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4, 8 or 16Gb of RAM?

blingem said:
I am sensing a lot of philosophizing and existentialism on the topics of RAM, marketing, etc. I'd like to bring it back to a more practical question: Do I need 8gb or 16 gb of ram? I ask because I am still running on my mid-2007 core 2 duo macbook. It has served me well but has crapped out a few times, requiring various resuscitation. I am moving overseas so I need to move on to something solid.
Usage: I edit photos in lightroom in large batches, do word processing/excel, heavy web browsing (e.g. 15 tabs at once), listen to music, and run a program called Citrix to virtualize my work desktop. Lots of other programs, like Rosetta Stone, BYKI, Skype, typical expat stuff. No magic here. Just lots and lots and lots of photos. I have basically had to stop editing photos my core 2 duo machine and pretty much just use it for web browsing. Even gmail is slow on my MB now.
I want my computer to last another 7 years. Will 8gb of ram get me across the finish line to 2021? Or will I need 16gb?
I did the math, and this little guy cost me $1400 plus another $100 in various upgrades and repairs (more ram, new battery), so $215/year or about $18/month. On a side note, would the base model $899 MBA get me 4 years of life? Not that I'm going to go that route, just curious :apple:
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I am not someone who suggests 16gb lightly, but in your case I would say max out the ram.

Reasons: Your above mentioned usage over 7 years.

You could very likely still get away with 8gigs though.
 
Meister said:
I am not someone who suggests 16gb lightly, but in your case I would say max out the ram.

Reasons: Your above mentioned usage over 7 years.

You could very likely still get away with 8gigs though.
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I agree with this comment. I feel that for this person that 16Gb could give some better head room. I still feel that a lot of people could get by 7 years with 8Gb though.

(I had to make my post longer because Macrmuors doesn't like my saying "I agree" even though I agree, thereby adding to the convo as that shows 16Gb may be the better option)

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Meister said:
:confused: what is this?
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I think he means light email use.
 
blingem said:
I am sensing a lot of philosophizing and existentialism on the topics of RAM, marketing, etc. I'd like to bring it back to a more practical question: Do I need 8gb or 16 gb of ram? I ask because I am still running on my mid-2007 core 2 duo macbook. It has served me well but has crapped out a few times, requiring various resuscitation. I am moving overseas so I need to move on to something solid.

Usage: I edit photos in lightroom in large batches, do word processing/excel, heavy web browsing (e.g. 15 tabs at once), listen to music, and run a program called Citrix to virtualize my work desktop. Lots of other programs, like Rosetta Stone, BYKI, Skype, typical expat stuff. No magic here. Just lots and lots and lots of photos. I have basically had to stop editing photos my core 2 duo machine and pretty much just use it for web browsing. Even gmail is slow on my MB now.

I want my computer to last another 7 years. Will 8gb of ram get me across the finish line to 2021? Or will I need 16gb?

I did the math, and this little guy cost me $1400 plus another $100 in various upgrades and repairs (more ram, new battery), so $215/year or about $18/month. On a side note, would the base model $899 MBA get me 4 years of life? Not that I'm going to go that route, just curious :apple:
Click to expand...

I actually don't think your computer can handle 16 GB of ram, so that should simplify your problem. Your computer might be able to physically last another 7 years but at one point you won't be able to run new software (either from incompatibility or that it would be too demanding). Getting an SSD for the computer might breathe new life into it but at some point, the processor will just be too slow for you.

Interestingly looking at price per month, I find that it doesn't cost much more to keep a fairly recent computer. Macs have a funny depreciation curve, they loose a lot of money going from new to slightly used or refurb. Then they slowly loose value for the first 3-4 years after which they start loosing value very fast. Keeping a computer that's in those recent 3-4 years doesn't cost much more than running a computer to the grave. For example, my first Macbook, the first aluminium one I bought in 2008 for 1200$ and sold for 800$ after 3 years, costing me around 11$ a month. I'm looking to sell the 15" MBP I bought refurb after that, and looking at the current market price, it seems like I'll end up with a similar monthly ownership cost.
 
paolo- said:
I actually don't think your computer can handle 16 GB of ram, so that should simplify your....
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Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean that I want to upgrade and keep my MB core 2 duo. I meant that I am buying something new and waffling between 8 and 16 gb. Well I bought the 2.4ghz, 256 gb ssd and 16 gb of ram. Thanks all for your advice! Paolo, thanks for your math too. Sounds like selling the thing after a few years might make the most financial sense. I will have to think about that! Thanks all!

Sincerely,
Happy customer!
 
maflynn said:
Perhaps but if you're never going to use it, then its a waste of money.
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I agree. The money is better getting put aside for the next MBP :)

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Raffi said:
16GB no less.
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So you are saying someone that wishes to just web browse and check emails needs 16Gb of RAM? This is the reason I created this thread (so that people do spend other peoples money for the sake of it).

