Anyone running 12 or more GBs of RAM in your Mac Pro? Worth the cost?

[quantum003]

Hi all,

I am the very happy owner of a 2009 Mac Pro... it holds up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM (4x 4GB sticks), but so far I have only upgraded it to 7GB (due to the cost of the 4GB sticks).

I'm already quite pleased with the Mac Pro's performance, but I want it to live for 10+ years... and faster is always better. is it worth upgrading to 14GB (picking up a 12GB kit of 4GB x 3)? I saw a set for $500 and it looked like a good price, PC-8500.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[Nugget]

I've got 16GB in mine and there are some things I do where I chew up all the memory. When I'm doing those things I appreciate having it.

Under "normal" operation I don't really make good use of it, but minimally it's pretty awesome to be able to play World of Warcraft and not have to worry about stopping my VMware sessions.

Right now, three hours after a reboot and having only slacked around on the web listening to music and watching youtube videos I've got 13GB free, so it's not even doing me any good as a file cache right now.

 

[jjahshik32]

I have 16GB (4x4GB) in my mac pro and sometimes I only have 12mb free!

Sometime in the future I'll add 4x4GB more making it 32GB.

 

[alphaod]

12GB on this machine. It's all stock and it's enough for the time being. In the future when I decide to get a UPS, I'll get a 24GB and run 12GB as a RAM disk.

 

[pprior]

Totally depends on what you do with it.

Personally I was still getting swap page outs at 12GB, but at 16 it has stopped.

Most people will not use more than 8GB with current apps.

 

[gugucom]

I have 12 and I bought them when the price was low. I never use them though.

 

[kevink2]

I brought up Activity Monitor the other day on my 14GB system, and it showed 7 GB free.

So, as of right now, I'm generally not using all the memory. But since it was only about $250 for the last 8GB of memory (I have an 08), I've kind of future proofed memory.

Any additional memory will require removal of some. But 2GB of it was a mistake on the part of the company I ordered memory from a year+ ago when I was going from 2GB to 4. For some reason, a couple weeks after my order, I got another 2GB from them. Had to be a mistake on their part, since I was never charged, but when I called them they couldn't seem to believe that they made a mistake...

 

[Cynicalone]

I have 32GB of RAM but I still get Page Outs. OS X loves RAM the more you give it the more it wants.

 

[matthewtoney]

Memory

I have 12GB in my 2009 Quad (3 X 4GB sticks) - I can use it up depending on what all I have going, but I got mine from NewEgg for $339 - I felt that was darn fair.

 

[GoKyu]

I have 14 gigs in my early '08 MP. I probably "average" about 5-6 gigs of ram on a regular basis.

Sometimes I can hit close to 9 or 10 if I'm doing a lot with Photoshop and Lightroom together.

I bought the ram at a good price, so as another poster said, I'm pretty much future-proofing myself. It's also nice to have the extra ram, as I don't need to close any of my apps. I keep Firefox (8-10 tabs), Adium, Transmission, Photoshop, iTunes, and a few other programs open all the time (open on login.)

I also never turn my machine off - my average max uptime is 2-3 months at a time, and the only time I reboot is if there are software updates that I need, installing a new OS (Snow Leopard), the computer hangs (*incredibly* rare...maybe 3 or 4 times), or if the power goes out during a storm (I have a UPS, but the Mac Pro only has maybe a 15 minute power backup.)

 

[js81]

You mean my 1GB in my work iMac isn't enough?

Na, I wish I had a Mac Pro - I have 3GB in my iMac (max for a white one) and its all the time hitting the wall when I do any kind of VM's or Photoshop. I've got 4GB in my Macbook, and its better, but VM's still kill it.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no such thing as too much memory, right?

 

[Transporteur]

Since I'm using several VM's I direcly went to 12Gb which was offered by Apple at a very decent price. It came in 6 2GB sticks which makes another major upgrade impossible (except for adding another two sticks to make it 16Gb in total).

At the moment i could use more Ram, but the 6 4GB sticks are way to pricy here right now.

 

[maghemi]

I've got 13gb in my machine and for the vast majority of the time no more than 8gb of that is in use.

However there are times with it does use up all of the 13gb. And I think it's worth it for those times simply because you won't notice the difference. And I think that the main point for me. It prevents that 'oh damn I'm out of memory' slow down.

 

[zap2]

If the 7GB is enough now, why not wait a few years, and upgrade then...its cheaper, and will do the same thing(make it last longer...although 10 years is quite some time...why just buy a lower cost Mac every few years?)