More Memorty Make My iMac Faster?

David, If your iMac is rev A, and only then:

Because of the system architechture tere is a boost when you use two identical DIMMs in your memory banks. I wouldnt be surprised if your rev A iMac would feel faster with two identical 512 MB DIMMs (making total 1 GB) than your current configuration of 1.5 GB RAM with non-identical DIMMs.

But since your talking about Pages and iWeb I doubt this is the case (those werent out yet when they sold rev A iMac G5s) and youve got rev B or C, in which the system bus was redesigned and this "128-bit memory bandwidth only with two identical DIMMs, otherwise 64-bit" problem was solved.

There really wouldn't be much of a difference from 1.5 to 2GB of RAM unless you have a large number of pageouts. Those pageouts can be an indicator that your RAM needs are greater than what your system has.

The Adobe apps you are running are system hogs and will not be quick no matter how much RAM you have.

That said, you should see a difference with the addition memory. Is the system recognizing it in the system profiler? If so, maybe take a few minutes to run Memtest found HERE. The new module may not be working properly.

Also, be sure that all your apps and the OS are completely up to date.

The specs for all iMacs can be found HERE. If your machine shipped with Panther (10.3) then it is a first gen G5 iMac. If that iSight is a built-in iSight and you have a G5, then you have the iMac iSight model.

Pageouts can be found in your activity monitor. Open it up and hit the "system memory" option. Next to the pie chart is an entry for "page ins/outs." Pageouts are cumulative since your last restart, so if there are a large number of pageouts, that in itself is not an indicator that you need more RAM. If the number of ins is close to or larger than the number of outs, then you need more RAM.

Right now, my Mac has been on for over 4 days and I have 69611 page ins and only 1164 pageouts.

When I said you should see an increase in performance, I meant from the 512MG to 1.5GB, not from 1.5GB to 2GB. If pageouts are not a problem, it would not matter if you had more RAM since your system is not fully utilizing what it already has.

I think the safest way to say what rev your iMac is, is for you to think when exactly was it that you bought your iMac.

Rev A
Introduction Date: August 31, 2004
Discontinued Date: May 3, 2005

While it's not impossible to have been sold rev A iMac after May 3 2005, it's unlikely. If you bought your iMac later than May 3rd, I'm pretty sure it's rev B. If you bought your iMac before that, it's rev A and theres no question about it.