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4 gb upgrade on 2.4ghz MBP - worth it?

B

ByronT

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 14, 2008
3
0
Hello!

I've finally made the decision to get the low-end model of the Macbook Pro with the student discount and free iPod Touch. I'll be using an Apple credit card so I'll also be getting $75 free iTunes points. However, I'm torn between the decision to upgrade to 4gb or not. I will be using the computer for games like Counter-Strike: Source as well as recording my songs with Protools M-Powered.

I know 4gb would be better - but is it worth $200 extra? What does everyone think? Rip off?
 
First off it's never worth getting it from Apple.

So you said you want to play CS:S and record music--the standard 2GB is plenty for those tasks; even if you wanted to do a little Photoshopping, 2GB is good.

In case you do want a memory upgrade, buy from NewEgg or something, not from Apple.

Like I said you don't need it.
 
Wow! Thanks for the quick replies! I will definitely check out your suggestions!
 
Do not get the RAM from Apple, but do get the RAM. I bought a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro two weekends ago and it was hurting for performance with only the 2GB it shipped with. Once I was able to put 4GB in it, performance improved significantly.
 
I've started playing CSS since school ended. It runs nicely on my 2.4 MBP, I recently upgraded to 4 gb of ram, and noticed no difference.

Like everyone else is saying, unless you want to pay 2.5 times the price, get ram elsewhere.

I run CSS out of Codeweaver's Crossover for games.
 
CWallace said:
Do not get the RAM from Apple, but do get the RAM. I bought a 2.4GHz MacBook Pro two weekends ago and it was hurting for performance with only the 2GB it shipped with. Once I was able to put 4GB in it, performance improved significantly.
Click to expand...

What kind of programs are you running to notice the difference? The programs I use aren't ram intensive, so I didn't notice a difference when upgrading.

I got my ram here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231135

$75 shipped!
 
I would recommend 4gb for anyone running VMWare or Parallels. With 2gb, Fusion only allocates 512mb to Windows by default, and I wouldn't want to go much higher than that, but with 4gb you could easily allocate 2gb or more to Windows.
 
Dropping 100 bucks on 4GB of RAM was the best thing ive done to my computer. Having the elbow room is ****ing great!
 
4gb is worth it (future-proofing ftw!) right now is the sweet spot to buy it; DDR2 is slowly being phased out in place of DDR3 (so the price of DDR2 memory will go up)
 
alphaod, your old RAM and the new RAM have the same timings? How could you get a performance boost from changing brand names?
 
alphaod said:
No idea; I've been using OCZ on my desktops for years; they were always fast and overclockable; recently saw the cheaper OCZ RAM, decided to give a try and it was faster. Maybe they use better chips?
Click to expand...

So you didn't even switch brands! That's really interesting how the same brand and the same RAM would give different performance! I guess you just got a "good batch"! By the way, on your Geekbench score, I just downloaded and ran it, but since I didn't buy it, it only runs a 32-bit test. Can you run a 32-bit test on yours, so I can have an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison?
 
ggjstudios said:
So you didn't even switch brands! That's really interesting how the same brand and the same RAM would give different performance! I guess you just got a "good batch"! By the way, on your Geekbench score, I just downloaded and ran it, but since I didn't buy it, it only runs a 32-bit test. Can you run a 32-bit test on yours, so I can have an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison?
Click to expand...

Oh no, I changed brands; the older memory was Kingston, the new one is OCZ.

Anyways, the results:
http://browse.geekbench.ca/geekbench2/view/64423
 
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