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Effectivness of Upgrading MacbookPro to 8GB

N

NStocks

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Apr 3, 2008
1,569
18
England
Hi,

I have a mid 2010 17" Macbook pro, using a Corei7 2.66Ghz processor with 4GB RAM.

I've recently been checking the activity monitor and when running many applications (mainly Adobe), the 'free' ram quite often falls below 100MB.

I'm not 100% sure what the readings show, though I have checked on Apple's website and it appears my Mac really is using almost 4GB of RAM.

Therefor, and after checking prices, I'm looking at upgrading to 8GB RAM (It's only £40 from Crucial Memory)

Will I see a good speed difference in major applications (Illustrator, CAD and Photoshop), or will they be minimal? Can these application really make use of 8GB?

Thanks for your help.

EDIT: Incorrect Price
 
Last edited:
I'm hoping £330 is a typo, because that ram is $54 US on crucial.com. I went from 4gb to 8gb on a mac mini and saw a difference, particularly in Photoshop.
 
AuroraProject said:
I'm hoping £330 is a typo, because that ram is $54 US on crucial.com. I went from 4gb to 8gb on a mac mini and saw a difference, particularly in Photoshop.
Click to expand...

Yes it was a type! (fixed now). Did you see speed boosts in the overall use of Photoshop, or just import/export type actions? (or both?)
 
I work with RAW files, so the 8gb upgrade definitely sped up opening the files (especially opening a batch), changes and saving, and import/export. The biggest speed difference for me was on anything batch related, it just handles the batch much better with more ram.
 
The free ram amount isn't wot you should be looking at bcos OS X will cache stuff in ram (hence the inactive ram category) and won't release the previous contents until a new application requests it.

You need to pay attention to the number of page OUTS that your system is having to do. high num = performance impact
 
There is NO WAY I would run Lion on anything less than 8GB (especially with Photoshop, etc.). I know others do it but IMO 8GB is a minimum. I guess it depends on what else you are doing on the machine. For the price of memory it is a no-brainer decision to me.
 
For your usage, 8 GB of memory would be effective in improving the overall performance of your MacBook Pro.
 
I just upgraded to 8gb RAM on my mid 2010 15 inch MBP and I notice a considerable difference. I highly recommend it. I got my RAM and macsales.com (OWC).
 
Seriously, it's $50. You spent a whole lot more on the macbook pro, $50 for a decent increase in performance is a no brainer.
 
For my usage, 4 wasn't enough. I would have a pages out value of around 2-3GB with a Pages in value of about 5-6 GB. I believe that if your pages out its more than 10% of your pages in, its wise to upgrade. Since I upgraded to the 8GB (got for 39 or so on Amazon) my pages out is almost always 0. In active remains at about 1gb usually with free hovering around 1.5-2GB. I do a lot of work on maya, autocad, mudbox, consistently have video chat running to communicate with my wife, videos (something or the other always on), and def. safari along with chrome (as google chat on safari is a pain in the butt).
 
I've looked at the pages info, and briefly, the pages out and pages in aren't that different.... I'd say they each range from 420-480 pages.

Another thing, and this is my reasoning for wanting more speed, is that Illustrator seems to be running quite slow, even for simple drawings.... I'm using OS X LION, and CS5.5... In activity monitor I noticed that pretty much all applications rain in 64X whereas Illustrator didn't say 32 or 64X which to me, means it's not running 64X?

Can Illustrator make use of 8GB RAM?
 
Asking if Illustrator can use 8GB of RAM doesn't make any sense. Illustrator does not need 8GB of RAM. If you're running Illustrator along with Photoshop and several other apps, then yes, your system might need 8GB. But just Illustrator alone will not.

Also keep in mind that page ins/outs are cumulative from the time you last restarted your computer. Best advice would be to restart it, use it the way you normally would for a little while, then check the page outs. If the page outs are high then you may want to invest in more RAM.

I know there's a lot of people here that will say you should just spend the $50, but why would you want to if it won't help you? RAM isn't a cure-all. If your computer is using the 4GB you currently have, then yes, it's worth the $50. If you're not having a lot of page outs, adding more RAM won't make things run any faster and you're just wasting $50.
 
I've just heard on a different forum that AI can only use around 3GB of RAM and is 32-bit only on the Mac. It was suggested that in 6-12 months, it would be more worthwhile upgrading as Adobe are likely to relase 64-bit AI on the Mac.

Whilst I would see overall system boosts, I only really see the slight slowness in AI (perhaps because it's 32-bit).

I think I will hold off for now...


Thanks for all the help
 
sweetbrat said:
Asking if Illustrator can use 8GB of RAM doesn't make any sense. Illustrator does not need 8GB of RAM. If you're running Illustrator along with Photoshop and several other apps, then yes, your system might need 8GB. But just Illustrator alone will not.

Also keep in mind that page ins/outs are cumulative from the time you last restarted your computer. Best advice would be to restart it, use it the way you normally would for a little while, then check the page outs. If the page outs are high then you may want to invest in more RAM.

I know there's a lot of people here that will say you should just spend the $50, but why would you want to if it won't help you? RAM isn't a cure-all. If your computer is using the 4GB you currently have, then yes, it's worth the $50. If you're not having a lot of page outs, adding more RAM won't make things run any faster and you're just wasting $50.
Click to expand...


Any computer can benefit from more ram. One thing is for sure, more ram will not hurt your system. Just using the internet , uploading/downloading things can easily run you into the 4gb mark.


Ram is not the only answer to the op's problem, but 8gb ram is a very good place to have your computer.
 
Don't know why this thread is any longer then one response.

The cheapest most cost effective upgrade you can do to speed up your PC is to max out the RAM. Spending $50 to double you RAM should not even be questioned. Just do it. Especially if you are using Adobe products.
 
iisforiphone said:
in Activity Monitor/Memory what are your page outs at, note a restart followed by a few hours of normall use will give you a better messure
Click to expand...

Here's a typical day: AutoCAD, Illustrator, Youtube, Mail.

As you can see the pages out are way bigger than the pages in, though normally it's by 100 not over 300!

I guess I should upgrade?

(it's pointless saying "It's only £50" but that's £50 towards the new MBP! And it needs to be worthwhile to even think about upgrading. apparently it's not worthwhile for AI as it's 32bit, but overall it will boost my system.
 

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Your page outs are tiny and your page ins are insignificant too. My page ins on my MBA with 4GB of ram, which I use to work on away from home, are at 10.2 GBs and my page outs are regularly around 4 GBs. 1024 Mega bytes = 1 Giga byte.

I do not see that you have a need for more memory, if that is indeed your typical daily usage.

The applications that you have mentioned can use a lot more than even 8 GBs, but it depends on what you use them for.
 
NStocks said:
Here's a typical day: AutoCAD, Illustrator, Youtube, Mail.

As you can see the pages out are way bigger than the pages in, though normally it's by 100 not over 300!

I guess I should upgrade?

(it's pointless saying "It's only £50" but that's £50 towards the new MBP! And it needs to be worthwhile to even think about upgrading. apparently it's not worthwhile for AI as it's 32bit, but overall it will boost my system.
Click to expand...

Based on this picture, I would say you do _not_ need more ram. It won't hurt your system to have more, but I don't think you would benefit very much.

I suggest upgrading the hard disk to an SSD. But for that you should carefully evaluate your storage needs.
 
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