/ram.

Whats the exact spec?

edunon

Get a external FIREWIRE Hard Disk at least 7200 rpm, clone the internal one to it. Now boot from the external disk and you'll be on another level

I have a powerbook, when I'm at home I have it connected to a external HD Firewire, 250Gb. When I have to go, I use SuperDuper to clone the parts of the HD I need on the move.

If you are worried about design, have a look at this/

edunon

Forgot to say: Don't use a usb HD, as you won't be able to boot from it!

deevey

That external drive looks the dogs wobblies .. but if you want everything to stay small....

Just get a 7200 rpm drive for the mini for about .. it made a huge diff to my ibook (basically the same) .. fist job i did to it actually..

you can always use the existing drive in a 2.5 enclosure as a small portable external drive (59 odd euro) .. as i did..

<edit>

OMG .. near 200 euro for an 80 gig intermal 7200 2.5' drive .. maybe .... laptop drives havent gone down in price.. but of you dont wanna go external..

K.O.Kiki

deevey wrote:

Just get a 7200 rpm drive for the mini for about .. it made a huge diff to my ibook (basically the same) .. fist job i did to it actually..

you can always use the existing drive in a 2.5 enclosure as a small portable external drive (59 odd euro) .. as i did..

<edit>

OMG .. near 200 euro for an 80 gig intermal 7200 2.5' drive .. maybe .... laptop drives havent gone down in price.. but of you dont wanna go external..

Sorry to butt in, but how did you change the HDD in an iBook? Any guides? Also, how does that affect battery life?

Sarunas

deevey: you replaced the 4200 hdd in your ibook with 7200rpm?

SouperComputer

changing the HD in an ibook is handy enough, just make sure you give yourself plenty of time to do it. Theres a good frew screws and plates to come off, but other than that its handy enough.

deevey

changing the hdd in the ibook is quite easy.. but not for the novice

performace time ...works out about 40% quicker boot, video runs smooth with multi apps open and everything is a little more fluid.

The hdd runs cooler than a 4200rpm..

Power consuption is about equal maybe even a little better, the 7200 drives are supposed to be more efficiant.

i usually get 4.5 hours with full screen brightness .. 6+ with screen dimmed to lowest..3 hours odd with full screen brightness and running a DVD.

warnings..you do have the danger of breaking and scuffing the seams if your not careful (i happened to have the antiscuff plastic "cracking" tool after a processor upgrade to my old powerbook..) be careful if using a screwdriver to do this bit.

leave yourself plenty of time and get a few diff containers for the screws.. (theres about 40 in total to get to the HDD)

Oh and as i found check the power wires to the screen ... mine were already almost cut through before opening it sealed it up though.. (apparantly its happeded a few people where a power cable cuts through and shorts on the frame and MoBo.)

eas

thanks for all the information here - great help.

I've found this out as well -

"The Mac mini can only use speeds of PC2700 RAM, no higher. Apple ships the Mac mini sometimes with PC3200 becasue it cost no more, and they just grab whichever to put in the Mac mini. The PC3200 in the mini just under-clocks to PC2700, that's all."

I'm also glad to say that over the weekend I was doing work on the machine and found a marked improvement between Photoshop, flash and dreamweaver with itunes and a widget or two running. So my disapointing upgrade isnt so disapointing after all. I hope I didn't scare anyone off upgrading from 512 to 1024. That certainly was not my intention.

I will look into an internal or external drive in the near future - either that or swap up for the Imac.

thanks again

heggie

hmm i find the mini fine for graphics work with 1gb ram. btw when i worked in a shop i really hated the ppl who 'compared' machines by opening acrobat etc. - it's really not an indication of speed. Anyways, for an external hdd i just got one of these today - the lacie mini companion. looks good, and is cheap.
http://www.pixmania.com/ie/uk/155568/art/lacie/mini-companion-hard-drive.html
They're availabie from 80 - 250 gb's, the latter being much better value.