Late 2008 MBP RAM upgrade

[tenhead]

I upgraded my late 2008 MBP to 4 gig of ram when I first bought it. Is it safe to upgrade it to 8 gig? (Crucial said I can). Will it make a different in speed. Seems kind of sluggish with just chrome, twitter, and iTunes opened.

ps- can't do SSD because I just got a new HDD last year after my hard drive died.
Thank you for any advice.

 

[snaky69]

I upgraded my late 2008 MBP to 4 gig of ram when I first bought it. Is it safe to upgrade it to 8 gig? (Crucial said I can). Will it make a different in speed. Seems kind of sluggish with just chrome, twitter, and iTunes opened.

ps- can't do SSD because I just got a new HDD last year after my hard drive died.
Thank you for any advice.

I'm not sure how upgrading RAM would be unsafe.

If you're not running out of RAM in the first place, adding more will provide exactly zero benefit to performance.

What OS are you running? If you're on Mavericks or later, open whatever it is you have normally open in situations where you find your computer sluggish. Open up activity monitor, go to the memory tab and check the memory pressure graph at the bottom. If it's green, you're fine and more RAM would not help.

You could always chuck the optical drive out, put your new HD there with a caddy and buy a SSD.

 

[tenhead]

I'm not sure how upgrading RAM would be unsafe.

If you're not running out of RAM in the first place, adding more will provide exactly zero benefit to performance.

What OS are you running? If you're on Mavericks or later, open whatever it is you have normally open in situations where you find your computer sluggish. Open up activity monitor, go to the memory tab and check the memory pressure graph at the bottom. If it's green, you're fine and more RAM would not help.

You could always chuck the optical drive out, put your new HD there with a caddy and buy a SSD.

I guess I got scare after reading a bad review on the 8 gig upgrade on crucial for the late 2008.
I'm running Yosemite, just checked the activity monitor and the graph is green. So I guess I'm ok. Thank you for the advice.

I want to get the new 12" retina once it comes out so I can have something light to take to work or whatever. Also want a new 15" retina MBP. Not sure which route to go.

 

[tenhead]

I upgraded to 8 GB

So I went ahead and installed 8GB kit RAM on my late 2008 MBP. Everything runs so much faster. Launching apps is so much faster. Feels like I got a new computer. I wish I did it long time ago.
Just want to share this with people with late 2008 running on 2 or 4 GB of RAM. Going up to 8 really does make a huge different.