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Just upgraded to 4GB RAM

A

andrewdale

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jan 28, 2008
868
1
Memphis, TN
All I've got to say is, it's amazing how much speed I just got on my start-up. I don't have times, but I know this. With 2GB, the dock would kind of hop up and then bounce and then iStat would take a good 10 seconds to load up completely. Now, maybe 5 seconds for the whole process and the dock just FLIES up. Nice and smooth.

Pretty dang sweet. I highly recommend it for anyone that hasn't upgraded yet.

**P.S. Sorry that this is the umpteenth post like this, but I couldn't hold back.**
 
Does changing the RAM really bring a difference in start time speed?

Hm, if it does I might actually go and do a RAM upgrade also. Which MBP do you have? Try run a stopwatch next time you turn it on and tell us about it :)
 
For your viewing pleasure, I stopwatched my MBP. I placed it on auto-login to take out one step.

Model: 2.5GHz Early-2008 4GB RAM 200GB 7200rpm HDD


Power button pressed: 00:00.00
Dong song: 00:03.31
Grey Apple Load: 00:12.31
Blue screen appears: 00:28:35
Wallpaper appears: 00:46.54
Apps loaded (iStat, Quicksilver, Adium): 00:56.27
Fully functional by 01:00.00

Much better than it used to be. And the QS splash icon is very smooth. It used to be extremely choppy!
 
My MBP seemed snappier once I replaced the stock 2GB with 4GB. Same with my iMac.

It might be mostly psychosomatic, but it's so cheap, I don't care. :)
 
I believe the Santa Rosa boards support 4GB. Pre-SR Core 2s only support 2 or sometimes 3GB, no matter what processor speed.
 
That surprises me. An OS shouldn't need 4 GB of RAM to run smoothly... that's a little insane. Are you sure it wasn't just the first time you restarted in a long time? If so, that could be why :p

*sighs* Gone are the days of System 7 sailing smoothly on six to sixteen megabytes of synchronous DRAM* :(

*Not that they used SDRAM in those days, but it worked with the alliteration.
 
Firefly2002 said:
That surprises me. An OS shouldn't need 4 GB of RAM to run smoothly... that's a little insane. Are you sure it wasn't just the first time you restarted in a long time? If so, that could be why :p

*sighs* Gone are the days of System 7 sailing smoothly on six to sixteen megabytes of synchronous DRAM* :(

*Not that they used SDRAM in those days, but it worked with the alliteration.
Click to expand...

Haha. Yes, those days are gone. You must have forgotten about Moore's Law and it's many iterations and developments!

As far as how long it had been since I restarted. I probably restart my Mac more than most people on MR due to using Bootcamp a few times a day. So, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that!
 
Just clocked my 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with stock 2GB.
Chime :02.4
Apple :09.9
Blue Screen :38.7
Desktop :41.3
Dock+Menubar :42.3
Apps (Webkit and Adium) :52.1

Is this a fluke? Or is your hard drive just very full? (I have a 5400RPM drive, too!)
 
andrewdale said:
Haha. Yes, those days are gone. You must have forgotten about Moore's Law and it's many iterations and developments!
Click to expand...

I thought that Moore's law had to do with the number of transistors doubling per dollar per square cm of silicon every 18-24 months =p

As far as how long it had been since I restarted. I probably restart my Mac more than most people on MR due to using Bootcamp a few times a day. So, I'm pretty sure it wasn't that!
Click to expand...

Hm.
 
Metuas said:
Just clocked my 2.2GHz Core 2 Duo with stock 2GB.
Chime :02.4
Apple :09.9
Blue Screen :38.7
Desktop :41.3
Dock+Menubar :42.3
Apps (Webkit and Adium) :52.1

Is this a fluke? Or is your hard drive just very full? (I have a 5400RPM drive, too!)
Click to expand...

I've heard that start-up times can actually increase when RAM is increased because the computer runs a check on the RAM to see if there is any data to start up. So, more RAM equals more time required for that. What I'm amazed with is the smoothness and "flowy-ness" of start-up. It takes longer to get to the wallpaper, but it's speed and smoothness from there to functional is much better.

Firefly2002 said:
I thought that Moore's law had to do with the number of transistors doubling per dollar per square cm of silicon every 18-24 months =p
Click to expand...

Haha, yeah, but as that number gets higher and higher, more and more (or should I say, Moore and Moore... :D) power is required to run it. Thus, more RAM! "No one will ever need more than 64K of RAM!"
 
andrewdale said:
I've heard that start-up times can actually increase when RAM is increased because the computer runs a check on the RAM to see if there is any data to start up.
Click to expand...

This is true. This is also why I have my startup tests disabled :D I'm not sure if it's possible to engineer from within OS X, but on old PPC macs, you could do it from the Memory Control Panel in OS 9 by holding cmd+ctl+optn while starting it, then turning off memory startup tests, which changed the appropriate value in the NVRAM.

