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Mid-2010 15" MBP + 16gb RAM... Possible? Worth it?

S

slimbek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2011
127
0
Melbourne, Australia
I have a mid-2010 15" MBP i7 with 4gb RAM and it's really starting to struggle with daily use.

I do a lot of design work so often have CS5 open, I enjoy tweaking my photos on Aperture, ripping DVDs with Handbrake, and often have iTunes streaming to the Apple TV etc. etc.
It gets a lot of use, so I'm thinking of the RAM upgrade and I've noticed a lot of new posts on the internets about people now achieving 16gb RAM in the 2010's.

Will that RAM boost fix the slowdowns?
Is it more hard drive issues with the software I'm running?
Does it just need an iDefrag and a proper clean out?


Would love to hear all your thoughts...
 
GGJstudios

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
slimbek said:
I have a mid-2010 15" MBP i7 with 4gb RAM and it's really starting to struggle with daily use.
Click to expand...
If you're having performance issues, this may help:
slimbek said:
It gets a lot of use, so I'm thinking of the RAM upgrade and I've noticed a lot of new posts on the internets about people now achieving 16gb RAM in the 2010's.
Click to expand...
All 2010 MBPs support a maximum of 8GB of RAM, except the 13" Core 2 Duo models. You can find specs on all Apple products, including maximum RAM:
slimbek said:
Will that RAM boost fix the slowdowns?
Click to expand...
To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used
slimbek said:
Is it more hard drive issues with the software I'm running?
Does it just need an iDefrag and a proper clean out?
Click to expand...
With very few exceptions, you don't need to defrag on Mac OS X, except possibly when partitioning a drive.

About disk optimization with Mac OS X
You probably won't need to optimize at all if you use Mac OS X.
Click to expand...
Read the first link in this post for performance tips.
 
S

slimbek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 23, 2011
127
0
Melbourne, Australia
Yeah I see now that the 13" MBPs can handle the 16gb unofficially but not the 15"/17". Shame.

Any suggestions on RAM sellers in Australia? My brother bought from RAM City.
This One. And it seems to be working fine.

For $80 you can hardly complain really.

After that and another design job or two and I might go the SSD upgrade too.
 
M

mb335

macrumors member
Apr 23, 2010
47
7
Upgrades...

I have the same configuration.

I maxed out memory to 8GB and replaced the hard drive with a 512 GB Samsung 840 SSD.

I have to say it's a fast machine now.
 
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