Ram upgrade for sure. Some people have reported freebe upgrades out of refurbished store, so if you are lucky may get 2.8 ghz as well for free !
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8GB vs. 16GB for RAM?
- Thread starter doctorstrange
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Ram upgrade for sure. Some people have reported freebe upgrades out of refurbished store, so if you are lucky may get 2.8 ghz as well for free !
Despite everyone recommending ram aftre you posted I tend to not immediately agree.
You should tell us what you are using it for first.
Well, it's not surprising. The same guy trying to discourage someone from buying more than 8gb of RAM again. Is this your job? You sure spend enough time at it.
Perhaps the poster would be able to save money by not buying RAM that s/he doesn't need. That money could then go towards AppleCare or some other expense. But alas, it seems Apple have succeeded at marketing once again. I'm not sure why it's engrained in most people's heads here that if you don't get the maximum amount RAM, then you're losing. Also, that's not to say that there aren't people who genuinely need to upgrade.
Read the OP before responding next time. This is a question of more RAM vs. a small clock speed bump. The OP plans to buy one or the other. Jesus, you people make such a big deal over this. It's $180-200 more. Big deal.
You are not adding anything useful to the discussion except for personally insulting people.
Do not write any more responses to my posts.
And yet you continue to respond...In case you can't comprehend, the point is: why waste money if you don't to upgrade? Yes, the poster said that s/he will get one or the other; but, and think about it for more than a millisecond, what if s/he doesn't need either upgrade? Strange possibility isn't it? It isn't a big deal, by the way. It's just that people here think too linearly i.e double the RAM is double the performance. Sure, roughly $200 isn't much extra, but, again, why spend it on RAM or any other specification upgrade if its superfluous? It's that kind of mentality why people are swimming in debt today.
I totally understand that. I, personally, went with 8gb and I can exceed that at times. Just not enough to justify the extra IMO.
Now, I believe most people that are worried enough to post on this forum and ask total strangers if they need 8gb vs. 16gb really should just buy the 16gb instead of dealing with the "what if" forever being in the back of their minds. You can't put a price on peace of mind.
Its not about the .2Mhz. One is a i7 2.8 the other i5 2.6.
The i7 has a higher clock speed, hyperthreading, and more L3 cache.
These three things make it up to twice as fast compared to the i5 for example for rendering and video editing.
The ram on the other hand will not necessarily bring any advantage in these regards.
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Please show me any type of testing results showing that the i7 bump is twice as fast.
It's not even close to being twice as fast. I don't care what task you are doing.
If you are the type that likes to keep their laptop until it dies then the safe than sorry approach is a good one. Think of it as future proofing yourself for the lifespam of the laptop. But, if you upgrade every year, go with 8GB and find out if that is enough or not. If it isn't, then get 16gb on your next upgrade. If it is enough, then stay with 8GB. Or you can go with the larger SSD and get an extra 8GB with that package. Remember MBP's have a really good resale value compared to PC counterparts. You will lose some but not as much. Plus the return window should be enough to find out if you need the extra 8GB or not.
Everyone has different needs and to each their own.
As your post states can't be sure; so if you must choose one upgrade the 16 RAMS makes more sense.
If your sole purpose of a machine is video editing then what i said in my earlier post stands even more. (being a deciding factor in a 13", since you should be moving to a 15" with much better power)
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I also question this but its not the main reason I disagree with his choice.
I disagree. If you have to ask, then you should just take the 8 sheep and call it a day. I couldn't resist.
The i7 is not always twice as fast as the i5. tests show more like a 5% to 30% advantage.
Its only supposedly up to twice the speed. There is nevertheless a noticable speed increase when rendering.
I dont have any test results on hand. Just try it out or maybe google it.
I agree.
Since the OP is not telling anyone what he is using the machine for so he might as well get 16gb ram.
(Since he seems to be fixated on those two options)
I only asked what he was using it for because that is the only way to give good advice.
