iMac slowdown- memory related?

[celliott]

Well, after reading some of the reports I bought an extra 2GB stick to take my Intel iMac up to 3 GB. Even though the memory isn't interleaved, most reports I saw said the extra memory more than compensated for the interleave situation. Well, ever since making the change about 1 month ago, things seemed sluggish overall. Lots of beachballs, etc. No crashes, though.

Today I pulled the 2GB stick out and replaced it with the stock 1 GB. I restarted, and it's very evident that things are, well. . . snappier. Anyone else have an opinion or experience? I really wanted the extra memory, but the system seems faster without it. Would it really make that much difference in app launches, menu drop downs, beachballs in general?

Intel iMac, 2.16GHz, C2D, 20" lcd, and now 2GB ram.

[mikebw]

From what I have read (over at Barefeats.com) the non-interleaved performance hit was very small, but real-world performance is more important and if you can tell a difference between running 2GB and 3GB then I would tend to trust that.

[anonymouse1]

Was the memory seated correctly? Was it the right memory?

[anonymouse1]

Oh, and how long do you go between restarts?

[celliott]

It was the proper memory, bought it from OWC, it was perfectly seated and I restarted several times, both warm and cold but to no avail. Things are just plain faster with 2GB as opposed to 3GB in my real life experience. I dunno.

[hal]

that shouldn't be...

[jdc]

hal wrote:
that shouldn't be...

agreed, something else is amiss

i would get the memory replaced

[Rolando]

I would replace as well. Might as well get that matched 2gb stick.

[sekker]

memory issue for sure