Add Ram or SSD to MBP i7 15"

[DAM-Photography]

I shoot mostly weddings and will use Lightroom 3 and CS5 to go through my images and edit them.

I have a few hundred dollars and I'm contemplating buying a SSD, RAM or saving up for a new camera body. I just bought the 15" i7 in April so I'm going to be using it solely for at least another 2 years.

Those of you that upgraded RAM or SSD and use your MBP for photography happy with your choice?

 

[ChrisA]

I shoot mostly weddings and will use Lightroom 3 and CS5 to go through my images and edit them.

I have a few hundred dollars and I'm contemplating buying a SSD, RAM or saving up for a new camera body. I just bought the 15" i7 in April so I'm going to be using it solely for at least another 2 years.

Those of you that upgraded RAM or SSD and use your MBP for photography happy with your choice?

The way to answer these types of questions is to watch the "preformance meter" app while you work. You can see if you are low on RAM and or causing swap outs (don't worry about swapp ins, those are normal.) You can also look to see if the disk drive is getting maxed out and causing a bottle next. Look at the bytes per second to see.

Ok so you can measure and do what's best for your work flow and mix of software. but my guess is the answer will be to max out on RAM before you worry about the disk. if "Stuff" gets chached in RAM the system does not have to go to the disk at all. no SSD can be as fast as zero delay. The RAM can get you "zero". The good news is lat later the price of SSD will be lower and they will be larger, so waiting will pay off. For now max out the RAM, unless my gues is wrong and aActivity Monitor show muuch unused RAM and the disk is just "red lined".

 

[toxic]

RAM is probably more useful than an SSD. once your computer stops paging out or swapping to disk, or your RAM is maxed out (whatever comes first), then think about an SSD.

 

[joelypolly]

RAM for now and SSD when you get paid next

 

[SayCheese]

RAM will more than likely speed up performance. The SSD is more useful if you are doing a lot of moving around with the computer switched on as there are no moving parts in a SSD. That's why Apple use them in iPhone's, iPad's etc.

 

[OreoCookie]

Definitely RAM: if you use Aperture or Lightroom, IMHO you should have at least 8 GB to work comfortably. I went from 2 GB to 8 GB on my new Core i5 MacBook Pro and Aperture now feels the way I'm sure it was always intended to be.