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2GB Ram in Mac Mini

C

cmstar

n00b
Joined
Jan 12, 2005
Messages
10
Apple often underspecs their Ram compatibility (for various reasons).

I noticed on PriceWatch.com today that you can get PC2700 compatible (the same kind as Mac Mini) 2GB sticks for $276. Apple charges over $400 for a 1GB stick.

I'm wondering if the Mini can, in fact, handle 2GB sticks instead of being limited to 1GB as Apple states?

Anyone able or willing to confirm this?
 
I'm wondering if 2gb of ram would be overkill with the CPU it comes with?
 
1gb vs 2gb makes a big difference in video editing/compositing applications. compiling as well, I would think.

besides, it makes the os faster. OS X will use the extra memory to cache. :D
 
I do not think it is possible as 1GB may very well be the limit the board can handle. Might be fun to try -if- I coud get a refund on the 2GB stick provided it does not work.
 
Methodical said:
1gb vs 2gb makes a big difference in video editing/compositing applications. compiling as well, I would think.

besides, it makes the os faster. OS X will use the extra memory to cache. :D
Click to expand...
Who in their right mind is gonna buy that dinky mini-mac to do even halfway-serious video editing??!!

I can't tell the difference between 1gig and 512mb of ram on my G4 @ 1.4ghz for general usage - so I am inclined to say that 2gigs is way overkill unless you are going to do serious video editing.
 
seanmcd said:
Who in their right mind is gonna buy that dinky mini-mac to do even halfway-serious video editing??!!

I can't tell the difference between 1gig and 512mb of ram on my G4 @ 1.4ghz for general usage - so I am inclined to say that 2gigs is way overkill unless you are going to do serious video editing.
Click to expand...

you beat me to that one...if you are going to do any type of serious number crunching I don't think the mini is what you are going to be getting :p
 
So if you can't edit video with it and it's too weenie to play games(and there are just too few games), what are you supposed to do with the thing?

I was looking to get one to do everything except playing games. Which would include video editing of our home movies and putting them onto DVD.

Would it be better to try to find a cheap used G4 powermac and give it a dual CPU upgrade?

What cpu would be good for video editing?
 
Archer75 said:
So if you can't edit video with it and it's too weenie to play games(and there are just too few games), what are you supposed to do with the thing?

I was looking to get one to do everything except playing games. Which would include video editing of our home movies and putting them onto DVD.

Would it be better to try to find a cheap used G4 powermac and give it a dual CPU upgrade?

What cpu would be good for video editing?
Click to expand...
That would make sense to me!

The appeal in the MiniMac is in its formfactor, anyone who says otherwise is lying.

A G4 Powermac would be much easier and cheaper to upgrade, and would be suitable for your video editing. The Powermac was Apples former workhorse, the MacMini simply does not fall into that category (at the same time im not saying it wouldnt be possible to do basic video editing on it).

I still want a MiniMac though :D
 
Ok, but what is the thing good for? Form factor is great and all, but it sounds like it really isn't much of a usable piece of hardware.
 
Internet, email, word processing, light vid editing, light photo editing, light gaming.....just kinda...light everything lol
 
What's the point in getting a mac to do just that when a PC can do the same just fine for much less?
Seems like the mac mini is really just a marketing gimick. But then I just want to buy one to screw around with OSX so I guess I bought into it.

Why can't they just release it for the PC, why oh why?!
 
I have a G4 cube that used for folding currently. But i can play Quake 3 and Starcraft on it. Other than that I really just used it for internet and music storage. I didn't feel like rebuying Office since I have it for my pc already.
 
actually I was thinking if you were going to get something for video editing (and that was your PRIMARY purpose for it) then this isn't the thing for you...if you want something that will take lite video edits...this would be great...processing power wise yeah...it is still a single CPU but has the fastest G4 that has been produced so it would do the job..technically it would work for Final Cut Pro as well just not as well as a Dual
 
bah, why wouldn't it work for video editing? Slap on a 250GB firewire drive and wheres the bottleneck? FCP keeps all the files portable and organized anyway, that way you are modular. Speed of the OS hard drive isn't an issue.
 
