Maxed out Memory in 500Mhz iMac

[iGuy]

Today I maxed out the memory in my Mom's Indigo 500Mhz G3 iMac.  It had 384meg which I replaced with two 512 sticks.  I did this thinking it would speed things up a little for her since she is running OS 10.3.9.  After doing so I repaired permisions and did a restart.  I also checked system profiler which showed a total of 1GB memory.  I didn't get too much time to play with the computer but the little I did I was disappointed.  It didn't feel much faster.  Is OS X just too much for the old computer to handle?  I mean, it works ok but I was expecting a noticable speed increase.

I ran a couple of system updates also.  One being for quicktime.

Another issue I want to ask about.  I wanted to show my dad a funny video clip.  It was a Window Media file but runs well on my computer with Flip 4 and Quicktime.  Well, when I tried playing the video on Mom's indigo iMac it was jumpy and skipped.  Like I said, this same vid runs smoothly on my newer Intel iMac at home.  Does anyone know why it doesn't play smoothly on her's?  Is it that her computer can't handle the new software even with the maxed ram?

By the way, she payed $100 dollars for the two 512 sticks of memory.  Not getting a noticable speed increase is hard to take after spending that kind of money.  Make me feel bad for recommending it.

Ryan

[Mayo]

I think that the iMac will seem speedier when doing some tasks, while other things won't be noticeably quicker...

The video problem is probably due to the old video card in the iMac.  As computer and online video has evolved it has demanded more and more VRAM, and your mom's poor ol' G3 iMac is doing the best that it can to keep up. I'm surprised that you haven't noticed any video glitches before now.

Finally, when we upgraded our 600MHz G3 iMac to 10.4 it was definitely faster.  At the time, my wife and I regarded the upgrade as being akin to getting a new Mac.

[Xairbusdriver]

The extra RAM would help if the programs running could use it, especially if they were previously using disk-based "virtual RAM." If nothing you used made use of that RAM you probably won't see any speed differences. I never used Panther, so I'm not even close to an expert but I think it ran/runs fine in the original RAM the iMac had (384MB). So it probably isn't needing or using the extra, either.

Secondly, the system buss that is used may be quite slow compared to the 667KHz ones on the newest Macs. Additionally, whatever the speed of that bus, there may be only one built in and it may be feeding a smaller, slower system cache.

I suspect that the slower buss and cpu speeds may be the cause of the less-than-fluid display of the video, also. Video usually requires pretty fast speeds throughout the hardware.

Buy her a full-priced version of Photoshop and see if it runs better on the new setup! In the meantime, be sure to send her plenty of encouraging and loving emails! You'll both feel better!

[Mayo]

Panther (10.3) requires at least 128MB RAM. That's the minimum just for the operating system, and then there is the RAM required by everything else... In your original post you wrote that you upgraded the RAM hoping for "a little" speed boost, but after installing the RAM the iMac didn't feel "much faster" to you. It sounds like you didn't have much time to play around with the Mac, so I think that you need to use it more before you decide whether the RAM upgrade was a good thing or not.

You don't say what your parents do with the iMac, but the applications they use will make a big difference on an iMac of that vintage. Some apps and even Widgets can use a LOT of RAM. Do they have a dial-up or broadband Internet connection? Have you used Disk Utility to verify and repair the drive? I would also check the drive for fragmentation, which can seriously slow-down things.

I recently had the opportunity to work on an iMac like your mom's with the RAM maxed-out. It was running OS 10.4. While it wasn't as fast as my G5 and Core 2 Duo iMacs, it wasn't a turtle racing a hare either; it seemed perfectly fine for Internet surfing and basic computing tasks. I don't recall sitting around waiting for it to do its thing... (And when I switched from my G5 iMac to the Core 2 Duo iMac, I didn't notice a significant speed increase when doing basic computing tasks either...)