People come her to get advice so we need to know what there needs are.
Without that info everyone is just guessing in the dark and a lot of people just recommend tons of ram.
This is the dumbest generalization anyone ever came up with on this forum and people just repeat it daily.
"If you have to ask a question about something, that means you don't need it"
Do I need an oil change? Must not seeing as I had to ask myself.
Do I need to change my underwear? Must not seeing as I had to ask myself.
Do I need gas in my car? Must not seeing as I had to ask myself.
Do I need to feed my cat? Must not seeing as I had to ask myself.
I couldnt agree more. People come here to ask for advice and recommending them to spend money on probably useless upgrades is irresponsible.
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If your sole purpose is video editing you should not bother with macbooks. Get a macpro!
Why are you so upset over a RAM thread? Is this your first one? Your anger has caused you to miss the entire point of my post, once again. I wasn't even talking about RAM; it was simply a joke that the poster said "RAMS."
Also, in regards to the advice that "if you have to ask, then you probably don't need it," you took the underlying message and made several nonsensical analogies. Extrapolation should be used wisely and smartly. By the way, you don't see professionals, the kind of people who know their needs, going around asking how much RAM or whatever they need.
In case you're wondering, your examples lacked the quantitative aspect. Example? I'll give you one: should I feed my cat 8 or 16 lbs of cat food? Not realistic, but purely to show your error.
Unfortunately, good sir, you're wrong.
The i7 in the 13" is a dual-core. Which means it also has just 4 threads like the dual-core i5.
The number of threads only vary between quad-core i5s and quad-core i7s. Quad-core i5s have 4 cores and 4 threads, while quad-core i7s have 4 cores and 8 threads.
You won't see much of a performance bump between a dual core i5 and dual core i7, but you'll see the bump between a quad core i5 and quad core i7.
So in practice, hyperthreading occurs in both dual-core i5s and i7s, but only occurs in quad-core i7s and not quad-core i5s.
Well, I will tell you what I would be using the machine for. But to be honest, it is as much about future proofing the laptop. At this point, I own a 15" MBP that is about 4 years old as well as an 11" MBA that is 3 years old. I travel a lot and do a lot of travel photography. I used to really enjoy using the MBA (4GB RAM, 256GB SSD) as my travel photo computer (I usually end up with over 1000 photos/wk on a trip-I've even had an 8 wk trip where I ended up with 10K photos). I use Aperture for all of my photo cataloging. Of course, while I travel, the computer is also used for all of my other online needs. It just seems that this 3 year old MBA is getting extremely slow in performance for everything I am using it for. So I would like to get a new travel computer. I hope to keep this computer for at least 3 years and I hope it won't feel so slow (the MBA seemed fast in the first year or two but now it feels bogged down) in another 3 year's time.
My typical usage? My wife and I would have separate log ins under Mavericks. We both tend to keep a web browser open with 12-15 tabs open at any one time. The other main thing is running Aperture, importing several hundred pictures into the Aperture library at a time and subsequently viewing/editing a library of several thousand photos. It will potentially running a virtual machine (VMWare Fusion) as well.
So is the 16GB of RAM better than upgrading to the i7 2.8GHZ CPU? And with the CPU, Does it boil down to just a 0.2GHz clockspeed difference? Or is there something fundamentally different with an i5 vs. and i7 CPU?
Between a dual-core i5 and dual-core i7, there's barely any discernible difference between them as both have 4 threads. However, if you're comparing between a quad-core i5 and quad-core i7, there's a fundamental difference as the quad-core i5 has 4 threads, while the quad-core i7 has 8 threads. Generally, a quad-core i7 with 8 threads perform about 30-40% faster in hyper threaded tasks compared to a quad-core i5.
Go for the 16GB of RAM upgrade if you're on the 13" MBP, if you must. However, 8GB is no slouch either.
But I normally have Photoshop open in OS X and VMware open as well (at least 4GB assigned to Windows), so I can make full use of 16GB RAM.