PC3200 in June 2003 Mirror Drive Door G4 (SIngle 1.25 CPU)?

Question

Level 1

5 points

PC3200 in June 2003 Mirror Drive Door G4 (SIngle 1.25 CPU)?

The manual and Apple specifications for this computer state it accepts upt to 4gb of PC2700 RAM. Yet when I went onto Crucial's website to order some they list this model as also accepting PC3200.

They say you can do this because DDR modules are backward compatible, which I'm not going to argue with, but if the Mac only supports 2700 modules then does that mean even if I put 3200 modules in it they will simply run at the same speed as a 2700 module?

As it is it makes no difference what I get since both PC2700 and PC3200 are the same price on their site but if I will actually benefit from having 3200 I'll get that instead.

PowerMac G4 June 2003 Mirror Drive Door, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Nov 4, 2009 1:21 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Nov 4, 2009 2:04 PM in response to Xandros

Hi Xandros. I had a similar question posted earlier regarding what I should put in my FW 800 1.42GHz. I was advised by Allan to load 4 sticks of PC2700, 512 Ram. It works a treat. I'm interested to hear from others if PC3200 is appropriate.
Cheers.

Reply

Answer 2

Allan Jones

Level 9

78,428 points

Nov 5, 2009 7:44 AM in response to Xandros

The only benefit to PC3200 in the MDD/FW800 is availability; some vendors stock PC 3200 for both their 3200 and 2700 needs. They will clock back if needed. The limiting factor in module speed and the max amount of RAM possible is the memory controller chip soldered to the logic board.

Some people are concerned about mixing speeds. I've not done it with the MDD but the eMac 1.42 has a very similar architecture to the MDD and ours ran perfectly for years with one PC2700 and one PC3200 module.

The manual and Apple specifications for this computer state it accepts upt to 4gb of PC2700 RAM.

Nope. The max is 2Gb per this Apple spec sheet: http://support.apple.com/kb/SP106. Each of four slots accepts one 512MB module for a max of 2048MB or about 2 gig.

BTW, System Profiler--at least in Panther and Tiger--has a bug with the MDD/FW800 models that reports the installed RAM as "PC2600," something that does not exist. Older versions of Apple Hardware Test do the same thing. If you see "PC2600" in a report from your computer, ignore it.

Message was edited by: Allan Jones

Reply

Answer 3

Xandros Author

Level 1

5 points

Nov 5, 2009 10:43 AM in response to Allan Jones

Sorry I typo'd that, I meant to write 2gb.

Anyway thanks, I think I'll just get the PC3200. I suppose with it being the same price as the PC2700 it doesn't really make any difference, but I just wanted to make sure Crucial hadn't got it wrong or something similar and MDD G4 really did accept PC3200.

Reply