For the editing he's talking about, the one gig of ram + iMovie will be more then adequate...

FC Pro would benefit more from a duallie G5, but that's overkille for home movies :)
 
So without a superdrive I would be unable to burn with iDVD itself, correct? But I could still use the program to create my DVD's? I would just have to use an external burner and another program to do the actual burn?
 
I guess the next question is can the G5 take up to 16GB? With 2GB sticks in the 8 slots it would be incredibly expensive and awesome. $2400 bucks..damn
 
i bet you could do a little more than "lite" video editting on a mini.... ive done it on my laptop.. a p4 1.6 w/ 256mb ram... home movies and stuff... i mean nothing extreme... then get a g5... but photoshop will probly run decent on it too... i used to use a g4 at my old work w/ only 512mb ram... did some big photoshop file 50-60mb up to i think once 300mb file (now that one pretty much killed it but still) this g4 was slower than the mini... i think the mini is sweet! haah im def getting one in the next month or 2
 
I dont see why it wouldnt edit video fine...

I edited videos on a 1.25G G4 with 512mb ddr fine for a while. Albeit, the mini has a laptop HD so it's a litle slower but you can get a 60gb 7200rpm drive for it. Although you wont be able to store many projects at once, it will edit fine.
 
I think it would be fine for video editing. Bring it up to 1 gig of RAM and get yourself a firewire hard drive and it should be ok. I ran FCP3 on an 800mhz G4 with 1 gig of RAM and it ran quite well.
 
valve1138 said:
I think it would be fine for video editing. Bring it up to 1 gig of RAM and get yourself a firewire hard drive and it should be ok. I ran FCP3 on an 800mhz G4 with 1 gig of RAM and it ran quite well.
Click to expand...

I agree, My old dual 450 is still doing aftereffects in a small animation studio......

CN
 
Archer75 said:
So if you can't edit video with it and it's too weenie to play games(and there are just too few games), what are you supposed to do with the thing?

I was looking to get one to do everything except playing games. Which would include video editing of our home movies and putting them onto DVD.

Would it be better to try to find a cheap used G4 powermac and give it a dual CPU upgrade?

What cpu would be good for video editing?
Click to expand...
I'm not saying you CAN'T edit video you certainly could do nearly everything you can do with a normal G4 tower. - I'm just saying that if I am looking for something to edit video with - I'm gonna at least buy a computer that comes in a tower case that you can add cards and drives to. Now if my edit suite was in tiny hallway closet, then this mini-mac may be the answer!!
 
the mini mac is no more than the current line of ibooks without a battery/kb/mouse or screen, my 2 iBooks are killer for anything ive ever thrown at them, the one i recently took to a gb of ram and a 80gb hdd and its my %100 use machine now. The other is my fiances new toy and its perfect too, ive made TONS of home videos on it and its still rockin strong. The only bottleneck is the videocard not being able to be upgraded, which a rad9200 is pretty good...not the best but it will get the job done.
 
I don't think 2GB is overkill. It could be very usefull for artists and muscians using the Mac Mini as a portable studio.

You could also use 1GB of the Ram to create a Ram disk and run applications from that for increased performance and less wear and tear on the harddrive.
 
Tiger will apparently take greater use of large ammounts of RAM. This excerpt from mosr:
Interestingly, on machines with large amounts of RAM (2GB+, particularly 3-4GB+) Tiger appears to have begun aggressive RAM caching all sorts of data and can appear to consume upwards of a gigabyte of RAM just for this -- but it doesn't appear to conflict with RAM-intensive applications, and does seem to have a considerable effect of performance by reducing unncessary/non-sequential disk activity.
Click to expand...

