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daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

[Snow] RAM requirements for OS X 10.6.8

On my Version 1,1 Mac Pro (two 2.66 GHz CPU's and 4 GB of RAM), I experience occasional slowdowns and beachballs (especially in Safari); I figured it was just a normal situation. But, I recently had a chance to spend a few minutes with a Mac Pro identical to mine, except that this one has 10 GB of RAM, and I see that it is a lot more responsive. Even on a simple task (calling up a list of the installed Applications under "About This Mac"), the other MP does it significantly faster, even though it has many more programs installed than mine does.

Since Snow Leopard is approved for various Mac laptops (which can only hold 4 GB of RAM), why should I need more than that in my MP to have a satisfactory experience?

Apple does have recommendations on which slots to populate first, but I have eight 512 MB memory modules, so all of the slots are filled. Thus, the issue cannot be related to improper memory installation.
Liberty
Premium Member
join:2005-06-12
Arizona

Liberty

Premium Member

I had 4 gig in my MBP originally
I yanked those 2 2 gig chips out and replaced with $50 worth of 2 4 gig chips and made a world of difference
Best $50 I spent on a mac...

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt to daveinpoway

Premium Member

to daveinpoway
Jeez, your MP came with 8x512MB? Or did you upgrade it to that? That's terrible slot management...

Anyway, 4GB vs 10GB shouldn't make a difference in opening up About This Mac, unless you have something chewing up CPU or memory. Have you checked in your activity monitor how many page outs you have after several hours running after a fresh reboot?

But ideally you should have 8GB+ in a machine like that.

In terms of upgrade possibility, you can remove two 512mb modules, get 2x2GB or 2x4GB modules.

Sebehk
USN Retired, 1993-2013, yvan eht nioj
Premium Member
join:2002-02-09
Pueblo, CO

Sebehk to daveinpoway

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to daveinpoway
I've been slowly upgrading my RAM in my MacPro1,1 since I've bought it (2006). As of right now, I have 14 GB of RAM. Originally started with 2 GB of RAM.

Same goes with the video card. It originally had the NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT. Upgraded it to the 8800 GT. Now, it has the ATI Radeon HD 5770.

Also, added an SSD as its startup drive.

These were my way of prolonging my Mac Pro's life. No beach balls, lockups, or kernel panics (last time I saw a KP was 2005, on my old PM G4/400!). My Mac Pro's age was definitely shown when I could NOT install MacOS X 10.8. Bummer.

No more upgrades for me...saving up to get the new Mac Pro.

--->Robert
8-)
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway to HiVolt

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to HiVolt
It came with two 512 MB modules. When CompUSA closed up (in 2007), I hit all of the San Diego stores to find whatever Mac Pro RAM they had- all I could locate was six 512 MB's, so that is what I added.

Even though Fry's Electronics sold the Mac Pro, they did not carry any RAM with the proper heatsinks, so I could not buy anything there. At the Apple Store, the prices were high, so that was out.

"About This Mac" shows that the Status is "OK" for all 8 of the modules, so there doesn't appear to be any RAM malfunction.

The Activity Monitor shows no page-outs, even after several hours of operation.

It is interesting that the other Mac Pro shows superior responsiveness immediately after turn-on, since the desktop loads much faster than mine does. Sometimes, it takes almost a minute for my desktop to appear and you hear the hard drive constantly thrashing away during that time.

SMARTReporter identifies no issues with my hard drive and I run DiskWarrior on it from time to time (in order to optimize it), so the drive itself should not be at fault.
daveinpoway

daveinpoway to Sebehk

Premium Member

to Sebehk
Since I don't do advanced video tasks, the 7300 GT video card is fine for me. I love the fact that it is fanless (and thus silent)- no point in adding any additional fan noise.

Yes an SSD could help, but the other Mac Pro seems to work fine without one, so this would not appear to be essential.

There are hacks which reportedly enable you to install Mountain Lion on an early Mac Pro, but I don't personally know anybody who has done this, so I cannot say how well this works.

I have been looking at used Mac Pro prices in Craigslist, but, if a RAM upgrade will help, I don't need to buy something else right now. Snow Leopard does a good job for me, so Mountain Lion is not presently a must-have.

HiVolt
Premium Member
join:2000-12-28
Toronto, ON

HiVolt

Premium Member

Is your boot drive original? Maybe the other one has had it replaced for a faster one?

I have a 10K RPM Velociraptor hard drive in one of my work Mac Pro's, and that sped things up considerably vs the stock drive it came with. Nowadays I would just add a SSD because they've gotten much cheaper, but this was a few years ago I upgraded it.
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

Yes, my hard drive is the original one (Western Digital 7200 PRM). I tried a Velociraptor once, but it made too much noise and vibration for me; I like my computers to be powerful but also civilized.

