is 8gb of ram worth it?

[vitzr]

Absolutely. It's the smartest most cost effective move you can make. Especially if you're going to keep it more than one year. As every year ticks off apps, and all that we do always demands more ram.

Droves of Apple followers defended Apples decision to equip 2010 MBA's with 2GB saying it was plenty. Now with Lion they can barely run it.

Ram is the cheapest its been, just do it & you will benefit.

 

[Nice]

If you have the money go for it. Ive had 2 gigs than I upgraded to 8 after 1,5 years and I am glad I did so. You will never need the whole 8 gigs unless you are some hardcore multitasker, but there is absolutely NO reason to buy 4 or 6 gigs because the price of a 4gig bundle and an 8gig bundle is almost the same.

 

[Matthew9559]

Ram is cheap enough nowadays, I really don't see a need not to add it.

 

[phyrexia]

Absolutely worth it.

 

[dlimes13]

$26? Where are you getting these memory cards?

Newegg, couple of weeks ago I saw a G.Skill 8GB Kit for $26 shipped via promo code. Now the cheapest 8GB kit is $35.98 (2-4GB sticks of G.Skill).

 

[snaky69]

How come?

The Intel card being shared memory, the more memory you have, the more it'll dedicate to itself, that is all.

OP, for your usage, you most likely will not notice any performance increase, but with the prices so low, I guess it can't hurt.

There isn't such a thing a better quality RAM when you buy from reputable brands, G.Skill, crucial, corsair, samsumg, hynex, patriot, mushkin are all reputable and have upgrade kits in the $35 neighbourhood.

 

[henrikmk]

Get 8 GB of RAM as it's very cheap these days. There is no point in saving a few dollars for 6 GB, if you own a Macbook Pro. If you ever get to work with programs like Aperture, you will need 8 GB RAM, otherwise it slows to a crawl.

Plus browsing gets more and more memory intensive all the time and it's nice to have the browser in the background, while doing something else, which saves you a few seconds of quitting and launching apps all the time.

 

[Philflow]

Funny how many people actually believe that 8GB will make things faster for the average user.

8GB improves performance only for people who run apps that need it, for example more intense image and video editing or virtual machines. For the average user (web, itunes, mail, office) it does nothing.

Browsing the web does not benefit from more than 4GB. Even if you have 40 tabs open, Word, itunes and utorrent at the same time.

 

[hafr]

Funny how many people actually believe that 8GB will make things faster for the average user.

8GB improves performance only for people who run apps that need it, for example more intense image and video editing or virtual machines. For the average user (web, itunes, mail, office) it does nothing.

Browsing the web does not benefit from more than 4GB. Even if you have 40 tabs open, Word, itunes and utorrent at the same time.

8 GB of RAM is 40 bucks. If you sell your MBP I bet you you could charge more than 40 bucks more for it if you have 8 GB than if you have 4 GB. If you don't sell it chances are you'd want to upgrade to 8 GB of RAM in a year or two anyway.

I've seen enough sudden price chocks on RAM that to me it's a good deal, even if I don't feel the need to upgrade right now. And even if the prices would drop, they can't go much lower than they already are...

That's why I, as an average user who gets about 1 GB worth of page out per week, spent 40 dollars on a RAM upgrade.

 

[vincebio]

i bought a macbook pro i7 17" yesterday with 4gb of ram....and went straight onto crucial's website and bought the 8gb kit for £37. Apple wanted £200.

its a no brainer....and anyone who buys the apple installed kit is a moron

 

[bearcats087]

thanks everyone i think i have been convinced to get the 8gb kit where should i go to get the screwdriver kit to open up the back?

 

[Young Spade]

thanks everyone i think i have been convinced to get the 8gb kit where should i go to get the screwdriver kit to open up the back?

Philips #00 is what you need I'm pretty sure. I ordered the little screwdriver set that includes that from their site for ~7 shipped.

Of course, if you live near a hardware store, I'd take your MBP in there and just get one from there; it would be cheaper and faster.

I'm sure they wouldn't mind even unscrewing the screws for you and laying them out neatly (they're 2 different sizes) so you can install right in the store.

 

[AppleMacFinder]

worth it plus your graphics will bump to 512mb.

Intel HD Graphics 3000 could use 384 MB at max, not 512

 

[maflynn]

I went with 8gb and now Lion just flies on my MBP. Given the low cost of ram, I'd say its a no brainer.

