Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Leopard overall speed increase going from 2gb to 4gb of ram?

I

iansilv

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jun 2, 2007
1,101
411
First mac, trying to understand something:

i have 2gb in my mbp, and i was wondering what kind of usability/real world speed increases I might see by going to 4gb of ram? For example, coverflow- do icons load faster so i will see fewer of the transparent placeoholder icons? Or, when using expose, will the pages slide more smoothly?

Also- is there less disk access with 4gb?

Forgive me for all the dumb questions, it's just that windows dealt with memory in a strange way, by basically not taking advantage of it properly, and I know leopard is different, so I just wanted to know if the speed increases will be noticeable.

thanks
 
I am new to Mac, got my mac pro and MB 3 weeks ago.

W/ the MB I had stock 1GB and played around with it for about 4 days until I realized 1GB was NOT enough for Leopard, at least for me.

I dropped 4gb in this bad boy and could not have been happier.

Snappy, fast, a true savage!! Get 4GB :D
 
Umm...
Won't you really only see benefits from more RAM if you're getting "page outs" in activity monitor?
 
ram is so cheap, just splurge

i plan to go all out to 4GB when i finally get around to it, even though I don't entirely get the benefits of the last GB on this version of the imac
 
Just added 4GB into my 2.2GHz macbook. I've not noticed a increase in speed, however with the stock 1GB of ram i did notice a few slow downs, in finder especially if I had a number of apps open, although as a whole it managed quite well.

I'm comparing this upgrade to upgrading from 512MB to 2GB in my Core Solo Mac Mini. Although this is not running leopard, I did notice an increase in the speed of applications loading and machine seemed to be less slugish.

However to give you an idea of real world test on my macbook, I had photoshop x3 3mb photos, Vwmare running Vista with 1.5GB allocated to it, final cut express and 2 windows of sarafi with multiple tabs open in each, all in different desktops using spaces, with no noticable slow down in speed at all. I'm pleased with the upgrade as my macbook now does exactly what I need of it.
 
I went from 2 to 4 on my laptop. Don't really notice much of a speedboost. I see it on my Mac Pro, and going from 1 to 2, but it depends on what you're doing. If it's anything intensive, go for it. If it's for web surfing and Word, don't bother.
 
i have been under the impression that more ram = more apps being able to be open simultaneously and it is the cpu that determines the speed? so therefore more ram would not make the computer run faster

have i been wrong all these years?
 
3rd Party Ram is super cheap right now.. almost a no brainer..
unless like solvs says, you do nothing app intensive.
 
I have a macbook, and i just do regular stuff like web, email, and word processig. I had 1GB of RAM and Leopard flew on my macbook. I upgraded to 2GB just cuz it was so affordable, but the only diference I notice is that I can run a billion applications at much more smoothly, but everything else is pretty much the same.
 
f1 said:
I have a macbook, and i just do regular stuff like web, email, and word processig. I had 1GB of RAM and Leopard flew on my macbook. I upgraded to 2GB just cuz it was so affordable, but the only diference I notice is that I can run a billion applications at much more smoothly, but everything else is pretty much the same.
Click to expand...

yea, thats what i was trying to say
 
Honestly....

My computer went from 1gb to 4gb (im running a 24" 2.4ghz Imac btw) and I didnt notice anything when it came to a speed increase...

I went from the original 1gb it came with, to be honest i never played around with the 1gb i immediately installed another 2gb out of the gate without first booting into 1gb....so my first experience was with a 3gb, but then i got paranoid re: mismatched pairs so i ordered another 2gb for a total of 4gbs....

between 3 and 4, no difference....the computer is fast and never had any page out's....(up until leopard, i get about 4-5 mb's of pageouts even if there is still free ram available)

but ya,
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back