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Does 8gb ram make any difference?
- Thread starter stanny
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not necessary. RAM only good for multitasking really. I have the 15" and i dont even have SSD and it runs very nicely. However games tend to run better on windows than Snow Leopard. For example, Starcraft 2 plays on medium for mine w/o lag on Snow leopard, while on Windows 7 i can easily play on high w/o lag.
While the ram is not necessary 8gb should cost $80, and thats CHEAP. its cheap but not necessary.
I upgraded my ThunderBook to 8GB for CS5, as I do a lot of graphics work and photo editing, with occasional video editing.
But it did lower my boot time from around 21s to 14s. I wasn't expecting that.
It's going to be really nice to upgrade to 16GB later next year when they come down in price. But if you need 8GB, there's no reason you can't do it yourself. Only costs about $80 on NewEgg, and the process is fairly straightforward. Just be careful when popping the bottom plate off, as the center clips on this model are a little snug.
But it did lower my boot time from around 21s to 14s. I wasn't expecting that.
It's going to be really nice to upgrade to 16GB later next year when they come down in price. But if you need 8GB, there's no reason you can't do it yourself. Only costs about $80 on NewEgg, and the process is fairly straightforward. Just be careful when popping the bottom plate off, as the center clips on this model are a little snug.
More RAM is a no-brainer at the prices you can get 8GB now. 16GB RAM..? Now that's where you start looking to need!
Depends on your usage. I upgraded to 8gig because I have to sometimes virtualize up to 15 Cisco router instances. For me 8 gig makes sense, but to others who do not run resource intensive apps then it would be a waste of money
This!!!! ^^
Most people here are just specs-naive and they probably think the bigger their RAM is, the faster their Facebook pages will open or their WoW will get better frame rates.
I beg to differ. Running Windows 7 to play hard-core games, you won't need more than 4gb RAM. In fact you won't even utilize more than half of that. Do your research.
If you're doing a fair amount of virtualization (with Parallels or Fusion, for example) then it's probably a worthwhile upgrade as this is one area where you're likely to see a difference.
You'll be playing games and expect some performance? I'm running a B.T.O. 2.3ghz. 17" with Apple's 128 gigabyte solid state drive. It appears to make the fans run like crazy but with 8 G.B. of R.A.M. I can play the OSX version of Portal via Steam put to maximum visual settings, without the sound becoming choppy like it was starting to do with the stock configuration.
I suppose it's good to keep in mind that the 17" pushes a higher resolution screen, requiring more resources. However since Portal's a bit of an old game by now, I'm sure you can find use in as much R.A.M. as you can afford, especially if you want to push an external monitor or home theater system with the laptop in clamshell mode at home.
I suppose it's good to keep in mind that the 17" pushes a higher resolution screen, requiring more resources. However since Portal's a bit of an old game by now, I'm sure you can find use in as much R.A.M. as you can afford, especially if you want to push an external monitor or home theater system with the laptop in clamshell mode at home.
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Any ram not being used by programs will be used by OS for disk cache nowadays, so it's worth having considering how cheap it is nowadays.
Well said, I only upgraded my 15" 2010 to 8GB for the resource intensive software I run for work. For most other use 4 is just fine.
It made a very noticeable difference for me, but I tend to keep 6-10 applications open at once. Even though none of those are particularly big (mail, calendar, RSS, etc), apparently that was enough to use up my memory. The biggest reason I got 8GB is for Aperture. With 4GB, I have to close every other application to use it comfortably.
Then 4gb is more than enough for you to worry about. Heck, even with 4gb, you'll run virtual just fine. 8gb is only useful if your 10 or more apps is doing something at the same time, like toxic posted.
I have been monitoring my RAM usage in Activity Monitor since I got my MBP. It has not gone above 4 GB yet. I do not have MS Office for Mac on it yet, and maybe after I install it I will be glad for the 8GB in my machine... But until then, I regret spending the extra money.
Think I will get 8GB today instead of 4GB, I will be running AAE and PS and all that jazz here soon for school, so I'll want the RAM. I hear RAM will make games load faster anyways, like map levels and such, so its nice to have. Don't think you will get 10+ FPS boost in your games though.
Plus I hate seeing 200MB of Ram free only for what I currently do(Steam, Safari, iTunes, PS)
Plus I hate seeing 200MB of Ram free only for what I currently do(Steam, Safari, iTunes, PS)
Wow I'm surprised
Nobody has yet mentioned checking activity monitor in utilities. I didn't know this till recently, but if you look at "system memory" in activity monitor, you can quickly tell whether you need more memory. If you look at "Page outs" and "Swap used" these values should be close to 0. "Free" shouldn't be hovering in the 0-200 mb range often. After having your computer on for a few days, you start to collect some open apps and stuff that soaks up memory.
Leave activity monitor open for a day or two, after a fresh restart and check it from time to time. Memory is so cheap now, it doesn't make sense to give yourself a bottleneck there.
Nobody has yet mentioned checking activity monitor in utilities. I didn't know this till recently, but if you look at "system memory" in activity monitor, you can quickly tell whether you need more memory. If you look at "Page outs" and "Swap used" these values should be close to 0. "Free" shouldn't be hovering in the 0-200 mb range often. After having your computer on for a few days, you start to collect some open apps and stuff that soaks up memory.
Leave activity monitor open for a day or two, after a fresh restart and check it from time to time. Memory is so cheap now, it doesn't make sense to give yourself a bottleneck there.