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Meister said:
Never heard of heavy or light email use. :)
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Neither have I but it is my best guess ;)
 
blingem said:
Sorry for the confusion, I didn't mean that I want to upgrade and keep my MB core 2 duo. I meant that I am buying something new and waffling between 8 and 16 gb. Well I bought the 2.4ghz, 256 gb ssd and 16 gb of ram. Thanks all for your advice! Paolo, thanks for your math too. Sounds like selling the thing after a few years might make the most financial sense. I will have to think about that! Thanks all!

Sincerely,
Happy customer!
Click to expand...

The computer arrived and OMG it is awesome! Big departure from the macs of yesteryear in terms of performance, size, everything. The boot time is unreal. Who knows if I'll ever use the 16gb of ram but for $180, it was worth it to know I have the option. Thanks to all for your help!
 
blingem said:
The computer arrived and OMG it is awesome! Big departure from the macs of yesteryear in terms of performance, size, everything. The boot time is unreal. Who knows if I'll ever use the 16gb of ram but for $180, it was worth it to know I have the option. Thanks to all for your help!
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Your welcome :) Enjoy your purchase!
 
No Mac laptop is enough for me.

32GB RAM, 2TB SSD. That's my current need.

And only a 5Kg laptop meets my CPU needs currently.
 
Well, just to give you an idea of how this can be very squiggly, on Tuesday I ordered and received on Wednesday a ME293LL/A, Oct 13, 15" i7 2.0 GHz 8 GB/256 GB, Haswell/Iris Pro.

I THINK I'm finding 8 GB to be not enough and I scored a 13. I do need a VM, but I only need one with Win 7 and it's so I can run some moderately hoggish Insurance software - two different company's software. By the way, I'm using VMware Fusion 6. I don't run it unless I need it and quite frankly, it runs great when you think about all that which is going on with the laptop.

On the OS X side, I like to run these things in the back ground all the time: Evernote, PDFPen, Postbox, Safari, Chrome, Numbers, Simplenote (and or Notes, but less so), and Messages.

In the bar up top, I run Cobook, ClipMenu, Memory Diag (new addition), Text Expander, Dropbox, 1Password, Skitch, Evernote, Boom, Fantastical, VMWare F6, Popclip. That looks like a lot of stuff, but I've seen some of you guys running tons more in the bar.

I have kept it pretty raw, no big fat wasteful memory hogging useless apps. Logos Bible Software is infamous for being a memory leaking fool and it does suffer when I'm running Logos. But, even without Logos and just running Chrome, Safari, Evernote, Postbox, and Simplenote, it seems to be jerky with browsing in Safari and Chrome.

I am almost willing to return the ME293LL/A and get a 2.3 GHz with 16 GB. It's $500 more and why not "nip it in the bud."
 
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RandomCitizen said:
But, even without Logos and just running Chrome, Safari, Evernote, Postbox, and Simplenote, it seems to be jerky with browsing in Safari and Chrome.

I am almost willing to return the ME293LL/A and get a 2.3 GHz with 16 GB. It's $500 more and why not "nip it in the bud."
Click to expand...

I'm sure this is not memory problem.
And what about Chrome with ME294 :)?
 
RandomCitizen said:
Well, just to give you an idea of how this can be very squiggly, on Tuesday I ordered and received on Wednesday a ME293LL/A, Oct 13, 15" i7 2.0 GHz 8 GB/256 GB, Haswell/Iris Pro.

I THINK I'm finding 8 GB to be not enough and I scored a 13. I do need a VM, but I only need one with Win 7 and it's so I can run some moderately hoggish Insurance software - two different company's software. By the way, I'm using VMware Fusion 6. I don't run it unless I need it and quite frankly, it runs great when you think about all that which is going on with the laptop.

On the OS X side, I like to run these things in the back ground all the time: Evernote, PDFPen, Postbox, Safari, Chrome, Numbers, Simplenote (and or Notes, but less so), and Messages.

In the bar up top, I run Cobook, ClipMenu, Memory Diag (new addition), Text Expander, Dropbox, 1Password, Skitch, Evernote, Boom, Fantastical, VMWare F6, Popclip. That looks like a lot of stuff, but I've seen some of you guys running tons more in the bar.

I have kept it pretty raw, no big fat wasteful memory hogging useless apps. Logos Bible Software is infamous for being a memory leaking fool and it does suffer when I'm running Logos. But, even without Logos and just running Chrome, Safari, Evernote, Postbox, and Simplenote, it seems to be jerky with browsing in Safari and Chrome.

I am almost willing to return the ME293LL/A and get a 2.3 GHz with 16 GB. It's $500 more and why not "nip it in the bud."
Click to expand...

if you use virtual machines, i'd recommend 16gb. if you don't, all your programs will not use up 8gb.


for some background. a good friend of mine who is a software engineer has been using an 11" mba with 4gb ram for the last two years with no complaints. yes, it's possible you'd encounter some "lag" when there's memory handling issues. the real question is if your computer is unusable for more than a second.
 
