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How to speed up 2010 13" MBP?

S

swamesp

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 12, 2009
131
0
Somewhere on Earth
Hello all,

I have 13" 2010 MBP, 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4GB, NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics.

I bought it in August 2010 and off late I do lot of photography (with my Nikon DSLR) and HTML design. Laptop has definitely become slower after I started using Aperture. I see 50 GB free in (250 GB) HDD and it has 4GB RAM.

Increasing the RAM and HDD will help to speed it up or should I look at the option of buying the latest MBPs?
 
I see, for some reason I thought this machine would serve me at least few years until it gets slower like PCs.

Ok will try to increase the RAM.
 
Try to exit/quit all applications excluding those which you use (Aperture and D'weaver probably) and try work then. It should then be clear and about 1-2GB left Free from 4GB. I don't think that that will help.
Put SSD there.
 
Get an SSD. Definitively, the single biggest upgrade you can do. I had a Vertex 3 in my 2011 MBP, and it was great. But the capacity was small (120GB) so when prices came down, I bought a 256GB Crucial M4, and put the Vertex 3 in my old 2008 Macbook, which pretty much felt unusable compared to the MBP. The SSD in the macbook gave this old computer a whole new lease on life. Even for older computers, the performance increase is absolutely staggering. Put down a few bucks for an SSD. You'll wonder why you didn't do it sooner.

All that photography software is very disk-intensive. SSD is absolutely the way to go.
 
If you do a lot of graphics work, I'd definitely recommend more RAM. You can get 8GB for as low as $40. The RAM specs for Mid 2010 13" MBP model are (PC3-8500 DDR3 1066 MHz type RAM) you can find it here

Also, while you cannot upgrade the processor, adding an SSD will help tremendously. That experience is more hit-and-miss, however, because of slight compatibility and stability issues with some drives. My recommendation is to choose between Intel 320, Samsung 470, Intel 510, Samsung 830, or Crucial M4. Samsung 470 and Intel 320 are perfect for your system because they are SATA II drives and they offer good stability/compatibility at a reasonable price. Intel 510, Samsung 830, and Crucial M4 are a bit overkill for your system since they're SATA III and your system only operates at SATA II speeds and these drives are also a bit more expensive.

Hope that helps :)
 
gorskiegangsta said:
Intel 510, Samsung 830, and Crucial M4 are a bit overkill for your system since they're SATA III and your system only operates at SATA II speeds and these drives are also a bit more expensive.
Click to expand...

They're overkill for the current system, although they're future proofing should he replace the current machine with a newer one. Given they'll negotiate at SATA II nothing's really lost, and the cost differential in pricing is minimal.
 
Aperture is a heavy program. An SSD would help you significantly, however I'd imagine you'd need a lot of space if you're heavy into the photography, so maybe hold off and see if the price/gb falls a bit more, and get an upgrade to 8 GB of RAM in the meantime, as it'll help you with future OS updates anyway and one can never have too much.
 
ram and ssd, definitely.

you can always store work that's NOT current on an external drive (i do that).
so i manage well with a 256g SSD...
 
gorskiegangsta said:
If you do a lot of graphics work, I'd definitely recommend more RAM. You can get 8GB for as low as $40. The RAM specs for Mid 2010 13" MBP model are (PC3-8500 DDR3 1066 MHz type RAM) you can find it here
Click to expand...

I wish free shipping also applies in Canada. It makes a lot of difference when youre tight in cash
 
I recommend you keep your hdd for storing photos, but the sad for programs, lion, etc so they are fast and that the ssd doesn't get filled up to easily.
 
RAM and SSD.

I have the same model as you with 8gb of ram and an SSD its fairly quick. LR4 gets bogged down, but I suspect thats a LightRoom issue and not a hardware problem. Adobe forums are rife with complaints about LR's performance.
 
Check for malware

Honestly check for malware. There are a few out there that have massively infected macs.

http://www.macworld.com/article/1160085/apple_posts_mac_defender_fix.html
http://www.sophos.com/en-us/products/free-tools/sophos-antivirus-for-mac-home-edition.aspx
http://www.infoworld.com/t/cyber-crime/flashback-malware-turns-macs-moola-says-symantec-192378

With the popularity of macs rising the threat of virus' and malware on macs are becoming a very high threat.

SSD will improve the performance. No doubt about that. But because your using sata 2 interface vs sata 3 interface it will not perform as stated on the box. The max that the sata 2 interface can perform at is around 260-280MB/s compared to 520-560MB/s on sata 3 interface. Just a FYI.

Good luck! :)
 
Thanks for all the helpful replies, appreciate it.

I have attached the screenshots from Activity Monitor while aperture is running, I saw that at times only 6MB of RAM is free. :eek:
RAM should be the culprit here.

Screen shot 2012-05-23 at 10.36.56 PM.png

Screen shot 2012-05-23 at 10.39.10 PM.png

As per apple website link, this 2010 MBP supports upto 8GB ram. Can i go for 16GB is it going to make any difference?

Right now with budget going for camera lenses, I'll wait for the SSD price to go down a bit lower. As HDD space has reduced, I'm more inclined to get a 7200rpm (640GB or more) HDD.

My photography includes travel and adding a HDD to my travel bag is a hassle as I think aperture is slower when I maintain the library in it than in the internal drive. Any comments on this?
 
It doesn't support 16GB, so the max you can do is 8GB.

I have your model, MAKE SURE you get 1066 RAM. If you don't, it will not boot. I learned this the hard way.
 
Ok great thanks.

Will place order in a day or two for this. I have two questions now:

- With my photography becoming intensive and the SSD (in case I choose that route) having smaller memory size, maintaining aperture lib in external disk will reduce the speed compared to having it in internal drive?

- Any suggestions on the hybrid drives from seagate? (SSD + HDD combinations)?
 
Nice thing about Aperture is it makes it easy to split things into multiple libraries. So you can keep a smaller, current library on the SSD, and move older stuff to an external to free up space.
 
Thanks for the reply, I read few other threads about "Moving the Master References to External drive", I have explore further on that. Thanks.

Now the final thing about Hybrid drive vs SSD? Cost vs performance scale?
 
8 GB RAM is on the way, is 128 Crucial SSD recommended as the price seems to be around $120.

Should I definitely look at 256 GB? Any suggestions on the hybrid drives as well?

Thanks.
 
I also have a 13" 2010 MacBook Pro. I never really noticed it slowing down, but that's because I've done a lot of upgrades. I really recommend upgrading to 8GB of RAM, and maybe a Solid State Drive (SSD). I replaced my mechanical hard drive with the SSD, and it's been so fast. The RAM also helps keep my machine running fast, and applications are very snappy with it.

It may seem expensive to upgrade everything, but it's definitely worth it. Not only is my MacBook Pro faster, but it'll stay fast for years to come.
 
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