A 500MHz G3 is at the outer-limits of Mac computing and the G3 processors are not compatible with Leopard. IMO a G3 Mac is coming to the end of its useful life, and if the RAM increase and other suggestions do not speed things up sufficiently, then it is time to admit to yourselves that your parents have outgrown that cute little bugger and it is time to consider getting a new computer. If you don't require the Latest and Greatest Mac there can be some very good deals available; I have seen some very good prices on previous-generation iMacs that are every bit as capable as the new aluminum iMacs. (Apple recently offered refurbished 20" Core 2 Duo white iMacs for $849.)  In fact, I think that the monitor quality is superior on the previous iMacs, and I'm not referring to the matte vs. glossy issue.  DealMac is a great place to find good deals on Macs.

[chriskleeman]

Well Mayo, I'm thrilled to hear that you were able to upgrade a 600 Mhz G3 iMac to Tiger! It was the consensus here at TS when I went to upgrade the OS on my daughter's 500 Mhz G3 that 10.3.9 was as far as it would go... so maybe that extra 100 Mhz speed bump was the ticket!

But in reference to this thread, Ryan, I did basically the same thing you did to your Mom's computer to my daughter's Dalmation iMac, a very similar machine, in that all the bus specs, G3 speed, drive size, maximum RAM, etc., are exactly the same architechture.

We found a noticeable increase and smoothness in some applications, but IAW XABD that your video card and 500 Mhz G3 processor are not going to be very happy running internet videos... you could get by with the 100 Mhz system buss, but that 500 Mhz processor just isn't going to run some things that smoothly. The only caveat that I'm aware of is whether you may have had enough applications open to negate the amount of RAM you now have in that machine. But I do think that the basic problem with running that video doesn't have a whole lot to do with RAM.

I upgraded the RAM in two installments, going from 256 to 640 with Jaguar, and then adding another 512 stick when I upgraded to Panther. Noticeable in some apps, negligible in others, and it's been long enough that I played around on that computer that I can't remember which ones  

I have spent hundreds of dollars trying to stay "current", and try to keep several older machines upgraded so that I could "keep up" with present technology. The biggest drain was my old 9600, which predates your mother's iMac by several years. I added a very expensive G4 upgrade card, all kinds of stuff, only having to pretty much junk it a year or so later because it happens to be one of the 9600's that's too fickle to reliably run OSX with Ryan Rempel's wonderful program, XPostfacto. There are only a handful of TS'ers who are still using OS 9 on a regular basis. I still boot to it occasionally, but only when I need a program that won't run in Classic (which the new Intel's don't support).

It's only a matter of time before the G4 architecture becomes obsolete. It will probably be a few years yet, and IAW Mayo that there are some pretty good deals on some fairly fast machines and some G5's that are much faster. The G5 architecture is a huge speed bump from the G4, but I expect to be doing just fine with my G4 iBook for quite a few years to come. A fast, relatively cheap G4 machine might be fairly cost-effective alternative for you or your parents to consider...

Don't feel too bad about your recommendation on the RAM upgrade, it was a logical step, and some stuff will really work much better.

HTH,

Chris K

[iGuy]

Thanks for the reply, Mayo.  I have not ran a Utility program on Mom's iMac.  I will have to find my older version of TechTool and give that a try.  

Before adding the ram she wasn't complaining about the speed.  I am the one that suggested it for future purposes.  Thinking it would squeeze more life out of it.  She only uses it for simple games, internet and email.  She would have no interest in buying a new computer yet.  She isn't the type to put more money into something she doesn't use much.

QUOTE

In the meantime, be sure to send her plenty of encouraging and loving emails!  You'll both feel better!

   Good idea, airbus!

[tacit]

QUOTE(Mayo @ Dec 10 2007, 08:22 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The video problem is probably due to the old video card in the iMac.  As computer and online video has evolved it has demanded more and more VRAM, and your mom's poor ol' G3 iMac is doing the best that it can to keep up. I'm surprised that you haven't noticed any video glitches before now.

Video RAM is not used for 2D tasks like showing movies, and the speed of the video card will not make a difference to such things.

Accelerated video cards are actually full-fledged computers--often more powerful than the machine they are plugged into Video RAM is used for three things: holding the contents of the screen (which takes an amount of RAM that is fixed and depends only on the screen resolution), holding and running computer programs written in languages like OpenGL, which render 3D scenes; and holding texture maps. The only benefit from a fast video card is in creating real-time 3D rendering, for example in 3D games such as World of Warcraft.

