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Concrete examples of where the 16 GB RAM would help
- Thread starter macbook123
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When I tried the base 2011 MBP 15" it was beach balling like crazy but when I went MBA with flash storage the beach ball was almost non existing. Both systems had 4GB ram.
OSX shows the beach ball if an application doesn't respond within two seconds, which can be caused by many different things, including a slow hard drive.
In case of the base 13" MBP, I know from first-hand experience that the standard hard drive is by far the most limiting factor. Sure, upgrading the RAM doesn't hurt either (it's also dirt cheap right now), but the most limiting component in that machine is the HDD.
That's definitely on the to-do list. I'm a little put off by the whole "ODD bay can't handle SATA III" thing. And, for what it does, the OWC data doubler seems a tad pricey.
Those are cheap quotes! I was looking at OWC and Crucial, and they show about $55-$60 for 4GBx2 kits.
A big mistake a lot of people make with VM's is allocating them too much RAM. Just because a computer running Windows 7 or Ubuntu would have 4GB or 8GB installed doesn't mean you should allocate that much memory. You also shouldn't give them 2 or 4 vCPU's.
As a general rule, start out very low. 1 vCPU and 512MB (XP, Linux servers) or 1GB of RAM (Win 7, newer shinier Linux distros)
As far as crossing the 8GB line, if I don't close my browsers and Ruby servers every few days, I'll get up there in RAM usage. I do web development so I normally have these apps open:
Chrome + lots of tabs
Safari + lots of tabs
Firefox + lots of tabs
Terminal windows
iTerm windows
LibreOffice spreadsheet + writer
Preview + couple PDF files
Multiple text editors - Sublime, TextMate, TextWrangler, MacVim
iTunes
VirtualBox with a Windows VM (1GB)
MySQL Workbench
Ruby server using passenger or more recently just 'rails s'
Memory bounces around between 2.5GB when I first get started to close to 8GB after a few weeks of running non-stop. Usually quitting and restarted each browser frees up 2GB and restarting the Rails server frees up another GB or two.
I don't do anything in Photoshop or things like that - it's basically just web browsers which are all memory hogs.
I have 4x2GB in my iMac, plus an SSD
As a general rule, start out very low. 1 vCPU and 512MB (XP, Linux servers) or 1GB of RAM (Win 7, newer shinier Linux distros)
As far as crossing the 8GB line, if I don't close my browsers and Ruby servers every few days, I'll get up there in RAM usage. I do web development so I normally have these apps open:
Chrome + lots of tabs
Safari + lots of tabs
Firefox + lots of tabs
Terminal windows
iTerm windows
LibreOffice spreadsheet + writer
Preview + couple PDF files
Multiple text editors - Sublime, TextMate, TextWrangler, MacVim
iTunes
VirtualBox with a Windows VM (1GB)
MySQL Workbench
Ruby server using passenger or more recently just 'rails s'
Memory bounces around between 2.5GB when I first get started to close to 8GB after a few weeks of running non-stop. Usually quitting and restarted each browser frees up 2GB and restarting the Rails server frees up another GB or two.
I don't do anything in Photoshop or things like that - it's basically just web browsers which are all memory hogs.
I have 4x2GB in my iMac, plus an SSD
It's more like HDD + sloppy file system. HFS+ is really quirky. Disk warrior cuts the amount of them you'll actually see even though it just organizes directories. Outside of application launches and a few other things, ram should deal with most beach balling, and 8GB is cheaper than a 500GB ssd of equivalent capacity (I have one that's 512 or something, they're quite expensive).
What about when there are 2 or 3 users? Our new rMBP will be primarily my wife's work laptop and require few resources. However, I will want to use it for iPhoto/iMovie/etc and my kids for games. (when she lets us near it!). Our current MBP is so slow switching users we never do but I want to have the option. Will more RAM or speed make a difference?
What application? Was it like 100k layers in PS?
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Hopefully one day RAM will become PAM (Permanent Access Memory) and piled high and sold cheap
There are countless examples and having people list them all is unrealistic. If you don't understand how computers work then there are plenty of guides out there that you can refer to for education on the matter. If you're frequently in situations where you're constantly paging out to a storage device that is orders of magnitude slower then you'll benefit from more RAM. If, instead, your work involves a lot of IO with storage device and not much memory then the SSD is probably a better choice.
It's all about identifying the bottlenecks, wherever they may happen to be, and addressing them rather than trying to rely on lists of every possible permutation and associated solutions. As with any other question on usage, look at your usage and act accordingly.
Benchmarks are just benchmarks. Again, analyze your usage and respond accordingly.
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While you should certainly start off with low amounts of RAM and CPU, I've found that my VMs performed terribly under 512MB. After giving them 1-2GB, they no longer run out of RAM, but they quickly run out of CPU cycles. Will probably have to upgrade my processor to fix this one (currently running off an old C2D).
Everyone keeps talking about giving their VMs vCPUs - how do you actually attribute cores on OSX? I'm still stumped on this one (someone help, please).
It in the virtual machine's settings.
https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch03.html#settings-processor
What application? Was it like 100k layers in PS?
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Hopefully one day RAM will become PAM (Permanent Access Memory) and piled high and sold cheap
no, like 60+ 2K exr layers in Nuke
Alright let's say FCPX, 5-15 minute videos in 720p. A few transitions, very quick POV/3rd person back n forth shots, hard light all the clips, and music overlay.
Maybe Motion 5 or or Compressor 4 open, a random export of the entire project to see how it looks outside of FCPX, and maybe open Safari randomly to check email, facebook, twitter, etc.
What would this benefit more from, the 2.6ghz upgrade or the 16gb of RAM, OOOOR is the base model MBPr fine for this kind of work?
Maybe Motion 5 or or Compressor 4 open, a random export of the entire project to see how it looks outside of FCPX, and maybe open Safari randomly to check email, facebook, twitter, etc.
What would this benefit more from, the 2.6ghz upgrade or the 16gb of RAM, OOOOR is the base model MBPr fine for this kind of work?
1799. So to upgrade to 16gb would account for a $300 difference with tax (assuming student discount + the itunes card). There was a MR poster who got his for 1749. Mine was an LG screen and if I was to bet, the other poster's is probably an LG also (if you're picky about that kind of thing).