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Need help with my slow Early 2011 17in MBP

K

KevinRightWing

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 15, 2007
270
31
Houston TX
I don't know what the Mavericks install did, but my 17in 2.2ghz early 2011 just crawls now. I have tried everything that is suggested on these forums to fix it, but regardless it still crawls.

My question for the forum is: would upgrading from 4gb of ram to 16gb help my situation? Amazon is showing Crucial ram kits at $140 for the 16gb 1333mhz speed.

Second question: does Mavericks really favor a SSD and thus I need to upgrade from the original 750gb 5400 rpm drive that came standard? Amazon currently has this guy for sale:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...116011_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1404565795&sr=1-2

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
 
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I have and it is usually using all 4gb's.

I guess what amazes me is that we have a 2013 macbook air as well that sings on Mavericks even though it only has an i5 and the same 4gb of ram. My 2.2ghz i7 is a much more powerful machine yet struggles. Just wondered if the SSD could be the difference maker. IE, why spend $140 on the extra ram if the hard drive is the real bottleneck?
 
Either Way...

You'll see a massive boost in speed with either a new SSD or 16 GB of RAM. If you can afford to do both at once then by all means go for it! Otherwise I'd say go for the SSD first, then do the RAM at a later date. When you install the SSD do a clean install of the OS for added speed. To do a clean install you will need a Time Machine backup.

A clean install is where you install OS X on a drive with nothing on it. Then restore from a Time Machine backup. This increases speed by removing old files, and also old operating system files that aren't being used but just take up space.
 
Yeah that is what I am thinking, go for the SSD first.

Is the Samsung that I listed above the right way to go for this mac? I need at least 750gb and from what I have heard, the Samsung EVO's are supposed to be good. I just don't know the difference between SATA II and SATA III and if that even matters for me. Someone educate me!
 
KevinRightWing said:
Yeah that is what I am thinking, go for the SSD first.

Is the Samsung that I listed above the right way to go for this mac? I need at least 750gb and from what I have heard, the Samsung EVO's are supposed to be good. I just don't know the difference between SATA II and SATA III and if that even matters for me. Someone educate me!
Click to expand...

SATA3 operates at 6 Gb/s, SATA2 operates at 3 Gb/s.

Your 2011 MBP supports SATA3, so go for a Samsung 840 Evo 750GB.

I use a 512GB 840 Pro in my 2011 15" because of the higher IOPS performance compared to the Evos.
 
Until it was stolen by a burglar in a break in last week, I ran a early 2011 MBP 17" that was rock solid. I did 16g ram and I pulled the optical disk, stuck a Samsung SSD in there as boot drive and left the HDD in.

I highly recommend a SSD AND the ram upgrade
 
If it really is grinding to a halt, the hard drive could be failing. That's what happened to my early 2011 15".

Either way, an SSD should provide huge performance gains, along with 8 or 16GB of RAM.
 
Ok, one more rookie question :

You guys said I can use 1600mhz ram but I thought the 2011 models were clocked at 1333 MHz? I tried searching the forums and it seems like opinions are mixed with some saying that the 1600 down clocks to 1333. Can someone please educate me......AGAIN ??
 
catean said:
And go for the 1600Mhz memory. Your model is supporting it.
Click to expand...
The speed difference is negligible in real world apps. 1600 MHz memory requires also a CAS latency of 11 clock ticks. The 9 clock ticks versions are sometimes unstable.

1600 MHz / 9 clock ticks = 177,78
1333 MHz / 9 clock ticks = 148.11

The 1600 MHz version is 20 % faster. Real measurements showed a lower advantage.

How fast can the system write data to the RAM (i mean large amounts of data, like the pixel data of the integrated GPU)?
The time needed for the transfer of the 8th word (the "slowest" of 1 to 8 words):
1333 MHz DDR3 CL9 = 18.75 ns
1600 MHz DDR3 CL9 = 15.625 ns

The 1600 MHz version needs 17 % less time for the transfer of the 8th word.

1.5 V 1600 MHz memory needs also more power for the RAM cells, compared to 1.5 V 1333 MHz memory. This reduces the battery life of your Sandy Bridge MBP and increases the heat, because your MBP does not support 1.35 V memory. Ivy Bridge and higher do not have this problem.

For that reason, i bought this RAM (2x) for my Early-2011 17" MBP:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005J4C820

No problems. :)
 
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Just want to let you know I had the same issue, same machine just the 15". I just the other day upgraded to 16GB ram and a 240 SSD both from Crucial. Could not be happier!! The only thing I "wish" I had was a retina screen. Performance is greatly improved. Mind you, my HDD was failing I believe.
 
