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is 8gb of ram worth it?
- Thread starter bearcats087
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first time Mac user with a 13" mbp and I actually ran out of memory last night after 2 weeks of ownership. and I wasn't even doing much: safari with ~6 tabs (no flash usage) and iTunes to embed artwork into ~8 movie files. iTunes froze until I closed safari to free up some memory.
I'll be upgrading to 8gbs since I ran out of memory without even using cs5 or Xcode. now to look for a good deal...
I'll be upgrading to 8gbs since I ran out of memory without even using cs5 or Xcode. now to look for a good deal...
And you have what now, 4 gig??? Safari and six tabs plus iTunes? That doesn't make sense. On 2 gig I could maybe see it, but not on 4. But Safari is hardly a stellar web browser anyway. Every consider trying Firefox or Chrome?
Rob
yea man i was shocked. i opened the activity manager and saw that itunes was at ~250mb and safari was at ~125mb. i don't know where the hell the rest of my 3.6gb of memory went haha, but all i had opened in addition was mail and adium.
i also have chrome and was primarily using that since i got my mac - when i opened up the 6 same tabs as on safari, it was using ~85mb. when itunes froze, i had safari running b/c i wanted to try out the 'two button swipe to go back' feature that i heard of, and to see whether that feature alone was worth using safari over chrome.
I have a 2011 13" MBP, 4GB of memory. It's my main work laptop. I currently have Chrome with seven tabs open. Safari with four tabs open. I'm also VNC'ed to two machines and also have Cord running, connected to a server. On top of that I also have Skype and Hipchat running.
May I suggest: http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatnano/
My machine currently reports that I have for memory; 916MB Wired, 1.87GB active, 376MB inactive and 886MB free, or completely unallocated. There is just no way four tabs in Safari can be peaking your memory usage like that unless you're running some sort of crazy extensions or something.
If I ever have to again run VMware or some other VM system locally again that would be the only reason I can think of to currently upgrade past 4GB. SSD is the better upgrade.
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EDIT: Sorry, I'm actually running iStat Pro. It's also free. http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/
May I suggest: http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatnano/
My machine currently reports that I have for memory; 916MB Wired, 1.87GB active, 376MB inactive and 886MB free, or completely unallocated. There is just no way four tabs in Safari can be peaking your memory usage like that unless you're running some sort of crazy extensions or something.
If I ever have to again run VMware or some other VM system locally again that would be the only reason I can think of to currently upgrade past 4GB. SSD is the better upgrade.
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EDIT: Sorry, I'm actually running iStat Pro. It's also free. http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatpro/
You didn't run out of memory as much as Lion took a large bunch and put it in "inactive". Download the trial of iFreeMem and you'll see you don't really need more RAM.
this sounds about right. wonder if it's a lion os issue that'll eventually get patched up. thanks to all for chiming in.
Best I can tell since upgrading to lion when it came out, IMO lion needs 2GB minimum to run well, and even then if you try to fire up more than a few programs it gets dicey. So yeah, 4GB is definitely the sweet spot.
I say resolve the issue of what is chewing up the extra 2GB you should have and then see how you feel about upgrading the memory.
I say resolve the issue of what is chewing up the extra 2GB you should have and then see how you feel about upgrading the memory.
Really, really wrong.
4GB is the absolute minimum for running Lion without lag.
8GB is the sweet spot.
Then why does Apple sell the base 11" Air with 2GB?
Have you even used Lion with 2GB? I have. And what part of "...if you try to fire up more than a few programs" did you not understand? It works fine if you're not trying to fire up a whole bunch of apps all at once.
Work on your reading comprehension.
Have you even used Lion with 2GB? I have. And what part of "...if you try to fire up more than a few programs" did you not understand? It works fine if you're not trying to fire up a whole bunch of apps all at once.
Work on your reading comprehension.
So they maintain their profit margin on it.
I've tried running Lion with 2 GB RAM and while it works, it is agonizingly slow. 4 is better, but 8 is where I don't see or feel any lag. That's part of the reason I think the Air in general is a kind of forced obsolescence - with 4 GB max after a while you're going to be tempted to get a newer one just for more RAM.
That's called a placebo effect...
https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1225456.html
I just recently upgraded a Dell poweredge 2950, being used as a vmware host server. It was running a mix of windows and Linux servers. One of which was an RDP server with an average of about 36 users connected during the work day. The host server had a total of 16GB of memory, 4GB of which was dedicated to this RDP server. So 36 users were sharing 4GB all day every day for the past five years before we finally started capping our memory.
Another thing, you're trying to tell me that you see a difference in operational speed on a machine when it runs 4GB vs. 8GB?
https://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-1225456.html
I just recently upgraded a Dell poweredge 2950, being used as a vmware host server. It was running a mix of windows and Linux servers. One of which was an RDP server with an average of about 36 users connected during the work day. The host server had a total of 16GB of memory, 4GB of which was dedicated to this RDP server. So 36 users were sharing 4GB all day every day for the past five years before we finally started capping our memory.
Another thing, you're trying to tell me that you see a difference in operational speed on a machine when it runs 4GB vs. 8GB?
