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Memory upgrade: 8gb or 16gb?

M

mrsausages

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 26, 2012
5
0
Hi All,

A very quick question - am looking to upgrade my early-2011 15 inch macbook pro memory from 4gb.... Based on the page-outs vs page-ins I have read about, I am in need of some more memory (although not desperately).

8gb is now very cheap from Crucial, but the 16gb upgrade is also looking very cheap (at least, compared to when I looked last year!!!).

So, does anyone think it's worth going for the 16gb upgrade? Will I notice any difference?

Cheers!
 
It really depends on how you use your Mac. Simple surfing, emailing, and office type apps won't really see too much of a benefit when going to 16gb
 
thanks... yes, useage is important!

So, Aperture is probably the big memory hog here: I'm sure it will benefit from going from 4gb to 8gb, but not sure if going to 16gb will help.

I also do the odd panorama and hdr with apps like hugin and luminance-hdr.

Probably the main useage in terms of time are the office apps and email / surfing etc - not expecting much benefit on these.
 
mrsausages said:
Hi All,

A very quick question - am looking to upgrade my early-2011 15 inch macbook pro memory from 4gb.... Based on the page-outs vs page-ins I have read about, I am in need of some more memory (although not desperately).

8gb is now very cheap from Crucial, but the 16gb upgrade is also looking very cheap (at least, compared to when I looked last year!!!).

So, does anyone think it's worth going for the 16gb upgrade? Will I notice any difference?

Cheers!
Click to expand...

what are you page in and page outs after a few hours of normal use?

note you need to reset your mac to reset your page in and page outs
 
You could always use more RAM. Why not right? If you think the 16GB is cheap, get it. If not, get the 8GB. 16GB will definitely keep you good for a little while - and I believe 16GB is the max for your model.
 
Thanks - this morning is a reasonable example, page-ins are 1.11gb, page outs 319 mb
 
mrsausages said:
Thanks - this morning is a reasonable example, page-ins are 1.11gb, page outs 319 mb
Click to expand...

ya thats very low, your obviously running out of RAM at some point for page outs to be anything other than 0 but your not in the GB's

8GB of RAM would be more than enough if you feel like upgrading dont was your money 16 for now
 
chrisvee said:
You could always use more RAM. Why not right? If you think the 16GB is cheap, get it. If not, get the 8GB. 16GB will definitely keep you good for a little while - and I believe 16GB is the max for your model.
Click to expand...

Yes it is!

To the O.P if you have the money for 16gb go for it, aperture will definitely benefit.
I upgraded from 4 to 8gb on mine and Aperture is a lot quicker than it was before, so it has to be flying at 16gb.
 
maril1111 said:
I upgraded from 4 to 8gb on mine and Aperture is a lot quicker than it was before, so it has to be flying at 16gb.
Click to expand...
That's not really a logical conclusion. If it's faster at 8 GB than 4 GB it's because it was likely running out of RAM before, and now it's not. It's not because "more is better". There is no real reason to believe that the improvement will be bigger if you upgrade to 16 GB unless you are running out of RAM at 8 GB as well.

Check your memory usage, that's a good hint when it comes to how much you will need. :)
 
maril1111 said:
so it has to be flying at 16gb.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the input... I'm guessing that might not actually be true though - if Aperture is using e.g. 5gb and I only have 4gb memory, it will be using the hard disk a lot for virtual memory, and therefore be slow.

If I upgrade to 8gb and Aperture still uses 5gb memory, I'm guessing there's a big speed up due to not using the hard drive any more.

But I wasn't sure whether going from 8gb to 16gb will actually do anything further - whether Aperture would recognise the fact it had more memory to play with...

Based on the info from iisforiphone though, I think I will stick with the 8gb upgrade for now - I needed a voice of reason there!

Thanks to all...
 
BitterMelon said:
That's not really a logical conclusion. If it's faster at 8 GB than 4 GB it's because it was likely running out of RAM before, and now it's not. It's not because "more is better". There is no real reason to believe that the improvement will be bigger if you upgrade to 16 GB unless you are running out of RAM at 8 GB as well.

Check your memory usage, that's a good hint when it comes to how much you will need. :)
Click to expand...

Actually yes with aperture being 64bit more is better, it is going to perform better because the application can utilize more ram and hence be more fluid.

mrsausages said:
Thanks for the input... I'm guessing that might not actually be true though - if Aperture is using e.g. 5gb and I only have 4gb memory, it will be using the hard disk a lot for virtual memory, and therefore be slow.

If I upgrade to 8gb and Aperture still uses 5gb memory, I'm guessing there's a big speed up due to not using the hard drive any more.

But I wasn't sure whether going from 8gb to 16gb will actually do anything further - whether Aperture would recognise the fact it had more memory to play with...

Based on the info from iisforiphone though, I think I will stick with the 8gb upgrade for now - I needed a voice of reason there!

Thanks to all...
Click to expand...

Yes aperture than uses only 5 because the operating system needs some memory and uses also more because it can use more as well.Also most people tend to ran more than 1app at a time, i haven't used a computer with 16gb ram yet but i am guessing it will use more because it can utilize more. And because aperture is a 64bit app it can recognize a lot of ram.

Example of 64bit maximum recognised ram:

Windows 7 Ultimate-192gb ram.
 
maril1111 said:
Actually yes with aperture being 64bit more is better, it is going to perform better because the application can utilize more ram and hence be more fluid.



Yes aperture than uses only 5 because the operating system needs some memory and uses also more because it can use more as well.Also most people tend to ran more than 1app at a time, i haven't used a computer with 16gb ram yet but i am guessing it will use more because it can utilize more. And because aperture is a 64bit app it can recognize a lot of ram.

Example of 64bit maximum recognised ram:

Windows 7 Ultimate-192gb ram.
Click to expand...

192GB of Ram? does that even exisit?
 
interesting!

well, since the 8gb upgrade is only 30 quid or so from Amazon, I think I will do that first and see how it looks!

Thanks for the info....
 
mrsausages said:
interesting!

well, since the 8gb upgrade is only 30 quid or so from Amazon, I think I will do that first and see how it looks!

Thanks for the info....
Click to expand...

Welcome and sounds good I did it as-well and haven't regretted it :)
 
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