I just installed 4GB on my MBP, but I see or feel anything different, it might be even slower. Are there specific things that I could do to see the difference better?
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Difference in 2GB and 4GB Ram?
- Thread starter Gattz
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
If you don't do anything intensive, like graphics or heavy stuff in VM Ware/Parallels, you probably wasted your money.
Why did you upgrade your memory?
Its akin to installing a larger drive but not having enough data to fill the extra space.
Why did you upgrade your memory?
Its akin to installing a larger drive but not having enough data to fill the extra space.
I wanted to get the most out of the system. I don't do any graphic designing, but I usually run a lot of apps at one time; I play high resolution videos that sometimes slow down; and I play games, but not too much. You know just a upgrade to increase overall run speed.
Have you done any personal benchmarks?
Stick your old RAM in there and do the stuff you think was suffering with 2GB of RAM. Then do it with the 4Gb and time the difference.
Stick your old RAM in there and do the stuff you think was suffering with 2GB of RAM. Then do it with the 4Gb and time the difference.
Not the best analogy! You might find your Mac a tad slower for a few days, until the OS figures out it has more swap space, and uses it accordingly.
More RAM will help when working with larger files, or apps that can make use of more available RAM.
The OS will use what it needs, and swap out space on the HDD as it is needed, so if more RAM is available, it will use less HDD space.
With RAM prices where they are, I doubt you wasted your money, but you might not see the speed improvement you thought you would.
Patriks7
macrumors 65816
You do know that a larger hard drive with more space will make the system faster, right? I bought a 500 GB even though I knew 200 GB probably won't be used.
Did you have a specific reason to install the 4 gigs? (video processing, photoshop, rendering etc..)
If your not using your machine for anything that requires 4 gigs, no it's not going to be magically faster. If your not sure, you probably aren't taking advantage of the 4 gigs, lots of people "think" they need faster processors, more ram etc... yet no clue why or don't even run programs that take advantage of the faster hardware.
Considering ram is cheap, you can't really go wrong upgrading but I'm guessing from your post you have no clue if you needed it or not. Good news is it will already be there when you do finally need it🙂
Upgrading to 4GB when your computer isn't fully using the 2GB is akin to upgrading from 250GB to 500GB drive when you only have 100GB of data. The 150GB of free space is all you need for the system to breeze easily and an extra 250GB won't make it run any quicker.
In your case the upgrade made sense because had you not you would be hitting capacity on your stock drive, which will slow the system down.
Regardless, the OP should do some personal benchmarks because even if the computer is running the same speed it may feel slower because he/she was expecting it to feel faster.