Best 8g Ram for New MBP??

[msslife]

hi guys.

i'm wondering what is the best company to buy 8g ram or 4x2g ram less price good performance ?

since i will need 8g for win and mac because I am going to use a very heavy apps in windows.

Then soon I get money I will buy SSD.

And also what is the best SSD until now?

 

[maflynn]

More expensive ram runs at the same speed as cheap ram, so spending money on that and thinking that you'll get better performance is incorrect.

Personally, I go with with crucial or OWC because of the quality of the ram and the customer service. You can buy cheap no-name ram, but the quality may be such that you'll have problems, such as kernel panics. I've never had any issues with crucial or owc.

 

[Gabriel GR]

G.Skill is supposedly pretty good and newegg has it at 380 bucks. You can't go wrong with crucial or owc of course.

When I get an SSD it will be made by Intel.

 

[elfxmilhouse]

i would get the SSD first. you will notice the performance increase with the SSD more than what the ram will give you.

The intel SSDs are the best right now but only recently started to come down in price.

Im considering picking up an intel drive to replace my ocz drive.

 

[msslife]

Thanks guys for answering.

My current ram is 2G so do you think buying SSD first will make any improvement?

 

[All Taken]

Thanks guys for answering.

My current ram is 2G so do you think buying SSD first will make any improvement?

Like night and day

 

[Gabriel GR]

Programs will launch faster and will be more snappy. But don't be mistaken, if you multitask heavily RAM is the weakest link in your system.

IMO it is unacceptable that apple offers a laptop with less than 4gb of RAM in 2010.

 

[msslife]

Like night and day

WOW! Hmmm so what is the best SSD until now for 160g? or 120g?

 

[All Taken]

WOW! Hmmm so what is the best SSD until now for 160g? or 120g?

Until now? I don't understand. The "best" SSD is often said to be the Intel X-25m G2 series, they come in 80GB and 160GB editions.

I have the above drive in my 13" macbook pro and it was well worth the upgrade. Another SSD I own is the OCZ Agility series 128GB drive - this is an excellent drive too and is great for extra capacity on a budget.

I hope that helps.

 

[elfxmilhouse]

also remember that ram wont make your computer faster but prevent it from slowing down when there is a lot of multitasking going on.

if i had to choose between ram and an SSD i would go with the SSD without hesitation. unless youre talking about going from 1gb -> 4gb (not the same as going from 2gb->4gb or 2gb->8gb) where most users will feel the difference, the ssd will be a huge improvement.

 

[coast1ja]

I know everyone praises the Intel SSDs... but I actually think the better value is in the OCZ vertex line. I also like the Kingston SSDNow V+ series for strong performance and a reasonable price. Use Mroogle to find threads where others (such as myself) have installed SSDs to let you know how much your machine will improve.

Keep in mind that if you own a laptop, 4x2gb will not work because there are only two sodimm slots... so for 8gb you need 2x4gb.

 

[maflynn]

I'd still go with the ram first. 2gb on OSX is not very much and you'll quickly find that you'll be incurring high swap outs/swap-ins Yeah the SSD will help in that but reducing/eliminating access to the swap files will provide better performance imo.

 

[All Taken]

OK how about a go between? Upgrade to 2x2GB (4GB) and pick up a modest SSD?

 

[moral-hazard]

More expensive ram runs at the same speed as cheap ram, so spending money on that and thinking that you'll get better performance is incorrect.

Personally, I go with with crucial or OWC because of the quality of the ram and the customer service. You can buy cheap no-name ram, but the quality may be such that you'll have problems, such as kernel panics. I've never had any issues with crucial or owc.

I agree. I have corsair which is also good on that front. Friends who live in my apartment at school have OWC and/or GSkill, both were satisfied. It sounds like 8GB GSkill is the best value for 8GB (on newegg). It apparently uses the exact same chips as the factory stuff that Apple uses.

I agree with whoever recommended an SSD and 4GB - realistically I think your computer will faster this way. Personally I didn't notice a massive difference going from 2GB to 4GB, upgrading to 8GB seems unnecessary at this point. Maybe later when prices drop.

 

[elfxmilhouse]

OK how about a go between? Upgrade to 2x2GB (4GB) and pick up a modest SSD?

sounds like the best bet

ive been running 4gb with SSD in all my macbooks for about a year now and i have never felt the need to upgrade unless the prices come down.

 

[RealEvil]

Get the cheapest RAM you can find - 'good' RAM in notebooks is a myth.
Ideally you was CL7 ram - e.g. everything Crucial and all the big names sell but CL8 is fine for a MBP.
Cheaper brands like Hynix are fine.

