15" MBP i5 HDD/RAM Upgrade

[veedubdrew]

I gave up on hoping for Sandy Bridge MBPs and decided to bump the one I bought a few weeks ago to 8GB RAM and from a 320GB 5400 RPM HDD to a Western Digital Black 500GB 7200.

I did a few speed tests as I upgraded to give those considering the same procedure an idea of how much things would improve.

I'm NOT a power user by any stretch. My machine automatically opens Safari, Mail, and iChat on boot. I often use iPhoto and iTunes. My tests revolved around this usage pattern.

After the new HDD was installed the machine was restored via Time Capsule.

Baseline:

15" 2010 MacBook Pro base model. 2.4/4GB/320

Time to boot up until apps have opened and iChat has logged in:

Stock: 1:08.0
8GB RAM: 1:00.4
8GB/7200 HDD: 0:33.1

Time to launch iPhoto:

Stock: 0:17.00
8GB RAM: 0:14.09
8GB/7200 HDD: 0:12.6

Time to launch iTunes

Stock: 0:11.9
8GB RAM: 0:09.7
8BG/7200 HDD: 0:03.9

Hope that's of interest to someone!

-Drew

 

[CanadaRAM]

Good data

Adding RAM would not be expected to improve boot times much, as booting is almost entirely hard drive bound.

The biggest difference in iPhoto comes when you have very large libraries, once the thumbnails overflow the available RAM, iPhoto slows way down as it is forced to swap RAM space on and off the hard drive. More RAM raises the bar on how many photos you can have before it slows down.

 

[babyt]

very nice!!

if you dont mind me asking
what brand ram did you buy and for how much?

those times are very nice!