I have the same computer as you but in 15". Upgrading the SSD was a MASSIVE upgrade. The computer boots in about 10 seconds and I don't see it slowing down anytime soon.

I have an Intel 520 SSD.
 
KevinRightWing said:
Ok, one more rookie question :

You guys said I can use 1600mhz ram but I thought the 2011 models were clocked at 1333 MHz? I tried searching the forums and it seems like opinions are mixed with some saying that the 1600 down clocks to 1333. Can someone please educate me......AGAIN ??
Click to expand...

I have 1600Mhz modules in my early 2011 and the were recognised and working at 1600mhz. I don't think you will notice the difference, but if you want to max out the specs, your computer works with this.
 
One more question: if I put the Samsung SSD in my Mac, do I have to upgrade from 4gb to 16gb now? All I do is email, safari, imessage, YouTube, and microsoft office, so nothing real intense. I don't think I could spend $450 for a 1gb ssd AND spend $150 on ram. Thank you in advance.
 
KevinRightWing said:
One more question: if I put the Samsung SSD in my Mac, do I have to upgrade from 4gb to 16gb now? All I do is email, safari, imessage, YouTube, and microsoft office, so nothing real intense. I don't think I could spend $450 for a 1gb ssd AND spend $150 on ram. Thank you in advance.
Click to expand...

You don't need to upgrade the RAM, nor should you. It woud be a total waste of money with your usage and would not increase performance at all.

The SSD will wake it up a lot.
 
KevinRightWing said:
I have and it is usually using all 4gb's.

I guess what amazes me is that we have a 2013 macbook air as well that sings on Mavericks even though it only has an i5 and the same 4gb of ram. My 2.2ghz i7 is a much more powerful machine yet struggles. Just wondered if the SSD could be the difference maker. IE, why spend $140 on the extra ram if the hard drive is the real bottleneck?
Click to expand...

Hard drives are only a major bottleneck when you don't have enough ram, and OSX can be horrible at freeing up inactive memory. The only thing about ram is that you have to test it, and some brands have a seemingly higher rate of defects than others.
 
KevinRightWing said:
I don't know what the Mavericks install did, but my 17in 2.2ghz early 2011 just crawls now. I have tried everything that is suggested on these forums to fix it, but regardless it still crawls.

My question for the forum is: would upgrading from 4gb of ram to 16gb help my situation? Amazon is showing Crucial ram kits at $140 for the 16gb 1333mhz speed.

Second question: does Mavericks really favor a SSD and thus I need to upgrade from the original 750gb 5400 rpm drive that came standard? Amazon currently has this guy for sale:

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Elect...116011_1_2?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1404565795&sr=1-2

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...

You can run 1600MHz RAM in your MBP. I have 1600MHz RAM in my 15" early-2011.

And as for your RAM usage...

Upgrading to an SSD prior to installing the proper amount of RAM would reduce the life of the SSD.

First, with inadequate RAM, the SSD will be utilized as virtual memory, offsetting the lack of physical RAM. By doing this, the computer will write tasks that are normally written to RAM, to the SSD.

Because SSDs have only a finite amount of writes available to each transistor, you'll effectively shorten its lifetime, and increase the risk of data loss. Additionally, even fast SSDs pale in comparison to the speed of RAM – ~750MB/s in SSDs vs. ~23 GB/s in RAM (@1333 MHz).

Therefore, the best solution would be to install the appropriate amount of RAM first, followed by an SSD upgrade. Once the proper amount of RAM is installed, an SSD will truly shine.
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
yjchua95 said:
You can run 1600MHz RAM in your MBP. I have 1600MHz RAM in my 15" early-2011.

And as for your RAM usage...

Upgrading to an SSD prior to installing the proper amount of RAM would reduce the life of the SSD.

First, with inadequate RAM, the SSD will be utilized as virtual memory, offsetting the lack of physical RAM. By doing this, the computer will write tasks that are normally written to RAM, to the SSD.

Because SSDs have only a finite amount of writes available to each transistor, you'll effectively shorten its lifetime, and increase the risk of data loss. Additionally, even fast SSDs pale in comparison to the speed of RAM – ~750MB/s in SSDs vs. ~23 GB/s in RAM (@1333 MHz).

Therefore, the best solution would be to install the appropriate amount of RAM first, followed by an SSD upgrade. Once the proper amount of RAM is installed, an SSD will truly shine.
Click to expand...

An SSD can last for 10 years or more. Sorry but this is rubbish and this myth about SSD's needs to die.
 
One other thing,

I have noticed that I really don't have much of the slowdown when I am using just the LCD on the MBP.

But my slowdowns are really evident when my MBP is connected to my thunderbolt display. Seems kind of weird. Is this the beginning of radeongate?

Thanks for the help.
 
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