As for the SSD, Gen 2 Intel 80 or 160GB is a great choice or Crucial SSDs are well regarded.

 

[maflynn]

Get the cheapest RAM you can find - 'good' RAM in notebooks is a myth.

I disagree. I've seen too many posts of people buying wicked cheap ram only to have problems with it and then having issue with whom they purchased the ram from.

I buy from crucial and OWC because it is better and because they have very good customer service plus a lifetime guarantee. Like anything else in life, you get what you pay for.

 

[sjinsjca]

i would get the SSD first. you will notice the performance increase with the SSD more than what the ram will give you.

I'd disagree with that for most users.

Always max out the RAM first, is my near-100% recommendation.

 

[elfxmilhouse]

I'd disagree with that for most users.

Always max out the RAM first, is my near-100% recommendation.

i think it depends on how much ram you are starting with.

obviously if you have 1gb and go to 4gb you'll notice the difference more than if you went from 2 to 4gb. with the lower starting ram you are closer to the minimum required amount to run the OS.

 

[msslife]

By the way I am owner of 3 macs

But this one is new and has less performence then the other two.

I am thinking to purchase this

http://cgi.ebay.com/Corsair-128GB-S...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item20aed53b19

Since I am a big fan of cursair! so what do you think guys,

 

[RealEvil]

I disagree. I've seen too many posts of people buying wicked cheap ram only to have problems with it and then having issue with whom they purchased the ram from.

I buy from crucial and OWC because it is better and because they have very good customer service plus a lifetime guarantee. Like anything else in life, you get what you pay for.

All RAM is rated. As long as you buy RAM with the same CAS latency it will perform exactly the same.

On desktop RAM there are more variations available - but again they are all rated so you can easily compare like for like.

As for customer service, yes I suppose there could be a difference. But a lifetime warranty on RAM is about as useful as a lifetime warranty on a pair of shoes or other products you are unlikely to keep for more than a few years.

 

[RealEvil]

By the way I am owner of 3 macs

But this one is new and has less performence then the other two.

I am thinking to purchase this

http://cgi.ebay.com/Corsair-128GB-S...C_Drives_Storage_Internal?hash=item20aed53b19

Since I am a big fan of cursair! so what do you think guys,

I live in the UK, but I believe the US price of the 160GB G2 Intel drive is about $400...so you would get more space and a better drive for the same price.
Also, do Corsair have firmware updates yet? Read a few reviews - that drive is the same as a Samsung P series and (I think a Kingston drive too). They never win 'group tests' especially since Win 7 came out.

Basically... buy Intel or a good Indilinx drive like a OCZ Vertex or Crucial.

 

[steffi]

I just put 8 GB of G.Skill in my MacBook Pro Unibody 13" and it's working real well.

G.Skill is supposedly pretty good and newegg has it at 380 bucks. You can't go wrong with crucial or owc of course.

When I get an SSD it will be made by Intel.

 

[ae3265]

if i had to choose between ram and an SSD i would go with the SSD without hesitation. unless youre talking about going from 1gb -> 4gb (not the same as going from 2gb->4gb or 2gb->8gb) where most users will feel the difference, the ssd will be a huge improvement.

I would go for the 4+gb RAM. Really, you only need to go to 8 if you are doing a lot of virtual machines, or stuff that really, really needs a lot of RAM.

If you are swapping to RAM, on a SSD it will be faster than swapping to HDD, but still orders of magnitude slower than using physical ram.

2gb of RAM on OS X uses a fair amount of swap. At 4gb, for "typical" use, it uses swap very rarely.

After 4gb RAM, then the SSD! At that time, you've optimized RAM first so most of you usage is on the fastest systems. So, disk I/O becomes the next bottleneck.

Like any performance recommendation, that's just general guidelines, it always depends...

 

[msslife]

I would go for the 4+gb RAM. Really, you only need to go to 8 if you are doing a lot of virtual machines, or stuff that really, really needs a lot of RAM.

If you are swapping to RAM, on a SSD it will be faster than swapping to HDD, but still orders of magnitude slower than using physical ram.

2gb of RAM on OS X uses a fair amount of swap. At 4gb, for "typical" use, it uses swap very rarely.

After 4gb RAM, then the SSD! At that time, you've optimized RAM first so most of you usage is on the fastest systems. So, disk I/O becomes the next bottleneck.

Like any performance recommendation, that's just general guidelines, it always depends...

Actually I use virtual machines for 24 hours a day it means as long as I am using mac I will use WIN at the same time since I am a programmer.

A lots of guys here suggested me to go with 4g then for ssd.

So I think I may go with that but any good rams corsair or hitache?