Unless they came out with a silent 10,000 or 15,000 RPM hard drive, I assume that the other Mac Pro does not have this, since I heard no excess noise from it.

I suppose that the best way to pin down whether it is the RAM or not is to arrange to borrow the memory from the other one and put it into mine. If I immediately see the same responsiveness that the other computer had, that will settle it.

One person I know (he has a 1,1 and a 3,1 Mac Pro) says that he never sees beachballs, since he does not use his MP's; he uses a 2002 Windows PC with about a 1.2 GHz CPU (long story). He is now looking for a 4,1 or 5,1 model- that will probably sit around unused, also.
Daemon
Premium Member
join:2003-06-29
Washington, DC

Daemon to daveinpoway

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to daveinpoway
load up activity monitor on each machine

click on the system memory tab at the bottom. First, note how much free memory you have (green text). If it's below about 25MB, more memory would improve the speed of the computer at whatever level you're using it at that moment. Then, look at the "page outs" line. If you run out of free memory, OS X will page it out to disk, which is 100s of times slower than RAM. If you have any page outs, then adding more memory will help you at least some of the time.

On my MBA running mountain lion, I have 4GB soldered to the main board. At the moment, I'm writing a scientific paper, which requires me to run MS Word, MATLAB, and Adobe Illustrator simultaneously. That right there just about uses all 4GB, especially if I have many images open in illustrator. As a result, my page outs are about 14GB.

OTOH, OS X is very good about using extra memory and will just start caching more and more and more things unless you need the RAM for some active task. That means that future program launches are faster because half of it is already cached in RAM waiting for you. There is no harm to piles of RAM, except on your pocketbook.
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

I have never noticed any page-outs, which makes it surprising that 4 GB of RAM is not sufficient. The Activity Monitor has always shown a healthy amount of Green (Free) RAM in the pie-chart.

joeybee
Joey
Premium Member
join:2003-08-12
Hamilton, ON

joeybee to daveinpoway

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to daveinpoway
Was the other MP also running 10.6.8? My MP 1,1 still runs fine with Lion and 8GB of RAM. I did notice some improvements when I moved to Lion.

Also it's possible the other MP might be running a RAID with 2 or more drives. That can speed things up too. I had mine on a dual drive RAID for awhile and noticed it is a bit slower now to load up with just a single drive.
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

Yes, the other Mac Pro is running 10.6.8 (just as mine is).

Since the other MP only has one hard drive (a Western Digital 7200 RPM one) installed, I am sure that it is not using any RAID.

I have 4 hard drives in my MP, but the one that Snow Leopard runs from has the same specifications as the (single) drive in the other MP, so hard drive differences cannot be responsible.

I have moved the RAM from the other computer into mine and things are snappier. Even loading the home page of the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper (a definite slow operation) is faster. I cannot explain why, since no page-outs were ever observed with the 4 GB of RAM installed, so that "should" have been sufficient.

I still don't know what is happening with my MP regarding loading the desktop when I turn the computer on. Sometimes, it will load quickly; other times, it takes almost a minute, with severe hard drive thrashing taking place. Something is obviously different between the fast and slow situations, but I am not sure what. The number of desktop icons is always the same, so this is not the issue.

I haven't played with the other MP enough to know whether it also experiences slow desktop loading from time to time.

billaustin
they call me Mr. Bill
MVM
join:2001-10-13
North Las Vegas, NV

billaustin

MVM

Check the labels on the RAM modules and compare the speed. The system will adjust bus speed to accommodate the capabilities of the installed RAM modules. It is quite possible that the older modules you have operate at a lower speed that the ones you borrowed from the other machine.
Daemon
Premium Member
join:2003-06-29
Washington, DC

Daemon to daveinpoway

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to daveinpoway
I'm guessing it's a disk speed issue. OS X has a nasty habit of beachballing while it waits for a sleeping disk to spin up, even if the disk that's spinning up isn't the one you want to read/write on. Do your non-boot disks sleep?

tango_bob
join:2001-12-16
Evanston, IL

tango_bob to daveinpoway

Member

to daveinpoway
Have you checked your hard drive with something like Smart Utility?
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway to billaustin

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to billaustin
That is a good suggestion regarding the RAM speed, but all of the modules (the eight 512 MB's I have plus the ones in the other Mac Pro) are 567 MHz (which is what is specified for the 1,1 MP). I have read that the memory can slow down if it overheats, but all of the modules have the proper heatsinks on them.
daveinpoway

daveinpoway to Daemon

Premium Member

to Daemon
Yes, the non-boot disks spin down when not in use. But, when first starting up, all of the disks are active, so this would not explain the desktop taking a long time to load (only sometimes).

