Macbook Pro 13" 2.26 . RAM / SSD Questions

[djarsalan2006]

hey guys, i have upgraded my hd to 500 5400, the blue scorpio and the ram to 4gb a long time ago
so, i was wondering if i can upgrade it to 8gb ? will it handle the 8gb ?
and also, the SSD, i dont know anything about SSDs, are their capacities like the regular HDs ? lets say when it says 80gb, it means it has 80 gb of space ?

 

[Bill Gates]

You should look at the formatted capacity when it comes to an SSD. Some models may be advertised as having one capacity but actually having another due to reserved space for error detection and redundancy. Typically they are advertised the same way as HDDs; if the drive is labelled as having 160GB of space, it will be the same as an HDD with 160GB of space. Since Slow Leopard lists file sizes in base-10, it should show up as 160GB formatted as well. More correctly it should have somewhere around 149GB if shown in base-2.

Depending on what you use the computer for, 4GB may be more than adequate. I wouldn't upgrade to 8GB of RAM unless you are certain that your work demands it, as the money could be better spent on a fast SSD or saved for other things if you don't need the extra memory. When looking at SSDs, it's important to think of how a given model will perform down the road when it's getting full and/or when it's been used a lot. The performance of an SSD will degrade over time if it doesn't have good garbage collection or if the host operating system doesn't have TRIM support, which OS X is lacking. I therefore recommend you look at models with a SandForce chipset, as they tend to maintain their performance over time, irrespective of host OS support for TRIM. They don't come cheap though.

 

[djarsalan2006]

You should look at the formatted capacity when it comes to an SSD. Some models may be advertised as having one capacity but actually having another due to reserved space for error detection and redundancy. Typically they are advertised the same way as HDDs; if the drive is labelled as having 160GB of space, it will be the same as an HDD with 160GB of space. Since Slow Leopard lists file sizes in base-10, it should show up as 160GB formatted as well. More correctly it should have somewhere around 149GB if shown in base-2.

Depending on what you use the computer for, 4GB may be more than adequate. I wouldn't upgrade to 8GB of RAM unless you are certain that your work demands it, as the money could be better spent on a fast SSD or saved for other things if you don't need the extra memory. When looking at SSDs, it's important to think of how a given model will perform down the road when it's getting full and/or when it's been used a lot. The performance of an SSD will degrade over time if it doesn't have good garbage collection or if the host operating system doesn't have TRIM support, which OS X is lacking. I therefore recommend you look at models with a SandForce chipset, as they tend to maintain their performance over time, irrespective of host OS support for TRIM. They don't come cheap though.

great, thank you for the help, i actually use it for music production / djing
i do really long sets , 3-4 hours, sometimes even more ..
so with that being said, can you recomend me a SSD around 300-400 bucks ..

 

[Bill Gates]

With your price range, I would recommend any SandForce-based SSD with a capacity of 100-120GB. There are a lot of different models on the market with a SandForce controller, including the OWC Mercury Extreme Pro, the OCZ Vertex 2, the Mushkin Callisto, the Corsair Force, and more. You'll have to spend some time shopping around and comparing prices. All of the SSDs that I listed above (and more) are essentially the same since they use the same controller. Most will also advertise the same read & write speeds, and have the same or very similar warranties, so it just comes down to price. They should all be <$400.