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Can mid 2010 4GB Ram MBP handle CS6?

E

EvBond

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 4, 2008
3
0
Hi everybody

Bit of a RAM/CS6 dilemma here. About to head off on holiday for a week and will only have my mid 2010 MBP to work with. It's maxed out at 4GB RAM, and I do a fair bit of high end retouching. Have just got CS6 on Creative Cloud Subscription, and wondering if anyone would advise as to whether 4GB will cut it? My CS5 run's OK-ish on it, and keep hearing about SSDs, but not sure how they work with a MBP... Latest MBPs can go up to 8GB ram, but is the 2K price tag worth it for extra 4gb ram or will I be tearing my hair out trying to work a 1GB PSD file in CS6 on my 4GB mid2010 MBP?

Any suggestions / advice appreciated
 
Hopefully someone with specific experience with the 2010 model will chime in, but I'm fairly sure that you should be able to upgrade your Macbook Pro with at least 8GB of RAM yourself.

Also you can definitely put an SSD in a Macbook Pro. There's a whole sticky thread on the topic: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1177020/
 
2010 MBPs can handle 8 GB RAM, which you can get for less than 50 USD via Newegg, Crucial, Corsair, Amazon and many other retailers and put it in yourself.


An SSD would be a good speed boost too, and you can get 120 GB SSDs for less than 150 USD nowadays.
MacBook, MacBook Pro: Replacing the Hard Disk Drive, transferring data to the new HDD

the guide includes:
  • 0. Identify your MacBook or MacBook Pro
  • 1. Getting a new HDD
  • 2. Guides to replace the internal HDD with a newer one
  • 3. Transferring data from the old HDD to the new HDD
  • 4. Using the optical disk drive (ODD) slot for placing an SSD or HDD inside the MB/P (OPTIBAY)
​


 
EvBond said:
Hi everybody

Bit of a RAM/CS6 dilemma here. About to head off on holiday for a week and will only have my mid 2010 MBP to work with. It's maxed out at 4GB RAM, and I do a fair bit of high end retouching. Have just got CS6 on Creative Cloud Subscription, and wondering if anyone would advise as to whether 4GB will cut it? My CS5 run's OK-ish on it, and keep hearing about SSDs, but not sure how they work with a MBP... Latest MBPs can go up to 8GB ram, but is the 2K price tag worth it for extra 4gb ram or will I be tearing my hair out trying to work a 1GB PSD file in CS6 on my 4GB mid2010 MBP?

Any suggestions / advice appreciated
Click to expand...

A mid 2010 can take 8GB, so you have room to upgrade. The newest can take 16GB. For work that large, I would definitely consider an SSD upgrade.

----------
simsaladimbamba said:
2010 MBPs can handle 8 GB RAM, which you can get for less than 50 USD via Newegg, Crucial, Corsair, Amazon and many other retailers and put it in yourself.


An SSD would be a good speed boost too, and you can get 120 GB SSDs for less than 150 USD nowadays.
MacBook, MacBook Pro: Replacing the Hard Disk Drive, transferring data to the new HDD

the guide includes:
  • 0. Identify your MacBook or MacBook Pro
  • 1. Getting a new HDD
  • 2. Guides to replace the internal HDD with a newer one
  • 3. Transferring data from the old HDD to the new HDD
  • 4. Using the optical disk drive (ODD) slot for placing an SSD or HDD inside the MB/P (OPTIBAY)
​
Click to expand...

$150?? Shoot you can get 120GB SSDs for right under $100 all day long. ;)
 
I'd definitely upgrade to 8GB of RAM. It's a cheap upgrade and will make CS6 work much more smoothly. You shouldn't need more than that unless you're working with very large files with lots of layers.
 
I have a 13-inch Mid-2010 MacBook Pro that was the base model (though I have upgraded to 8GB of RAM since then). I've tried Photoshop CS 5, 5.5, and now 6, and all of them run really well on my computer.

I do a lot of digital paintings around 3K-4K pixels and it runs pretty smoothly. The file sizes haven't exceeded more than 200 MB however. I tried working with a 1GB file size and I did notice that it was running more sluggishly. For example, when I applied a brush stroke it took about half-a-second longer to apply, I was moving it faster than it was going on the canvas. I did high resolution photo retouching and it's worked kind of okay; it's not awfully slow, but I noticed some slow down.

It'll probably run sluggish for you at the sizes you're working with though.

I would purchase 8GB of RAM though, I got it for about $45 from Crucial. It did make my machine run a bit snappier.
 
Thanks for all the advice everyone, as my memory said all slots were used, I assumed it was maxed, but apparently not - schoolboy error - will get 8Gb put in ASAP and look at the SSD option. My MBP is a 2.66GHz Intel Core i7, 1067MHz DDR3. Thankfully the black screen of death seems to be abating. Lion and the Nvidia chip on these models was making it virtually unusable at one stage
 
I don't see it running any slower than CS5. The biggest bottleneck is your hard drive, and my guess is that you don't see much difference between 5 and 6. Got to 8GB (2x4GB sticks) and stick an SSD in there and it'll feel like warp speed.
 
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