What's new
Apple iPad Forum 🍎

Welcome to the Apple iPad Forum, your one stop source for all things iPad. Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!

New iPad has 1GB of RAM

zphone

iPF Noob
Joined
Mar 12, 2012
Messages
465
Reaction score
14
Location
Vancouver
It's been reported as a rumor previously. However it would not be so surprising to increase RAM given the larger size of images and the use for gaming - which consumes a lot of RAM. I would assume memory is shared by graphics processor and CPU.
 

zphone

iPF Noob
Joined
Mar 12, 2012
Messages
465
Reaction score
14
Location
Vancouver
I am however surprised at the low CPU score from the benchmark. Just a little suspect, but as they say - it could be the benchmark just was not built that flexibly.
 

Mickeylittle

iPF Novice
Joined
Feb 11, 2011
Messages
353
Reaction score
95
Location
Mississippi
To me what has sucked is that the iPhone 4 came with 1gb of ram and the iPad 2 only had 512mb of ram! Really Apple!
 

Skull One

iPF Novice
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
612
Reaction score
78
To me what has sucked is that the iPhone 4 came with 1gb of ram and the iPad 2 only had 512mb of ram! Really Apple!

Ummm.....

iPhone 4 and 4S only have 512MB of RAM. I own both.

But if you do find one with 1GB of RAM, I am pretty sure I can get some serious cash for it. Mainly because Apple would want to buy it to see how it was pulled off and still maintained battery life.
 

tlbaker

iPF Novice
Joined
Aug 23, 2011
Messages
2,482
Reaction score
113
Mickeylittle said:
To me what has sucked is that the iPhone 4 came with 1gb of ram and the iPad 2 only had 512mb of ram! Really Apple!

Wow. I didn't know that. Wonder why.

Sent from my Verizon Black 64GB iPad 2 w IOS 5.1 Update From NYC!!! using iPF.net
 

donka

iPF Novice
Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Messages
864
Reaction score
63
Location
Scotland
Skull One said:
And how may I ask was the dual core not being fully utilized with only 512MB of RAM?

Depends on the task at hand. The dual core CPU allows for better multitasking or for things like editing 1080p video but less ram limits the number of program's running at the same time or how much video footage can be processed.
 

sjleworthy

iPF Novice
Joined
Jan 14, 2011
Messages
2,051
Reaction score
108
Location
Penarth, Wales, UK
Website
www.sjleworthy.com
But who cares? And why should we? Apple don't make a point of detailing there gubbins and specs of their devices. And for convenient reasons. The devices just work. And work good. As someone said, 'it's no slouch'.

I don't personally care about core or ram numbers. I just care about performance. And for me, performance has never failed, even with a lower spec than it's competitors or lower spec than people's expectations.

I'd certainy never moan about spec. It's all perceived.
 
Last edited:

donka

iPF Novice
Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Messages
864
Reaction score
63
Location
Scotland
Lack of RAM was the sole reason for me upgrading from iPad 1 to 2. The 256mb was too limiting, even with core IOS apps such as Safari where if you scrolled too fast you got the checker board effect as the rest of the web page was loaded into memory. This was mostly eradicated on the iPad 2 with twice the RAM. IOS works well with a small amount of RAM but if you then try to run an intensive app, the lack of RAM can become all too obvious.
 

swaggapad

iPF Noob
Joined
Mar 11, 2011
Messages
23
Reaction score
0
Location
Tyrone, GA - USA
Lack of RAM was the sole reason for me upgrading from iPad 1 to 2. The 256mb was too limiting, even with core IOS apps such as Safari where if you scrolled too fast you got the checker board effect as the rest of the web page was loaded into memory. This was mostly eradicated on the iPad 2 with twice the RAM. IOS works well with a small amount of RAM but if you then try to run an intensive app, the lack of RAM can become all too obvious.

I can crash Dolphin browser pretty easy if I open too many tabs on my just sold iPad2. I was actually kind of surprised when I looked at the crash reports in settings menu. Either Dolphin browser sux or i'm hitting RAM limits. But at the end of the day, I'm hardly complaining and eagerly awaiting my "new" ipad on Friday :)
 

Skull One

iPF Novice
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
612
Reaction score
78
I can crash Dolphin browser pretty easy if I open too many tabs on my just sold iPad2. I was actually kind of surprised when I looked at the crash reports in settings menu. Either Dolphin browser sux or i'm hitting RAM limits. But at the end of the day, I'm hardly complaining and eagerly awaiting my "new" ipad on Friday :)

Poor programming. No if, and or but.
 

Skull One

iPF Novice
Joined
Mar 7, 2012
Messages
612
Reaction score
78
Depends on the task at hand. The dual core CPU allows for better multitasking or for things like editing 1080p video but less ram limits the number of program's running at the same time or how much video footage can be processed.

Now I see your misconception.

1) Better multitasking has NOTHING to do with the amount of RAM. Please go research PCs that are *nix based (iOS is a *nix based OS) running with less than 128 Meg of RAM that have full HTTPD, FTPD, SMTP, POP3 and other internet based services running that can handle 50 to 100 users at once.

2) 1080P video editing can be done in 512MB of RAM as long as the flash drive read and write times are fast enough to keep up with demand. Increasing RAM to 1GB is NOT going to make that much of a difference considering that the extra 512MB can only hold between 1 to 3 minutes of extra full motion video.

3) Since the user can only work on 1 program at a time, due to the limit of the touch screen input, any remaining tasks in background are simply going to sit there unless they register certain API calls for background tasking. The number of apps that do this are VERY LOW since Apple vettes these apps and require justification for background processing. And since ALL iOS apps have code stubs for dealing with saving their current state when paused, in case the program is rolled out of memory, this allows a full state restore when the users relaunches the app. iOS is designed to run in 256MB and still be able to do the same job.

Oh wait... iPad 1 has 256MB of RAM and iOS 5.1 runs on it. Amazing isn't it?
 

donka

iPF Novice
Joined
Sep 21, 2010
Messages
864
Reaction score
63
Location
Scotland
Skull One said:
Now I see your misconception.

1) Better multitasking has NOTHING to do with the amount of RAM. Please go research PCs that are *nix based (iOS is a *nix based OS) running with less than 128 Meg of RAM that have full HTTPD, FTPD, SMTP, POP3 and other internet based services running that can handle 50 to 100 users at once.

2) 1080P video editing can be done in 512MB of RAM as long as the flash drive read and write times are fast enough to keep up with demand. Increasing RAM to 1GB is NOT going to make that much of a difference considering that the extra 512MB can only hold between 1 to 3 minutes of extra full motion video.

3) Since the user can only work on 1 program at a time, due to the limit of the touch screen input, any remaining tasks in background are simply going to sit there unless they register certain API calls for background tasking. The number of apps that do this are VERY LOW since Apple vettes these apps and require justification for background processing. And since ALL iOS apps have code stubs for dealing with saving their current state when paused, in case the program is rolled out of memory, this allows a full state restore when the users relaunches the app. iOS is designed to run in 256MB and still be able to do the same job.

Oh wait... iPad 1 has 256MB of RAM and iOS 5.1 runs on it. Amazing isn't it?

What misconception? Are you honestly saying the amount of RAM has no impact on multitasking??
As for the 1080p argument. I never said it can't be done but quite simply the more data you are working with, the less painful that is with more ram.
Don't forget any browser that uses tabs is effectively multitasking. It may appear as a single app to the user but essentially there are multiple sessions running. Now the iPad 1 would occasionally struggle with a single page, granted dependant on the content in that page. iPad 2 alleviated that and the iPad 3 will improve this further.
 

Most reactions

Latest posts

Top