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8GB RAM in a Late 2013 iMac.

A

AGamble

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 21, 2013
161
71
Hey,

My late iMac came with 8GB ram (i5 3.4, 1TB Fusion, 780 GPU). As i currently only use it for basic tasks (word processing, emailing, internet browsing, video watching etc...) am I likely to see a performance boost if I was to increase the ram to 16GB or 24GB?

To be fair its a super fast machine as is.

Thanks,
Alex
 
Thanks guys, for the time being its probably not needed but you never know when I might need the extra grunt so I'll probably upgrade in a few months anyway.

Slightly off topic but can anyone recommend a good basic paint/drawing app?
 
I wouldnt recommend upgrading to 16gb or 24gb. RAM is not cheap these days. I think you are well of with 8gb. The performance gain doesnt justify the cost. If you have money to throw, then of course do the upgrade :)
 
No it will be a pointless upgrade. People only say to upgrade due to RAM not being that expensive. Unless you are using your machine for video or photo editing 8gm of ram is more then enough.
 
torana355 said:
No it will be a pointless upgrade. People only say to upgrade due to RAM not being that expensive. Unless you are using your machine for video or photo editing 8gm of ram is more then enough.
Click to expand...

There are other fields besides Digital Content Creation (DCC) that use that much RAM.

The easiest way to see, if one needs more RAM is to restart the Mac at the beginning of a typical work day (if it has not been switched the day before) and look at Activity Monitor at the end of the day, to see if any page outs occurred.
If those page outs are below 1 GB, then one is fine with the existing RAM, but any more than that points to a need of more RAM.
 
AGamble said:
Thanks guys, for the time being its probably not needed but you never know when I might need the extra grunt so I'll probably upgrade in a few months anyway.

Slightly off topic but can anyone recommend a good basic paint/drawing app?
Click to expand...

Pixelmator. It's fantastic.
 
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simsaladimbamba said:
There are other fields besides Digital Content Creation (DCC) that use that much RAM.

The easiest way to see, if one needs more RAM is to restart the Mac at the beginning of a typical work day (if it has not been switched the day before) and look at Activity Monitor at the end of the day, to see if any page outs occurred.
If those page outs are below 1 GB, then one is fine with the existing RAM, but any more than that points to a need of more RAM.
Click to expand...

Im aware of that but read the first post. The OP is using the machine for Surfing the web, emails and watching videos ect. 4GB of ram is more then enough for that let alone 8GB.
 
torana355 said:
Im aware of that but read the first post. The OP is using the machine for Surfing the web, emails and watching videos ect. 4GB of ram is more then enough for that let alone 8GB.
Click to expand...

I read the first post.

But not everyone behaves the same way. I for instance have open two browser windows with up to 20 tabs per window. I was told by someone, that that is not much.
So who am I to tell, what kind of RAM usage one has by simply stating "watching videos, browsing www and reading emails"?

If one wants an answer and know, how to ****ing find out, if one needs more ****ing RAM, why not give them the ****ing way to determine the ****ing truth?
 
simsaladimbamba said:
I read the first post.

But not everyone behaves the same way. I for instance have open two browser windows with up to 20 tabs per window. I was told by someone, that that is not much.
So who am I to tell, what kind of RAM usage one has by simply stating "watching videos, browsing www and reading emails"?

If one wants an answer and know, how to ****ing find out, if one needs more ****ing RAM, why not give them the ****ing way to determine the ****ing truth?
Click to expand...

Don't get too excited there. Im sorry but 8GB of ram is more then enough for what the OP is doing, i don't care if they have 100 tabs open in a browser. You really need to be doing something more than browsing the net and answering emails to use more than 8GB or ram. Fact.
 
torana355 said:
Don't get too excited there. Im sorry but 8GB of ram is more then enough for what the OP is doing, i don't care if they have 100 tabs open in a browser. You really need to be doing something more than browsing the net and answering emails to use more than 8GB or ram. Fact.
Click to expand...
Actually 100 Tabs open in Chrome does suck up a lot of RAM. As I said earlier in this thread, they probably don't need the extra ram, but to be sure they can follow the directions simsaladimbamba provided.

There is no way to be absolutely sure how much ram someone needs without checking what the system in question is doing. So you may as well tell them how to determine what their ram situation is like instead of just saying they do or don't need the extra ram.
 
AGamble said:
Hey,

My late iMac came with 8GB ram (i5 3.4, 1TB Fusion, 780 GPU). As i currently only use it for basic tasks (word processing, emailing, internet browsing, video watching etc...) am I likely to see a performance boost if I was to increase the ram to 16GB or 24GB?

To be fair its a super fast machine as is.

Thanks,
Alex
Click to expand...

Unless you are doing something like editing very very large video files or processing HUGE images in Photoshop, you are very unlikely to see any difference at all going from 8GB to 16GB. See this test.

For the type is usage you described, I don't see 16GB doing anything at all for you.
 
I have the same Machine. Same amount of RAM.

I started Activity Monitor. Then I started Aperture, LightRoom 5, PhotoShop and InDesign.

With all running simultaneously and processing a photo adjustment in Aperture, memory usage was 5.3Gb. But I guess that, realistically, video programs and gaming are a whole different realm.
 
garycurtis said:
...
With all running simultaneously and processing a photo adjustment in Aperture, memory usage was 5.3Gb. But I guess that, realistically, video programs and gaming are a whole different realm.
Click to expand...
I have Aperture, Firefox, iTunes, Mail and a few small applications running and I'm pushing into swap space with 8GB of ram. Everybody's experience is different which is why there are tools to measure what the system is doing. It's not bad enough to add more ram to my current system, but my next system will have 16 or 24GB of ram.
 
If you buy a current iMac 27" with 8GB of RAM, and you decide later to upgrade to 16GB, is it just a matter of buying an additional 8GB of RAM and adding it to what is already there, or do you have to pull out the 8GB modules and replace them with different and all new modules?
 
hakr100 said:
If you buy a current iMac 27" with 8GB of RAM, and you decide later to upgrade to 16GB, is it just a matter of buying an additional 8GB of RAM and adding it to what is already there, or do you have to pull out the 8GB modules and replace them with different and all new modules?
Click to expand...
A 27" iMAc has 4 ram slots. 2 are empty, so you can add more ram later without having to remove the current ram. It's only if you want to go to maximum memory do you need to replace the original 8GB.
 
garycurtis said:
The onboard 8Gb of Ram is configured as 2 4Gb chips. You simply add two more to increase it. I might bypass a 16Gb setup and go to 20Gb. Would require adding a 4Gb and 8Gb chip for a total of 20Gb.
Click to expand...
I would recommend adding 2x4 GB or 2x8 GB for best memory performance. If 16GB looks like it wouldn't be enough they may as well go to 24GB so they don't have another 4GB module they would have to replace if they found out they needed more than 20GB.
 
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