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MBP: Big different between 2gb Ram to 4gb Ram? 6gb Ram?

L

legaleye3000

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
1,377
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Would I see that much of a difference on an Early 08 MBP go from 2gb to 4gb of ram? What about 2gb to 6gb?

Someone told me my early 08 mbp can have 6gb of ram? I thought 4gb was the max...?

Thanks
 
No its not. Apple only said that because single 4GB chips were/are still expensive
 
Thanks for the link.

I'm wondering if anyone has first hand experience and can tell me if upgrading from 2gb to 4gb of ram would make a big difference or not...?

Thanks
 
Yes it does if you run memory intensive apps like Photoshop and VMware Fusion. I upgraded a while back and can't imagine going back to a slow 2gb.
 
Once in a while, I'll rip a DVD and encode it to AVI. And I sometimes play C&C: Tiberium Wars. Other than that, I run a few programs at a time (Word 08, Safari, Firefox, iChat, iTunes). I don't think those are considered memory intensive though, even running all together...(?)

So in that case, is it worth it? If so, anyone know where I can get good cheap ram?

Thanks
 
legaleye3000 said:
Would I see that much of a difference on an Early 08 MBP go from 2gb to 4gb of ram? What about 2gb to 6gb?
Click to expand...
IMO, you'll only see a performance increase if you are currently using more than 2GB of RAM. For example, if the max you ever use is 1.5GB, then adding more memory isn't likely to help, as you're not running out of the 2GB that you have in the first place.

Check this article out:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

It'll show you how to use the Activity Monitor program (in the Applications / Utility) folder to view your memory. "If the combination of Free and Inactive is very low, then you might need more memory."
 
If you run "Activity Monitor" under System Memory you will see.... Page in, Page out, and Swap used. If you are using swap and/or paging out a lot ( say after a few hours after a clean boot ) then you could probably use with some more ram.

If they are low or 0 then your current usage patterns do not require more RAM.
 
For page out (uptime= about 24 hours), I'm using ~58mb and ~121mb for swap used (I haven't played my game yet or have yet to do video encoding also).

So is that a small amount? Do you think it would increase a lot after I play my game and do any video encoding...?

(So far in past 24 hours just have been running safari, itunes, word, ichat)

Thanks
 
legaleye3000 said:
Thanks for the link.

I'm wondering if anyone has first hand experience and can tell me if upgrading from 2gb to 4gb of ram would make a big difference or not...?

Thanks
Click to expand...

1. If you run VMWare or Parallels, you want enough memory for a Macintosh, plus enough memory for Windows. So 4 GB would be a good idea.

2. Open "Activity Monitor" and switch it to display "System Memory". Green = memory that is completely unused. If you took away that memory, you wouldn't notice a difference. Blue (inactive) = memory that isn't really needed right now, but contains stuff that might or might not come useful at some point. If you took away that memory, you wouldn't notice much of a difference. If green + blue is very little, then you should get more RAM.

3. Four GB is really, really cheap. You might as well buy it. If you buy a new computer, and you want the best value for your money, you would pick lots of memory first, and a faster processor a distant second.
 
legaleye3000 said:
For page out (uptime= about 24 hours), I'm using ~58mb and ~121mb for swap used (I haven't played my game yet or have yet to do video encoding also).

So is that a small amount? Do you think it would increase a lot after I play my game and do any video encoding...?

(So far in past 24 hours just have been running safari, itunes, word, ichat)

Thanks
Click to expand...

That's pretty low, but I would run some more demanding applications ( within reason ) before making a decision.
 
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