So, more RAM equals more time required for that. What I'm amazed with is the smoothness and "flowy-ness" of start-up. It takes longer to get to the wallpaper, but it's speed and smoothness from there to functional is much better.
Click to expand...

I guess OS X just relies very heavily on paging without RAM. Actually we kinda knew that, but this makes it even clearer :p

Haha, yeah, but as that number gets higher and higher, more and more (or should I say, Moore and Moore... :D)
Click to expand...

*groans*

Lol, ;)

power is required to run it. Thus, more RAM! "No one will ever need more than 64K of RAM!"
Click to expand...


I suppose. Memory just has to do with how much stuff needs to be kept ... well, in memory, at any given time, not transistor count or CPU speed though =p

And I can't remember if it was that Bill Gates never really said 640K is all you'll ever need, or he knew he was BSing, but it's one of the two :D
 
Yeah, more RAM doesn't make your computer run faster. You are still limited by the processor speed and write times. It does help when trying to run multiple things at once though.
 
gibbz said:
Yeah, more RAM doesn't make your computer run faster. You are still limited by the processor speed and write times. It does help when trying to run multiple things at once though.
Click to expand...

If you're running an application or multiple applications that use more than the RAM available and your system is paging, then yes, adding RAM WILL make your computer run faster. Less time is spent paging information to and from the hard drive, which is slower than RAM. If you have 2GB of RAM and all you ever run is TextEdit, then no, you wouldn't see an improvement from more RAM. Processor speed isn't a factor, since it's much faster than RAM or hard drive access. Adding RAM reduces hard drive access, so the only relevant comparison is RAM speed vs HD read/write speed.
 
Yeah, one of the biggest improvements I've noticed is in opening apps.

Firefox is just instantaneous.
Photoshop is much quicker.
I can open Photoshop, Flash & Dreamweaver all at the same time with ease.
I haven't tried a Handbrake rip yet, but I will.
 
ggjstudios said:
If you're running an application or multiple applications that use more than the RAM available and your system is paging, then yes, adding RAM WILL make your computer run faster. Less time is spent paging information to and from the hard drive, which is slower than RAM. If you have 2GB of RAM and all you ever run is TextEdit, then no, you wouldn't see an improvement from more RAM. Processor speed isn't a factor, since it's much faster than RAM or hard drive access. Adding RAM reduces hard drive access, so the only relevant comparison is RAM speed vs HD read/write speed.
Click to expand...

Well we are playing semantics now. The actual speed of the computer is not changed. The computer still is limited by it's processing capabilities. The efficiency at running multiple items at once, which is what I said, does improve for the reasons you mentioned. So yes, you can get better performance based on reduced HD access, or if you have a HD with faster read./write capabilities.
 
The good thing about a lot of ram is that you can leave all sorts of apps open.

I've always shut down apps to save memory but moving on into the ram happy future i probably should re-learn this.

Unless apps grow in size ;)

Having said that, I can't help wondering if some of the above posts are placebo related :D
 
andrewdale said:
For your viewing pleasure, I stopwatched my MBP. I placed it on auto-login to take out one step.

Model: 2.5GHz Early-2008 4GB RAM 200GB 7200rpm HDD


Power button pressed: 00:00.00
Dong song: 00:03.31
Grey Apple Load: 00:12.31
Blue screen appears: 00:28:35
Wallpaper appears: 00:46.54
Apps loaded (iStat, Quicksilver, Adium): 00:56.27
Fully functional by 01:00.00

Much better than it used to be. And the QS splash icon is very smooth. It used to be extremely choppy!
Click to expand...

I just timed my MBP which only has 3 GB ram and it seems to start up quite a bit faster than yours.

00:03.1 "dong"
00:07.1 apple logo
00:25.0 Bue screen
00:26.5 Desktop

Im guessing you are running Leopard and I'm running Tiger so that could be the difference?

I recently upgarded my hard drive from the standard 120 GB and put in a WD 250 GB drive and that seems to have increased the startup speed somehow...

Later,
Andrew
 
i feel my computer running a lot smoother now, especially with final cut pro and photoshop. 4GB is twice as good as 2 :D
 
andrewpoll said:
I just timed my MBP which only has 3 GB ram and it seems to start up quite a bit faster than yours.

00:03.1 "dong"
00:07.1 apple logo
00:25.0 Bue screen
00:26.5 Desktop

Im guessing you are running Leopard and I'm running Tiger so that could be the difference?

I recently upgarded my hard drive from the standard 120 GB and put in a WD 250 GB drive and that seems to have increased the startup speed somehow...

Later,
Andrew
Click to expand...
My friend's Tiger MBP starts up almost instantaneously, posting times similar to yours. My Leopard MBP takes about 45-50 seconds to start up. I'm guessing it's just because of the OS.
 
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