 

[Naimfan]

Intel HD Graphics 3000 could use 384 MB at max, not 512

Wrong. Intel HD 3000 bumps up to 512 MB when 8 GB is installed in a MBP with the HD 3000.

Try it--you'll see.

To the OP--as others have said, 8 GB is so cheap there's no reason not to. When I did it, I noticed an overall increase in "feel"--things felt a bit faster.

 

[WorldIRC]

I don't have to do much on my computer to utilize 8GB. Definitely worth it.

 

[BiggAW]

For me, if I got the Macbook Pro 13, I absolutely would get 8gb. And not because of the poster above. There is no Safari memory leak. It keeps a lot of it's cache in memory, which is a great place to keep it. You have it, use it.

Anyways, 8gb opens a few more doors. One thing you could do is give a nice chunk to Parallels and run Windows well in a VM.

However, if you haven't invested in an SSD yet, that is something I would consider first. You'll see a lot more real world benefits with that.

Given the price, there is really no reason in this day and age to not have an SSD in a >$500 laptop, and given the price of the MBP, and the price of 8GB of ram, it is totally worth it. That being said, there's not much point to 8GB of ram if you're not running pro apps or VMs.

It used to be RAM that no one knew about being the most important thing for making a computer "feel" faster. Now it's an SSD.

 

[palpatine]

Given the price, there is really no reason in this day and age to not have an SSD in a >$500 laptop, and given the price of the MBP, and the price of 8GB of ram, it is totally worth it. That being said, there's not much point to 8GB of ram if you're not running pro apps or VMs.

It used to be RAM that no one knew about being the most important thing for making a computer "feel" faster. Now it's an SSD.

not disputing the speed claims of an ssd, but dollar for dollar, it makes sense to get 8gb. it is very, very inexpensive. i've got it in my 13".

 

[Young Spade]

Wrong. Intel HD 3000 bumps up to 512 MB when 8 GB is installed in a MBP with the HD 3000.

Try it--you'll see.

To the OP--as others have said, 8 GB is so cheap there's no reason not to. When I did it, I noticed an overall increase in "feel"--things felt a bit faster.

That mb bump for graphis does not transfer over to performance, oddly enough.

Read up on it more. You don't achieve better graphical performance when having 8gbs as opposed to 4.

 

[Naimfan]

That mb bump for graphis does not transfer over to performance, oddly enough.

Read up on it more. You don't achieve better graphical performance when having 8gbs as opposed to 4.

I did not say it improved graphics performance. I was simply pointing out that when an MBP is upgraded to 8 GB of RAM the Intel HD3000 is allocated 512 MB for use as VRAM.

"Try it" referred to upgrading to 8 GB RAM and then observing that 512 MB was indeed allocated to the HD3000 graphics.

 

[kevink2]

On my system running VMWare Fusion and 64 bit Windows, 4GB was too little.

The lack of expandability to 8GB was why I didn't buy the Air.

 

[Mr. Retrofire]

what memory leak?

In your head.

 

[BiggAW]

On my system running VMWare Fusion and 64 bit Windows, 4GB was too little.

The lack of expandability to 8GB was why I didn't buy the Air.

It has a few other expandability issues too!

 

[VMMan]

4 GB is fine

Should I get 8gb of ram for doing some programming stuff (e.g. xcode) and running word and safari at the same time? or is 4 enough?

MBP2011 13"

I intended on upgrading my RAM to 8 GB but never bothered once I realized that I was fine running Photoshop, Xcode, and safari simultaneously with 4 GB.

 

[peaceActivist]

no, I've noticed on lion that safari does eat a lot of memory while open. It will gradually increase eating memory until you close it. Firefox had this very same issue a couple versions back.

Memory nowadays is priced like gold. It gradually changes. Right now, it's a fair price, around 35-45 for 8GB SODIMM 1333s. When you think about it, thats pretty damn good for that price. It's only small percentage increase in speed as you probably know, but once you start running multiple programs like browsers, itunes, virtual machines, games, steam etc, memory will become a major asset to the performance.

Not to mention, the increase to video memory which is always welcome. The real question is, to be blunt, can you afford it? Cause when it comes down to it, its not like its going to bog down your system or cause any incompatibility. If you'd like to receive peace of mind, 45 dollars is well worth the RAM increase considering what apple would charge if they sold it to you with 8GB stock.