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Does more Ram use more battery power?

Y

yuanmoons

macrumors 6502
Original poster
I read a comment in passing whilst surfing and i wondered whether it was true - does more ram equal more power drain? if so, any indication of how much extra 10%? etc?

I thinking of upgrading from 2 to 4gb ram on my macbookpro 2.4ghz.

Thanks
 
Yes. It would have to power the extra stick.

I am unsure as to how much more battery power is required though.
 
inigel said:
Yes. It would have to power the extra stick.

I am unsure as to how much more battery power is required though.
Click to expand...

But if you're currently using 2x1GB and upgrade to 2x2GB it's not an extra stick, it's just 1GB more on each stick, would that still use more power?
 
yuanmoons said:
I think the mbp has 2 x 1gb sticks right now, im assuming? so would it not be replacing like for like, 2 x 2gb sticks, so just higher capacity?
Click to expand...

Yeah thats right. I think a higher quantity of ram might use a tiny bit more power, but it really won't make a difference to your battery life. There will be more physical chips or chip capacity in the 2gb sticks, so that is why i think it might use more power. Not sure though.
 
natebookpro said:
But what about less accessing the hard drive...
Click to expand...

That is true, but unless you're doing anything really heavy or you have a small amount of ram it won't write to the hard drive much at all.
You can check your page ins and outs on disk utility. Mine has been very little (100mb) and i have 1gb of ram.
 
When I bought my MBP in October, I upgraded to 2x2 Gb RAM about a week later in-store because I do a lot of graphics work with PS3. I didn't notice any extra faster drainage of battery power when I got home.
 
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