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Can you have too much
- Thread starter drewaz
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Adding more RAM will not adversely affect performance. The only thing that it will affect is your pocketbook if you add an exceedingly large amount of RAM that you'll never use.
It's nvrenuf 
8 gig now days is like a bare minimum, plus ram is soooo cheap now days. If you can afford to put more in defiantly do it. You can get another 8 gig for $40.
I decided to order machine with 8 from apple and i purchased another 16g so will have 24 gig once i put it in.
8 gig now days is like a bare minimum, plus ram is soooo cheap now days. If you can afford to put more in defiantly do it. You can get another 8 gig for $40. I decided to order machine with 8 from apple and i purchased another 16g so will have 24 gig once i put it in.
It's nvrenuf
I decided to order machine with 8 from apple and i purchased another 16g so will have 24 gig once i put it in.
You can get by on 2gb but 4gb is standard now
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Not true, im running 4GB in my MBA and iMac with no issues. We were also only running 6GB in our production Macpros at work until recently. Most people think they need 16+ gigs of ram but the fact is 4GB is more then enough for most regular uses.
The 2011 i bought from the shop, The guy at apple reseller said that if i am going to install ML then i should bump up the ram to 8 gig, as it only had 4 in it. I ended up just getting 8 gig over two sticks anyway giving me 12.
Photoshop uses all the nice ram anyway.
but is it true that mountain lion is more memory hungry ?
and with ram so cheap why wouldn't you give it a bit more. better to have it than not.
Photoshop uses all the nice ram anyway.
but is it true that mountain lion is more memory hungry ?
and with ram so cheap why wouldn't you give it a bit more. better to have it than not.
I don't know how you guys do it.
Not running Lion or Mountain Lion?
After I boot my machine, open safari with a few tabs, mail application, and a few background apps (dropbox, backup, etc etc...) I am pretty much already at 4Gb.
Then I start working, opening the few apps I need to do my thing, and my 8Gb is all maxed out...
I have firefox with 6 tabs open along with filezilla, itunes, mail, ps3 media server, twitterriffic, Chrome, iGetter, Xee, VLC, Deluge and cyberduck atm and i am only using 2.2GB... If you are running the Adobe suite then you start to need more then 4GB but for your average user 4GB is more then enough.
The main down side of excessive RAM is for laptops/desktops with smaller SSD as the memory image when going to sleep mode is around the same size as memory. Take also time to write and read from disk.
Beside that more RAM never really hurts beside money, energy bill and heat.
Beside that more RAM never really hurts beside money, energy bill and heat.
Which OS?
How often do you reboot?
Did you disable Flash in firefox/chrome?
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You can illustrate a general rule by an example, but you can't draw a conclusion from an example, it's a fallacy. All you can do from your own example is define some hypothesis.
"It works for you"+"you're an average user" NOT EQUAL to "it works for the average user"
i have a 2008 with 4GB ram. I keep about 20 tabs open in Chrome and a few in Safari, and also open others for testing sometimes. I keep photoshop open and also a few small apps (coda, terminal, etc) open all the time. My ram is consistently maxed out at around 3.8GB, which means I can't open anything else. I have to close chrome, safari and photoshop to open aperture. I have to close photoshop to open illustrator. I'm always fighting because for me 4GB is nowhere near enough.
I am maxing my new iMac out with 32GB, because in 3-4 years I don't want to be fighting like this again. Sure, 8GB is "enough" but somehow I doubt that will be the case in a few years.
6 years ago 2GB was enough. 10 years ago 1GB was more than enough in my G4 iMac (which came standard with 128/256MB)
I am maxing my new iMac out with 32GB, because in 3-4 years I don't want to be fighting like this again. Sure, 8GB is "enough" but somehow I doubt that will be the case in a few years.
6 years ago 2GB was enough. 10 years ago 1GB was more than enough in my G4 iMac (which came standard with 128/256MB)
4GB is fine for many users. I reckon Apple stuck 8GB in the 21" iMac because it can't (easily) be upgraded and having 8GB helps future proof the systems for the next few years.
7 Macs here. Two run Mountain Lion and have 8GB RAM. Activity monitor shows that's just fine even though I typically run a Windows virtual machine under Parallels, screen capture (iShowU HD), Keynote, Safari, and iMovie simultaneously. One runs Mountain Lion with 4 GB. An MBA that is basically only used for browsing runs ML with 2GB of RAM. A mini with Snow Leopard Server has 4 GB RAM. Two minis with Snow Leopard have 2GB of RAM and run Plex and occasionally Safari. None of these systems have memory problems.
So if you usage is light, 2GB is sufficient, even for Mountain Lion.
It's best to check your memory usage (particularly page outs over time) to determine if you need more memory. More memory costs money, increases boot (particularly POST) and sleep times, and takes more disk space for the sleep image.
So if you usage is light, 2GB is sufficient, even for Mountain Lion.
It's best to check your memory usage (particularly page outs over time) to determine if you need more memory. More memory costs money, increases boot (particularly POST) and sleep times, and takes more disk space for the sleep image.