So anyways this is a thread on whether it is possible, not the benefits (or lack of) 2GB of RAM. Is 16GB possible in the G5?
 
seanmcd said:
I'm not saying you CAN'T edit video you certainly could do nearly everything you can do with a normal G4 tower. - I'm just saying that if I am looking for something to edit video with - I'm gonna at least buy a computer that comes in a tower case that you can add cards and drives to. Now if my edit suite was in tiny hallway closet, then this mini-mac may be the answer!!
Click to expand...

Why do you need to add cards?

You have a firewire bus that can capture A/V perfectly fine (and in HD i might add)
You can also add on external FW drive (like mr. meth said, portability and modularity)

The video card is negligible since all it has to do is play back the video.
You have built in audio for previewing.

I don't see where you'd need add in cards.
 
KaosDG said:
Why do you need to add cards?

You have a firewire bus that can capture A/V perfectly fine (and in HD i might add)
You can also add on external FW drive (like mr. meth said, portability and modularity)

The video card is negligible since all it has to do is play back the video.
You have built in audio for previewing.

I don't see where you'd need add in cards.
Click to expand...
Uhhh, how about if I want to add a real sound card? How about if I want to add a video capture card (what if I still have Beta SP cams without firewire??) What if there is a major upgrade to Firewire next year and all the new cameras require the update, it would be nice to put a new firewire card in my machine yes? What if I a want to add an 802.11z card in two years? How about if I just don't feel manly enough if I don't have an ass load of future upgradability-ness?!? LOL I think this thread has gotten a bit off topic. I'm not here knocking the Mac - I love the mac as much as you do. I'm sorry to have driven this thread so far off into no-mans land.
 
Heres how I look at it, if my G4 iMac can do video / photos / everything else I throw at it, a faster mini with more ram will be more then adequate. 1GB of ram is more then enough for home video I think. I'm still running 512mb, using iMovie / Final Cut Express / iDVD and it runs pretty well for me.
 
I would bet that the great majority of users go forever without the need to add cards. without the firewire and USB 2.0, then yeah, sure it would be a no go. But thats what all those nice hi speed busses are FOR - to hang yer drives and what not off of.

And I would bet my left nad that 99 out of 100 listeners couldnt tell the diff between audio recorded on the mini with a iMic and one recorded with a sound card on a towarz.

anyone that has really serious NEEDS in those depts. shouldnt even be considering a mini. It's not the product in Apple's lineup for such things, the PM is. But I bet the actual results would not look or sound much different if done on the mini - it would just take longer to do those same things.
 
cmstar said:
Apple often underspecs their Ram compatibility (for various reasons).

I noticed on PriceWatch.com today that you can get PC2700 compatible (the same kind as Mac Mini) 2GB sticks for $276. Apple charges over $400 for a 1GB stick.

I'm wondering if the Mini can, in fact, handle 2GB sticks instead of being limited to 1GB as Apple states?

Anyone able or willing to confirm this?
Click to expand...
To stick with your original question - can you give me an example of when Apple has "Underspec'ed" their ram compatibility as far as max ram amount? I don't see why, if the machine COULD handle 2gigs, what reason they would have to lie (so to speak) and say it would only handle 1gb. wouldn't they rather sell you two gigs up front and make more money?
 
it is more of an issue of it was not TESTED with that much RAM...good example would be some of the older iBooks..when they were released they were only tested with say 320 (64 built in and an additional 256) but could really take up to 576 but in 1999 it was kind of hard (and expensive) to get a 512 chip...does it work..yeah but Apple never tested it so who knows how it will work...now if you look at the price of a 2 Gig chip you are talking about $800 (crucial) so the question would be why test to see if it is supported when the cost of the RAM is almost 2X the cost of the unit?
 
firey-eyez said:
like the previous poster said, even if it could handle 2 gigs why would you want to?
Click to expand...

Final Cut Pro

Archer75 said:
What cpu would be good for video editing?
Click to expand...

If you want the cheaper route, iMac G5


Since the Mini and the Powerbooks use the same cpu I would guess the mini can do final cut pro just fine.

Does final cut pro use the video card GPU? Or is it all on the CPU?
 