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3_5 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8L1 Safari/6533.18.5)
OSX and especially Lion 10.7 utilizes memory to cache programs. So the more memory the more caching happens and nothing is faster than launching a cached program. So if you really only need 2GB and limit yourself to that amount then you would not gain the benefit of how OSX works.
OSX and especially Lion 10.7 utilizes memory to cache programs. So the more memory the more caching happens and nothing is faster than launching a cached program. So if you really only need 2GB and limit yourself to that amount then you would not gain the benefit of how OSX works.
As I said before, I find 4GB to be the sweet spot. My only point in all of this is the difference between 4 and 8GB is marginal at best. To crazee928, even though cheap i think you will be disappointed in the performance boost, unless of course you are running VM's or rendering in 3D, etc.
If you truly are running short on memory then you have some other underlying problem. Fix the real problem and if you want to spend money invest it in an SSD instead. you'll be happier with the results.
If you truly are running short on memory then you have some other underlying problem. Fix the real problem and if you want to spend money invest it in an SSD instead. you'll be happier with the results.
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I actually run Chrome in one space, AND Safari in another space, with multiple tabs open in each, daily generally from 6am to 4pm when I go home...it's my job. I have 4GB of memory. And I'm doing other stuff too. Right now I just decided to see what it would take to max out my memory;
Chrome + Safari + playing a ripped DVD in iTunes + VPN connection and RDP session running in Cord + playing around in finder while waiting for Garageband to load. FINALLY it beachballed for about ten seconds.
I had iStat and Activity Monitor running and that was the first time I've seen any page writes out today. Actually since I rebooted from Bootcamp yesterday afternoon. If people want to waste their money, I guess they can go ahead.
My macbook came with 8gb installed so can't compare to 4gb or less but have worked great for me and is awesome to allocate 4gb of RAM to VM and still run silky smooth.
Really, for the price, its worth the upgrade just for the one time you might actually need the RAM
Really, for the price, its worth the upgrade just for the one time you might actually need the RAM
That depends on what you're doing. I have 8 GB, but the only times I really notice any difference is when I'm pushing the computer. There is no need for the average user to have 8 instead of 4 GB of RAM. Especially not since most of the times page outs is due to large amounts of RAM being inactive...
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I agree with this. I got the extra RAM because from time to time, I need it. Plus it increases the value of my MBP by more than the RAM cost (in case I want to sell it later on). But if "most people" want to see a performance boost - SSD is the first thing they should get
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If you're not doing anything else than using browsers, there's no wonder you're not getting page outs. But a person who, say, imports the pictures from last weekend and moves large files between disks will get GB's of page outs quite fast.
By the way, I'm guessing you "beachballed" because of your hard drive, not because you "ran out of RAM"...
Ha, smart cookie. You are right, of course it's my HDD. It was a straw man I was hoping would lead at least someone being logical to the conclusion that SSD is a better choice over a bunch of memory they likely won't need at this time.
As for me being "browser heavy", that is the average user. Okay, maybe Office or some other similar app and then a browser with a whole bunch of tabs. Maybe I should have fired up LibreOffice or MS Office in my "test" last night, just for yucks.
Def worth it.
Got it for 40 bucks on Amazon and changed my life.
4GB kept on giving me beach balls and lags on heavy app, but with 8GB, multitasking is priceless.
Got it for 40 bucks on Amazon and changed my life.
4GB kept on giving me beach balls and lags on heavy app, but with 8GB, multitasking is priceless.
I was trying out the MBA 2gb ram version at my local apple store and what alarmed me was that even with no other programs open, it had already used 1.5 gb of ram. This doesn't seem to leave a lot of spare memory for other programs to run?
I guess its that while you may not really need 4gb of ram, 2 gb is pushing it quite thin, and you will probably feel more at ease with that little extra memory as backup for those times. 8gb is probably overkill for me, but hey, my imac came with free ram upgrade, so who was I to refuse?
I guess its that while you may not really need 4gb of ram, 2 gb is pushing it quite thin, and you will probably feel more at ease with that little extra memory as backup for those times. 8gb is probably overkill for me, but hey, my imac came with free ram upgrade, so who was I to refuse?
I was trying out the MBA 2gb ram version at my local apple store and what alarmed me was that even with no other programs open, it had already used 1.5 gb of ram. This doesn't seem to leave a lot of spare memory for other programs to run?
I guess its that while you may not really need 4gb of ram, 2 gb is pushing it quite thin, and you will probably feel more at ease with that little extra memory as backup for those times. 8gb is probably overkill for me, but hey, my imac came with free ram upgrade, so who was I to refuse?
The thing with the MBA is that it has an SSD as standard. Using a swapfile on a regular HDD is bad because it wears out the disk, increases the probability of disk failure and it's slow. With an SSD you have none of these issues, thus making 2 GB of RAM on an Air less of a "limitation" than 4 GB of RAM on a Pro (given that the Pro has a regular HDD).
I mean, of course no page outs is better than having to use a swap file, but with an SSD there's no need to worry about it.