Anything which is not 3D, including tasks like playing moves, running Photoshop, and so on, doesn't benefit from a fast accelerated video card or from more VRAM. (Screen refresh when you click and drag a window does benefit, and certain other user interface tasks benefit, because Mac OS X treats windows like 3D objects, and the contents of the window like a texture map, if the window's contents are static.)

The video is jerky and stuttery because video on the Web is compressed. The computer's CPU has to uncompress every single frame of the video, and uncompress the audio as well. If the video is 30 frames per second, that means the computer's processor has to uncompress 30 separate compressed pictures every second and put them on the screen. This is an extremely processor-intensive task, especially with modern video formats that use very, very complex compression techniques.

Even with a modern, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line accelerated 3D graphics card with gobs of fast DDR2 VRAM, a 500 MHz G3 would not be able to show movies without stuttering, because te processor simply can not uncompress the frames fast enough.

[krissel]

Thanks Tacit for that explanantion.


As I mentioned in a thread a couple weeks ago, my niece's iMacDV 400 died while I was using it just after updating to 10.3.9. The POV board just went...poof! I took out the RAM, hard drive and DVD and the rest will go to a recycler. I had commented frequently how amazed I was that the little machine took so much abuse and still performed it's heart out.

I just picked up a used 600 iMac which will be arriving Wed. It will be a replacement for the original iMac but faster. You can find these on eBay for less than $50 ( I paid $31). Of course shipping adds to the cost. Even if my niece gets 6 months from it I figure it was worth it.

Also picked up a 800Mhz eMac from eBay and it looks and runs like new. It had a new 10.4.11 on it and runs not too shabbily with only 256 RAM. But I will be transferring a chip from the dead iMac which is the same used by the eMac (and my G4 DA) so you may be able to use that RAM if you move to another machine at some point. The eMac wants PC133 and the iMac PC100 but the former will run in the latter. The 512 chip I had put originally in the old iMac was PC133 so it will do fine in the eMac.

Incidentally, I cloned the Tiger install to an external FW drive and then to my DA to one volume. Then used Migration Assistant to transfer  my main install to the Tiger partition. Am now running from that. So I essentially got a new OS from the eMac purchase.


Anyway, run a disk utility, dump caches, etc. on the machine. If you have a FW external drive you might clone the main drive to it, then wipe the iMac and clone the install back. That will essentially defrag the drive and might speed things up a tad. One thing you might look at regarding the video is to select Thousands instead of Millions in the Display settings. That can help.

[gunug]

I'm running on a G4/400MHz with 1 Gig of RAM and when I notice it lagging I run MAC Helpmate (specifically the sections that clean up buffers and things).  I would expect a lag on videos running from the web on this machine as compared to the G5 iMAC I've got at work.  I didn't see that you said what your internet connection is.  Sometimes I have to reset the router (Linksys WRT54g) like I did this evening.  My son is attached with a faster PC playing World of Warcraft and I killed him out when I started up but I think the router was in a weird state.  I also changed over to a wireless connection and I don't seem to be interfering with him at all (even though it's through the same router).

[iGuy]

QUOTE

The video is jerky and stuttery because video on the Web is compressed. The computer's CPU has to uncompress every single frame of the video, and uncompress the audio as well. If the video is 30 frames per second, that means the computer's processor has to uncompress 30 separate compressed pictures every second and put them on the screen. This is an extremely processor-intensive task, especially with modern video formats that use very, very complex compression techniques.

Even with a modern, state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line accelerated 3D graphics card with gobs of fast DDR2 VRAM, a 500 MHz G3 would not be able to show movies without stuttering, because te processor simply can not uncompress the frames fast enough.

Nice explanation, tacit.  That is useful information I will pass on to my mom.

gunug, the video I was playing on her iMac wasn't streaming from the internet.  It had been fully downloaded to her hard drive.  The only thing her internet connection would of affected is how long it took to download it in the first place.  She has a wireless connection equivalent to a low DSL speed.  Wireless meaning she received her internet signal with a small antenna type hardware mounted outside her house.

[iGuy]

I ordered the RAM from OWC.  They do have a 30 day return policy.  I am going to attempt to return the RAM.  First I will get my mother's opinion on performance before doing so.