13in RAM Upgrade

[harrym17]

Hello there MacRumors!

I'm new to this forum (look at the post count!) and I have a question about the RAM in my 2yo MBP (early 2011, came with SL, now ML)- I currently have 4gb RAM, the Apple manual says I can install up to 8gb, but the Crucial website says 16gb.

The question is this- given almost 4gb (3.60gb to be precise) of Page-Outs in Activity Monitor (14.55gb Page-Ins and 3.68gb Swap Used), should I upgrade to 8gb or to 16gb? Will my mac even support 16gb?

Thanks!

PS: Intending for mainly developing uses- xcode, simulator, about ~12 tabs in chrome, a bit photoshop, a bit games (but I understand that I can't play any on normal graphics because of the Intel 3000 HD- but will my low-graphics setting be faster?)

 

[Dalton63841]

Yes it will run 16GB of ram just fine. It's just Apple only OFFICIALLY supports 8GB ram. This isn't the only mac out with an arbitrary ram limit like this.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3588294?start=0&tstart=0

 

[harrym17]

But should I upgrade at my current average use?

EDIT:

I bought 8gb by corsair. Should I replace all of my RAM or can I put it instead one of the 2gb, thus having 1gb of RAM (8+2)?

Thanks!