Commatic Limited - Apple Information

At Commatic, we have been using Apple Macintosh based products for a number of years. From their excellent PowerBook range to the innovative iSight and their new Intel-based iMac

You can purchase Apple products, directly from Apple, by using the links on this page

Apple memory upgrade for the Intel-based iMac

The Intel-based iMac 20" comes with 512 Mb as standard which is a little disappointing. If you are running multiple applications at the same time or you are running memory hungry applications like Photoshop then your iMac will benefit from a memory upgrade.

The Intel-based iMac has two memory slots so your upgrade options are as follows:

1) Add a second 512Mb memory chip to get 1Gb total memory
2) Add a 1Gb memory chip to get 1.5Gb total memory
3) Remove the existing 512Mb and replace with two 1Gb memory chips to get 2Gb total memory

But how much will my iMac benefit from a memory upgrade?

Well, this very much depends on exactly what applications you are using and the number of applications you are running at a time.

In the table below you will see the results of a number of 'real world' tests that we carried out with the standard 512Mb of memory and then replicated after installing 2Gb total memory. After each test we shutdown the iMac.

The most noticeable improvements in speed occurred when loading the Apple Mail app for the second time (a reduction from 7.78 seconds to 1.85 seconds on the 2nd test with 2Gb and shutdown speed (down to 5.46 seconds from 14.55 seconds).

It is strange to see that some tasks took longer after the memory upgrade. Perhaps this is down to the fact that the iMac will store more data in memory when it has 2Gb than when it has 512Mb so initial loading of applications takes longer but subsequent processing is quicker as the data is in memory? The memory usage of the various applications reported by System Preferences did increase after installing the 2Gb of memory which seems to confirm that the applications were taking advantage of the extra memory.

It was also noted that there was a general feeling of speed improvement when using the iMac with 2Gb. Switching between apps was faster and there were less occurrences of the iMac being "busy" when asking it to do something.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, the 2Gb memory upgrade costs around £190 + VAT from one of the leading memory suppliers in the UK. Original Apple memory could cost twice this much.

After spending £1200 to £1300 on a Intel-based iMac 20inch, treat it to the memory upgrade!

For assistance with your Apple computers, please email info@commatic.co.uk

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