2010 MBP memory hog?

[Montymitch]

I recently upgraded from a late '08 MacBook with 8gb ram to a 2010 MBP with 4gb, Mavericks on both machines. The MBP is really laggy and freezes up, it's ridiculous.
On the MBP, Activity Monitor says that 3.99 of my 4.0 memory is used when all I've got open is a handful of tabs in Chrome. The max memory I can install is 8gb, and I've got it ordered but I'm worried it isn't going to be enough. Santa is bringing me a Samsung 840 Evo for Christmas as well. Do you think that configuration will be sufficient? I use Aperture and iMovie a lot, and right now this setup just sucks. The older Macbook was slow, but consistent. This one hangs and freezes. Is the ram going to fix all my problems?

 

[rapicell]

Used memory =/= memory that's actually in use. Activity monitory says I have 3.30gb of my 4gb ram used and when I switch over to istat only about half of that is in actual use. Activity monitor can be misleading, however there could be something sucking up resources that you aren't aware of.

 

[Montymitch]

I agree about Activity Monitor being misleading. IStat says only 1.3 is active--is this discrepancy due to Mavericks memory compression?
The thing is, the machine lags and I can't figure out why. It's specs (with the exception of RAM) are considerably more robust than the MacBook it replaced. Hopefully 8gb will be enough.

 

[seveej]

OP,

Whether the memory is the reason for the perceived lagginess or not, I'd recommend maxing out the memory. It won't hurt, and does not cost the farm.

It struck me as somewhat funny, that whereas the i5 and i7 based mid-2010 MBP's (15" and 17") support only 8 GB, the C2D -based 13" MacBook (not really)Pro from the same batch can be coaxed into going up to 16 gigs... Weird...

RGDS,

 

[Montymitch]

OP,

Whether the memory is the reason for the perceived lagginess or not, I'd recommend maxing out the memory. It won't hurt, and does not cost the farm.

It struck me as somewhat funny, that whereas the i5 and i7 based mid-2010 MBP's (15" and 17") support only 8 GB, the C2D -based 13" MacBook (not really)Pro from the same batch can be coaxed into going up to 16 gigs... Weird...

RGDS,

Agreed! I was surprised to learn that this machine only accepts 8gb, the same as a base MacBook from 2 years prior. Oh well.

 

[Gav Mack]

Agreed! I was surprised to learn that this machine only accepts 8gb, the same as a base MacBook from 2 years prior. Oh well.

Chipset limitation I recall. The Arrandale CPU in the 2010 gives much better performance for same battery life as previous gen.

Max it to 8gb and when Santa comes down the chimney the Evo will give it a huge boost even though it's only SATA 2.

 

[TheEnthusiast]

Your memory is not actually in use, but it is cached. It's all part of how Mavericks handles memory usage. It is intended to improve system responsiveness. It is better to have your RAM being used than left unused. The SSD would give you a significant speed boost, however.

 

[alphaod]

I just upgraded a 2010 13" MacBook Pro from 4GB of RAM and a 250GB 5400RPM HDD to 8GB of RAM and a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, respectively. Performance is day and night; the upgrades are worth it!

There are no problems handling any tasks. I see no issues with memory leaks.