Well I purposely opted to get RAM installed in my G5 tower by the Apple reseller well aware of the RAM sensitivities of G5...and I still had problems. Just ripped out my 2x 1gb sticks = no more kernel panics.
RAM is marked "SMT" plus usual specs e.g. DDR3200 etc - I thought the "genuine Apple certified ram" was hyundai or corsair or some other brand I've at least heard of - Has the dealer just plonked in some dodgey cheap stuff?! I paid $340 for 2x1Gb sticks.

I thought the new G5's were using DDR2 PC2-4200 Ram but am willing to be corrected.

The price of the DDR PC3200 Ram you got is not out of alignment with Streetwise (399) given you purchased the Powermac through them as well.

The question is whether the correct Ram has been installed. What is the standard Ram in your Powermac - any writing on it and what size is it?

edit - it would seem i am correct

http://www.apple.com/au/powermac/specs.html

Back to the reseller mate and take the specs with you!!

Apple use whatever cheap shit they can get at the time.

If anyone ever finds Corsair in a mac from apple, I'll eat the chair I'm sitting on.

that post has absolutely nothing to do with the question

and the only relevance here is that 'resellers' use whatever Ram they want, and may have placed incorrect or cheap Ram in a machine - not Apple

Sorry I didn't specify that this is a 2 Ghz Dual PCI-X recently purchased at a firesale - so 400Mhz DDR3200 as written on RAM matches it.

Interesting to note that over 4 days the only, but consistent problem was with Apple Compressor which would not complete even one encode. However FCP HD, PShop CS, Safari, Office 2004, MT Newsreader, Adobe acrobat prof etc all fine - I even worked for good 3-4hrs on a SD project in FCP. Compressor = great memory test even feeding it relatively short QT movies like 3mins in length.

Factory 512MB seems all good - I want more of that stuff whatever it is. When I referred to Apple certified I also meant the sticks my reseller put in - the whole point was not to be stuffing around sending sticks back through the post etc. Although my fix is pretty fast and local, I gotta drive out there and spend my lunch-time sorting it out - but preferable to waiting a week

Maybe the brisbane metro reseller had a firesale or ex demo and refurbished Apple stock sale for a reason, the deals looked pretty good. Give them a bell, they will fix it up, they are usually pretty good. Hope it works out!!

Firstly, there is no such thing as Apple Certified RAM - they do put stickers on them though... The RAM that Apple supplies is within spec and tolerance levels for the particular machine and sometimes this can be problematic. The original PowerBook 15" Alu's would not take ANY stick available in Aus - even Apple refused to sell them as suitable.
Secondly, while Apple does some checking (on paper) to see what is in spec for the hardware, any extra RAM that is purchased through them comes from a third party supplier in Aus, only comes with a one year warranty (unlike the lifetime warranty of almost all other brands) and is the slowest, cheapest RAM available that will work. All the new DDR2 RAM for PowerBooks, iMacs and G5's is typically CL4 and 95% of the time is Hynix or Samsung, but can be other brands.
You have to consider that all RAM chips are made by a very small amount of company, tested to see how shitty they are, and then sold on to other companies for re-branding.

The only way to get really good quality, fast RAM (and by the sounds of the work you are doing, it would be worth it) is to by either top tier Kingston or Corsair. As long as they are DDR they will work as they will be way above minimum spec.

Bad RAM chips are a bitch, but don't blame the guys you bought them from - everyone is demanding the cheapest possible solution and therefore has to put up with batches that are below spec or faulty.
You should be able to find out from the people you bought it from whether it was Apple supplied RAM or third part, and if it was third part, who it came from. If you lucky, it will have a lifetime warranty (of the machine, not you ) and you may be able to apply for an exchange.

Edit - BTW, a fair amount of Apple shipped RAM fails as well. And it is impossible to fit incorrect RAM as the pin configurations are all different. The worst you can do is fit RAM slower than the bus speed and have reduced performance.

I have the same mac as you and about a month after getting it I plonked in another gig of RAM, which was Kingston Value RAM (yes, I am a student!) and have not had any problems with it. I have had it installed for close to 4 months now I think. I have never used compressor, but I have left the mac on for anything up to a week with no issues.

I was a little concerned at first about the non-"Apple Certified" status of my new RAM, but seems like it was a little ott, no worries at all.

Thank you for your insight into RAM - I wonder if "SMT" is shitty brand or not? Everything is under warranty and I also have Applecare. Have arranged to exchange my DIMMS tomorrow (they were supplied by Apple dealer).
But I want some good RAM, like you say Corsair - for even my P/T business use, after this experience cost doesn't really matter - the sweet taste of bargain is long forgotten if waste time screwing around or lose business from unreliable hardware.

bljpoad - definitely run a comprehensive mem test or some footage thru compressor - all my other apps worked fine, machine was sleeping or on for most of the weekend - crashes only in compressor.

Thanks for the heads up, I don't have access to compressor, but I will find a memory tester and run it during the day tomorrow while I am at uni. Any suggestions on a good one? The one I am planning on using was Memtest OS X

Rember is an easy to use front end for a very good memory tester - certainly discovered problems on memory I purchased for a G5 that the apple hardware test didn't even raise a gasp at.

As a by-the-by, if you have a lot of memory, many programs will never access all of it, so you may think ram is fine until you run a memory intensive application and then all hell can break loose. It's been my experience, also, that installing new apps, like Motion for example, while you have bad memory installed can cause kernel panics/freezes etc. later on. If you experience such problems after you replace bad ram, it might be a good idea to check and reinstall apps after the bad ram problem is solved.

Yeah that's the one I used...I didn't wait for it to complete since I have already exchanged my RAM today so will try these new sticks tonight.
Fortuitous that I launched into a DVD project as soon as I got the machine...a normal user would take weeks if ever to discover these sorts of probs I imagine.

Problem persisted with my new sticks. Took it back - was told for a trade-in on a new DC they'd offer me couple of hundred less that what I paid - a week ago AND for a faulty machine to boot! What service - apparently due to even cheaper firesales coming through...I said well no, that really is not on - you sold me a machine that is not fit for the purpose...

anyways getting full credit + I adding $$ for a Dual 2.7Ghz...hard decision since I'm well into DC money but I think the 2.7 w/ Radeon 9800 Pro will be significantly faster the the DC w/Nv6600 256Mb which is what I would've got new.

Also for the moment I'm staying with all my previous generation software FCP HD, DVDSP 3, CS1 etc which probably isn't optimised for a Quad which I also considered. Some early feedback from FCP users say they are underwhelmed by their Quads - this swayed me last night to go the 2.7.
Am I crazy in forgoing the DC machines...Barefeats has me leaning to the 2.7 only since it has the 9800 Pro w/o it.

I would have gone the dual core. For the PCI-E.... decent AGP cards are going to be vanishing quickly

Saga continues, got it home last night they gave me a 2.5ghz by mistake (paid for 2.7), and I downgraded an 9800xt to my old 9800pro since I was informed the 2.7 had a 9650xt video card.
Am all done with firesale machines - I do pro work and have no faith in these DOA or returned history machines. Final outcome in my sig.