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Macbook Pro 8Gb Ram and SSD

Mastamarek

Mastamarek

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 31, 2007
138
1
Warsaw, Poland
Hey
I know you probably get a million of these threads but plz help a newbie. lol. I m doing some serious photoshop work and I need a upgrade. Currently I own a 15' unibody macbook pro. Not the newest one. Usually the size of one of my photos is about 50mb and CS4 with only 4Gb can run a bit slow sometimes. I was thinking of upgrading to 8Gb and a SSD drive to speed up things a bit. Help me choose the right hardware and is it hard to install new ram and HD in your macbook?
thx in advance
 
The favorite SSD on these forums (and quite possibly everywhere else with a rational thought) is the new Intel X-25M SSD's. They seem to be the best performers consistently than the other things on the market although a bit pricey.
As for RAM you're kinda limited on choices. Corsair is my preference when it comes to any RAM. Newegg has a 2x4 GB option for $760 USD, so it's a bit on the pricey side. But if you got the money then go for it.
If you have to end up choosing only one upgrade at a time, I'd advise choosing the SSD upgrade first. It seems to be more noticeable for most people than the upgrade in RAM.
Just my 2 cents though.

Edit:
I just re-read and noticed you said you had an older uMBP, so the RAM may actually be DDR2 instead of 3 which may make a pretty large impact on the price thing. Sorry 'bout that.
 
jaredwaynef said:
The favorite SSD on these forums (and quite possibly everywhere else with a rational thought) is the new Intel X-25M SSD's. They seem to be the best performers consistently than the other things on the market although a bit pricey.
As for RAM you're kinda limited on choices. Corsair is my preference when it comes to any RAM. Newegg has a 2x4 GB option for $760 USD, so it's a bit on the pricey side. But if you got the money then go for it.
If you have to end up choosing only one upgrade at a time, I'd advise choosing the SSD upgrade first. It seems to be more noticeable for most people than the upgrade in RAM.
Just my 2 cents though.

Edit:
I just re-read and noticed you said you had an older uMBP, so the RAM may actually be DDR2 instead of 3 which may make a pretty large impact on the price thing. Sorry 'bout that.
Click to expand...

thx mate, I still have the unibody MBP but it wont accept 8gb, lame!! well anyways, does the size of the SSD drive matters that much on performance as it does on a regular drive? I can get the cheapest intel X25m drive but it wont be very roomy. lol. It doesnt really matter that much as I back up all my data to my external HDDs anyway.
 
Both sizes of the Intel SSD's have the same read/write speeds for the most part (with the few irregularities that no one can really explain well) :rolleyes:. Although I have heard that since Snow Leopard doesn't have TRIM support the SSD will get slower as it gets closer to filling up. Although even after this slow down, the SSD performs faster than HDD's.
 
Your computer needs ddr3, I am one 100 percent sure. All unibodies need ddr3. Some of the earlier unibodies however don't support 8 gigs, and you will actually see a performance decrease.
Get the intel SSD and you will be very very happy
 
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