I believe it's just about all CPU. CoreImage will take care of that though - head over to Apple and look for the tech behind 10.4.

the two things that will make the most difference in Tiger is resource locking for dual CPU's and CoreImage. 10.4 is going to rock so hard, it will be on the Billboard Top 100. :cool:
 
Archer75 said:
What's the point in getting a mac to do just that when a PC can do the same just fine for much less?
Seems like the mac mini is really just a marketing gimick. But then I just want to buy one to screw around with OSX so I guess I bought into it.

Why can't they just release it for the PC, why oh why?!
Click to expand...

I can answer that perfectly, my Mother. She prefers Mac over PCs. She is currently using an old 8500 that's been upgraded to a G3. It's on its last legs and if anything major dies, it's going to be hell to repair it. She doesn't need power house graphics, she's not going to upgrade her computer and wants a new machine but doesn't want to pay $1300+. Even with doubling the RAM $575 for a brand new machine with a warranty is much easier for her to accept than $1300 for the new LCD iMac. She doesn't need a screen, she has an LCD already, same with a keyboard and mouse.

It's a low cost machine for people who like Mac or want to start with a Mac but don't want to spend a lot of money. Any PC you get in the same price range is not going to be "feature rich" or usable for anything other than basics anyways.
 
seanmcd said:
To stick with your original question - can you give me an example of when Apple has "Underspec'ed" their ram compatibility as far as max ram amount? I don't see why, if the machine COULD handle 2gigs, what reason they would have to lie (so to speak) and say it would only handle 1gb. wouldn't they rather sell you two gigs up front and make more money?
Click to expand...
When I got my beige G3 the box said the Max ram was 384MB. I know that is wrong because I have 768MB in it right now. 256MB sticks werent readily avaliable or not yet approved by IEEE so they didnt put that on the box.
 
Archer75 said:
What's the point in getting a mac to do just that when a PC can do the same just fine for much less?
Seems like the mac mini is really just a marketing gimick. But then I just want to buy one to screw around with OSX so I guess I bought into it.

Why can't they just release it for the PC, why oh why?!
Click to expand...

Apple make, as we all know, their money on hardware. We pay the premium because OS X, unlike the rest, doesn't suck*. Of course I'd love to get a dual Xeon workstation for about as much as an iMac would cost and be able to run Mac OS X, but really, that is never going to happen. Just accept it, already! ;) It's worth the extra money.

Even when doing basic things like browsing the web, the time I spend being "productive" (ie, reading, writing) compared to the time I spend waiting or finding things (be they tabs or pages) to be "productive" with is much higher on a Mac with OmniWeb than anything else. Mac OS X is just a lot less pain. For me, and even more so for those with no knowledge of computers. A PC doesn't do the same "just fine."


*warning, personal opinion!
 
Where can you get a non-ECC stick of 2GB ram? crucial has it, but it is registered ECC. And it almost costs twice as much as the mini itself.
http://www.crucial.com/store/PartSpecs.asp?imodule=CT25672Y335&cat=RAM
I dont think the mini will take ECC, but i could be mistaken.
Does anyone know if the G5 will take 16GB?

Edit: After some research, it seems that the G5 has the ability to address 4TB of RAM(oooh, ahhhhh). Although Panther only has the ability to allocate 32 GB. With Samsung's new 4GB sticks, all 32GB can be added, but at $3500/ stick it is a little price prohibitive.
http://videosystems.com/mag/video_welcome_bits/

Edit again: After more research, it seems that the Mini will take a 2GB stick.
Apple representatives on the Expo show floor confirmed plans to certify 2GB PC2700 RAM for the system, as well.
Click to expand...
http://www.macworld.com/news/2005/01/11/macmini/index.php
Seems that they just havent gotten around to certifying 2GB sticks yet. I can see why as there are already people on this thread who are bitching and moaning over 1GB prices.
Now it is yet to be seen whether the Mini will accept 4GB when they become avaliable to max out the 32bit G4.
 
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