When the desktop loads quickly, all of the icons appear at once. During a slow load, the icons appear a few at a time, until they are all present.
daveinpoway

daveinpoway to tango_bob

Premium Member

to tango_bob
I have used SMARTReporter; it shows no problems. I also downloaded a free trial of DriveDx this afternoon; it also discovered no issues.

As I indicated in my initial post, I also use DiskWarrior from time to time (in order to optimize the drive).

tango_bob
join:2001-12-16
Evanston, IL

tango_bob to daveinpoway

Member

to daveinpoway
Does Activity show any process hogging the CPU?
Does this happen when booted in safe mode?
Does this happen in a different use account?
Does this happen when booted off an external drive?
I really don't think it's a RAM issue, but have you run memtest yet?
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

No processes are shown using a lot of CPU resources- right now, the CPU is shown as 99% idle.

Since the slow desktop loading only happens once in awhile, I have not tried booting many times into safe mode to see what happens.

Again, since the slow desktop load is intermittent, I have not tried many instances of a different user account.

I have not tried an external hard drive, but I have a few which have Snow Leopard on them. Again, since the condition is intermittent, I may need to use an external drive many times before I see something happen.

Yes, I ran memtest86+ for over 10 hours- no RAM errors and no ECC errors were found.

After a slow desktop load, I have looked in the Console, but I have not seen any failures shown.

If I knew why the hard drive is constantly thrashing while a slow desktop load is taking place, this would probably help a great deal. I don't know how to determine this, however.

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

Snow Leopard requires 1 gb ram, but you should add as much ram as your machine can hold.
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

Yes, I am sure that more RAM is good, but, if the slow desktop loading was due to insufficient RAM, I would expect the desktop to load slowly every time (since the amount of memory is always the same).

Since the slow loading only happens sometimes, some other issue must be involved.
daveinpoway

daveinpoway

Premium Member

Perhaps this explains all of the hard drive activity: »support.apple.com/kb/TA20856

Brendan
Warr Guitar
join:2000-07-14
Portland, OR

1 edit

Brendan to daveinpoway

Member

to daveinpoway
I just put this in mine:
»www.amazon.com/gp/produc ··· F8&psc=1

You should do the EFI64 hack and install Mountain Lion. Runs like a champ on my 1,1.
»www.jabbawok.net/?p=47
daveinpoway
Premium Member
join:2006-07-03
Poway, CA

daveinpoway

Premium Member

Thanks- I will look into that RAM.

I haven't decided whether to use the Mountain Lion hack or not- for now, Snow Leopard works fine for me, so I haven't even used Lion.

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

I have put random laptop memory into both my imac and my old white macbook (Well, value memory, that fit the specifications of the device). Never had an issue.

The apple certified stuff is a ripoff. You know why? BECAUSE INTERNALLY IT'S THE SAME AS OTHER MACHINES (Even if it's designed better, it still uses the same Intel parts and what not)

With all of this said, you do need ECC memory. Don't get any random memory that isn't up to specification. But 'Apple certified' is a ripoff.

joeybee
Joey
Premium Member
join:2003-08-12
Hamilton, ON

joeybee

Premium Member

said by Metatron2008:

I have put random laptop memory into both my imac and my old white macbook (Well, value memory, that fit the specifications of the device). Never had an issue.

The apple certified stuff is a ripoff. You know why? BECAUSE INTERNALLY IT'S THE SAME AS OTHER MACHINES (Even if it's designed better, it still uses the same Intel parts and what not)

With all of this said, you do need ECC memory. Don't get any random memory that isn't up to specification. But 'Apple certified' is a ripoff.

In the case of the Mac Pro it is best to go with Apple certified.

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

said by joeybee:

said by Metatron2008:

I have put random laptop memory into both my imac and my old white macbook (Well, value memory, that fit the specifications of the device). Never had an issue.

The apple certified stuff is a ripoff. You know why? BECAUSE INTERNALLY IT'S THE SAME AS OTHER MACHINES (Even if it's designed better, it still uses the same Intel parts and what not)

With all of this said, you do need ECC memory. Don't get any random memory that isn't up to specification. But 'Apple certified' is a ripoff.

In the case of the Mac Pro it is best to go with Apple certified.

People said that about every Apple machine. These are no longer PPCs (Which is why you had 'apple certified'). They use intel, amd, and nvidia parts. As long as it fits specification there is no reason to buy 'Apple Certified'.

joeybee
Joey
Premium Member
join:2003-08-12
Hamilton, ON

joeybee

Premium Member

But the Mac Pro isn't just a regular desktop. It's server hardware. It needs ECC RAM with proper heatsinks. Would you buy cheap RAM for any other server?

Metatron2008
You're it
Premium Member
join:2008-09-02
united state

Metatron2008

Premium Member

i said ecc , ecc doesn't mean 'apple certified'