Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

gryffinwings

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 25, 2012
118
0
I'm wondering how much ram I need to actually run this program. I pretty much have a stock Early 2008 13 inch MacBook with a completely dead battery.

2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
120 GB HDD 5400 RPM

I was wondering if my dead battery was killing my performance?

I'm pretty sure that my RAM needs to be upgraded. Would 2 GBs be enough or do I need more?
 

maflynn

macrumors Haswell
May 3, 2009
73,373
43,265
I think overall the specs of the machine are holding you back. The GPU, CPU, and ram are all factors that are impacting the performance.

The dead battery shouldn't do anything unless you pulled it, many of apple's newer laptop's halve the performance without a battery, though I'm not sure if a 2008 MB does this.

Overall, you're not going to get great performance because of the ram/cpu/gpu
 
Last edited:

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
2.1 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
1 GB RAM
120 GB HDD 5400 RPM

I was wondering if my dead battery was killing my performance?

I'm pretty sure that my RAM needs to be upgraded. Would 2 GBs be enough or do I need more?
The dead battery won't do anything to your performance. I have an early 2008 MacBook Pro with the battery removed and my wife has a mid 2007 Macbook, also with the battery removed. If the battery is dead (not recognized and/or warping) I would strongly suggest removing it from the computer so that it doesn't cause problems. I believe you can bring it to an Apple store for recycling.

Aperture's minimum system requirements state 2 GB of RAM as the minimum. More is better, and your system can take up to 6 GB of RAM. I've never run Aperture on 2 GB, only 4 GB and higher, but it will utilize high amounts of RAM pretty readily. It shouldn't be too expensive to get more than 2 GB.

Your hard drive is small and slow (5400 RPM). You don't necessarily need to upgrade the internet hard drive, but you may want to run your Aperture library off of a faster external drive.
 

gryffinwings

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 25, 2012
118
0
The dead battery won't do anything to your performance. I have an early 2008 MacBook Pro with the battery removed and my wife has a mid 2007 Macbook, also with the battery removed. If the battery is dead (not recognized and/or warping) I would strongly suggest removing it from the computer so that it doesn't cause problems. I believe you can bring it to an Apple store for recycling.

Aperture's minimum system requirements state 2 GB of RAM as the minimum. More is better, and your system can take up to 6 GB of RAM. I've never run Aperture on 2 GB, only 4 GB and higher, but it will utilize high amounts of RAM pretty readily. It shouldn't be too expensive to get more than 2 GB.

Your hard drive is small and slow (5400 RPM). You don't necessarily need to upgrade the internet hard drive, but you may want to run your Aperture library off of a faster external drive.

I've heard that running on the power adapter can cause a macbook to run slower, I've seen a post just can't remember where I saw it.

I was going to cannibalize my other laptop that has 4GB of ram, that uses DDR2 but it uses DDR2- 800 PC2-6400 memory, which to my understanding won't work for me, Oh well...

2GB x 2 kits typically are running around $50-$60, I have been looking around and haven't found anything cheaper than that, if you know anywhere cheaper let me know.

The hard drive I want will be a hybrid drive, since I need the space but want an increase in computer speed. I prefer to run my programs off of the internal drive, external drive speeds might actually be slower but I'm unsure about that.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
I've heard that running on the power adapter can cause a macbook to run slower, I've seen a post just can't remember where I saw it.
According to maflynn the newer systems with batteries that are not user-replaceable will experience performance issues if the battery is removed. It's the first time I've heard of it, but I don't have any evidence to say it's untrue, either. All that I can say is that there was no performance decrease on the systems I mentioned, and I regularly used them for photo editing and video encoding, so any performance cuts would have been noticable.

I was going to cannibalize my other laptop that has 4GB of ram, that uses DDR2 but it uses DDR2- 800 PC2-6400 memory, which to my understanding won't work for me, Oh well...
It wouldn't hurt to try, I suppose. I don't remember how the older systems handled it, but I've heard some claims that people use faster RAM and the system just under-clocks it. Changing the RAM on the MacBooks is pretty easy, too. At worst, you spend a few minutes and find that the system won't boot up. At best, you get 4 GB of RAM and it didn't cost you a thing.

2GB x 2 kits typically are running around $50-$60, I have been looking around and haven't found anything cheaper than that, if you know anywhere cheaper let me know.
That seems to be the going price. It used to be cheaper, but RAM prices always shoot up once a newer specification becomes dominant.

The hard drive I want will be a hybrid drive, since I need the space but want an increase in computer speed. I prefer to run my programs off of the internal drive, external drive speeds might actually be slower but I'm unsure about that.
I used a hybrid drive for a bit over a year and can attest to their speed. I use a SSD now, but as far as I'm concerned the SSD/HDD hybrids are the best value for capacity and speed. I actually didn't feel that my SSD upgrade represented a huge speed boost over my old Momentus XT.

The Aperture library isn't Aperture itself, but where your photos reside (assuming you choose to store your photos in the library, instead of linking out). Unless you're running an external drive connected via Thunderbolt then the speeds will most certainly be worse (unless there's a big disparity between drive access times, such as an internal 5400 RPM drive vs. an external 7200 RPM drive). I run my library off of an external, but that's because it's huge. It's fast enough for me as it is, and as a result I can't justify the extra cost associated with boosting the size of my internal drive to accommodate it. Go with whichever setup fits your needs and budget.
 

gryffinwings

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 25, 2012
118
0
So I did some more research and found that I can install one of the 2 GB modules from my spare Sony laptop, so now I have 2.5 GBs of memory.

Here's my findings. For me the upgrade made the Macbook noticeable faster, I find for now that the upgrade has made Aperture fast enough that I will stay with it. This setup is actually faster than what I was using, the Sony Viao with 4 GBs using Lightroom 4, which was actually kinda laggy, but the new setup is actually faster for me. I assume that if I upgrade to 4 GBs total, that it will actually run even faster on aperture 3.

Now, I don't want to degrade the speed I have just acquired, but will I have any speed issues if I upgrade my current version of Aperture 3.2.4?
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.