FrozenDarkness said:
if you use virtual machines, i'd recommend 16gb. if you don't, all your programs will not use up 8gb.


for some background. a good friend of mine who is a software engineer has been using an 11" mba with 4gb ram for the last two years with no complaints. yes, it's possible you'd encounter some "lag" when there's memory handling issues. the real question is if your computer is unusable for more than a second.
Click to expand...

I'm going to study it more. I've had the thing since Wednesday afternoon, so I won't make any judgements for a week. The big reason I say that is the computer is running like a champ today. I think it may be because I was running VMWare F6 in the background, but as "suspended." I guess that is still taking up a ton of RAM. I have turned the app "off" right now and it runs like a champ. That might be the whole deal. On the other hand, I specifically bought a quad core because I wanted as much as I could afford to get to handle VMWare. Like I said, I'm willing to trade it up to 2.3 and 16, I just don't really want to burn the extra $500, not to mention having to upgrade my Square Trade policy (another $100 or so).

So, you can tell VMWF6 how much RAM to allot to Windows? That might be what I want to do!

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krabdb said:
I'm sure this is not memory problem.
And what about Chrome with ME294 :)?
Click to expand...



To what do you refer toward Chrome and ME294? I'm running ME293. A link for explanation or some help here, please.
 
RandomCitizen said:
I'm going to study it more. I've had the thing since Wednesday afternoon, so I won't make any judgements for a week. The big reason I say that is the computer is running like a champ today. I think it may be because I was running VMWare F6 in the background, but as "suspended." I guess that is still taking up a ton of RAM. I have turned the app "off" right now and it runs like a champ. That might be the whole deal. On the other hand, I specifically bought a quad core because I wanted as much as I could afford to get to handle VMWare. Like I said, I'm willing to trade it up to 2.3 and 16, I just don't really want to burn the extra $500, not to mention having to upgrade my Square Trade policy (another $100 or so).

So, you can tell VMWF6 how much RAM to allot to Windows? That might be what I want to do!

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Click to expand...

I found my rMBP to be a little jerky and laggy the first day or two after purchase until Spotlight finished its indexing.

This may have been what you were experiencing.

After it was complete, it has worked flawlessly with only 8GB RAM.
 
1. c
2. c
3. b
4. a
5. a?(no editing)
6. c
7. c

total:16points (8GB RAM) and yes it is enough for me actually.
 
Hammie said:
I found my rMBP to be a little jerky and laggy the first day or two after purchase until Spotlight finished its indexing.

This may have been what you were experiencing.

After it was complete, it has worked flawlessly with only 8GB RAM.
Click to expand...

I've figured it out! It wasn't Spotlight indexing, but that is a great point for people to be aware of.

It was Chrome, me thinks. I dug into the experimental settings at chrome://flags/ and did some accelerating of things. This reminds me of a few years ago when I used to run Chrome Canary, so I installed Canary and went into the chrome://flags/ to see if there were even more settings dealing with the GPU and all that.

THERE ARE MORE SETTINGS!

Canary even has a FPS monitor for the upper right hand corner and that is showing me some interesting data, as well. It usually scrolls in the 40-60 FSP range, which is quite good.

At this stage, I know it is still early as I have a week and a half to make my mind up, but I'm not spending the extra $500 on a 2.3 with 16 GB.
 
RandomCitizen said:
I've figured it out! It wasn't Spotlight indexing, but that is a great point for people to be aware of.

It was Chrome, me thinks. I dug into the experimental settings at chrome://flags/ and did some accelerating of things. This reminds me of a few years ago when I used to run Chrome Canary, so I installed Canary and went into the chrome://flags/ to see if there were even more settings dealing with the GPU and all that.

THERE ARE MORE SETTINGS!

Canary even has a FPS monitor for the upper right hand corner and that is showing me some interesting data, as well. It usually scrolls in the 40-60 FSP range, which is quite good.

At this stage, I know it is still early as I have a week and a half to make my mind up, but I'm not spending the extra $500 on a 2.3 with 16 GB.
Click to expand...

Glad to hear you have narrowed it down to Chrome. I don't use Chrome, so I could not speak to that.
 
Just to give a performance report, I was in a client's office and they asked me an existing policy question. I yanked out the rMBP and it had the VMWare going in about three seconds and that was right after I flipped the lid open. She's strong. I didn't have any performance issues at all while I was working. No stuttering or whatever. At this point, I honestly don't know what I was seeing.
 
The problem with this test is that heavy video or photo editing alone could be a reason to get 16gb. VM is a separate good reason to get 16 gb.

The test makes little sense, as it is unlikely that anyone would be running all three at once.
 
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