mbPro retina 13 - 8 or 16 GB

[jerrykur]

HI,

I am looking to upgrade from a 2010 MBPro 2.66 with SSD. I am pretty sure I am going with the base CPU, but am wondering about memory. My usual application mix is web browsing, development (XCode, IntelliJ, etc), and some photo editing (Lightroom). Is 8 GB too small?

Thanks,

Jerry

 

[alexk403]

I mean of course if you have money to flush away then absolutely go for it you can never have too much memory but I have just 8 on my 15 rMBP and have never run into any problems. 4gb is probably too small for retinas which is why I think apple went with 8 as default. But I think 8 is fine for most people, if not all. Having 16 is more of a luxury than a necessity

 

[ROLLTIDE1]

I would go with 16 cause you can't upgrade it later

 

[nyc2pdx]

I second that. I wanted to upgrade and went back and forth on the 15" model. I went with 16gb because in a year or two, I could very well regret the decision not to have upgraded to 16gb. I want my macbook pro to last several years-so I went for the bullet and got a high end system.

 

[Jsketch]

Yeah, i am not sure if I should return the 16GB.

 

[Starfyre]

Yeah, i am not sure if I should return the 16GB.

Keep it, you won't regret having more. Now if it was the processor, that would make more sense to think it through since it may have heat/battery/fan noise impact.

 

[Krazy Bill]

I went with 16gb because in a year or two, I could very well regret the decision not to have upgraded to 16gb.

Why? Will the same apps you used 1 year ago magically require twice as much memory?

Wow. Apple certainly stumbled onto a way to cultivate some real fear-mongering when they soldered RAM directly to the boards. Genius!

 

[Fultonpics]

i was talking to my web guy at work and i remembered i updated his 2 year old 15" to 16 gigs earlier in the year. he said it REALLY helped with the small video work we do. his system was hanging with only 8 gigs. he had the last 15" that is user upgradable. so if you ever think you might do some video work, go for the 16...

 

[ioannis2005gr]

I would go with 16 cause you can't upgrade it later

give additional 200$ for your machine "future-proofing"...

 

[Meister]

give additional 200$ for your machine "future-proofing"...

"future proofing" was necessary before ssd drives. I think ram requirements will stagnate in the future.

 

[Voodoofreak]

Go with the 16. It will boost reselling as well in case you want to get rid of it in a couple of years.

 

[pshufd]

When you don't have enough memory, the operating system swaps or pages to disk. In the old days of hard-disk-drives, this could be a big pain in the neck but it's less of a problem with SSDs and I think that this is why MacBook Airs can get away with 4 GB of RAM.

I did a test installation of Mavericks on my old MacBook Pro and it was using 3 GB of RAM running one open tab on a web browser.

I plan to get a system with 16 GB but my current MPB is six-years-old so I'm assuming that I will keep the HRMBP for at least six years. With 16 GB of RAM, I don't have to worry that much about not having enough. There's the possibility that there will be bioinformatics work done on the laptop too and that typically requires a lot of memory.

 

[Azathoth]

Go with the 16. It will boost reselling as well in case you want to get rid of it in a couple of years.

No it won't - just like with cars people pay little extra for the options.

The new memory compression in 10.9 works well on my 4GB machine. I would expect that for everything apart from video work or multiple VMs 8GB is enough.

If you have the 16GB already then keep it and be happy, otherwise the 8GB is likely to be fine too..