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RAM - 4gb vs 8gb. What's the most notable difference?

R

RobbyIdol

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 20, 2012
248
185
For a while, I've been thinking about getting a 13" MBA 256SSD w/ 8gb of RAM. But I'm not entirely certain I NEED the 8gb of ram (more just for future-proofing the machine, a bit).

That said, where do YOU notice the difference between 4gb of RAM and 8gb?

Some research has shown that the increased bump is actually really small from 4 to 8gb on SSD machines. And on a personal note, I've been using a 2gb MBP for the last 7 years, so really, anything is an improvement :p
 
RobbyIdol said:
That said, where do YOU notice the difference between 4gb of RAM and 8gb?
Click to expand...
It completely depends on the usual workload you run on your Mac. A great number of users will never fully utilize 4GB of RAM, while even 8GB isn't sufficient for others, who have more memory-intensive workloads. What others may experience has no bearing on your workload and RAM needs. If you're not regularly maxing out 4GB of RAM, you won't see any performance difference by adding RAM.

This should help: How much RAM do I need in my MacBook?
 
GGJstudios said:
It completely depends on the usual workload you run on your Mac. A great number of users will never fully utilize 4GB of RAM, while even 8GB isn't sufficient for others, who have more memory-intensive workloads. What others may experience has no bearing on your workload and RAM needs. If you're not regularly maxing out 4GB of RAM, you won't see any performance difference by adding RAM.

This should help: How much RAM do I need in my MacBook?
Click to expand...

Great link, thank you!
 
Made my 2010MBP feel overall faster. Yosemite will use the RAM! My MBP uses nearly 4GB on idle shortly after booting up.
 
RobbyIdol said:
For a while, I've been thinking about getting a 13" MBA 256SSD w/ 8gb of RAM. But I'm not entirely certain I NEED the 8gb of ram (more just for future-proofing the machine, a bit).

That said, where do YOU notice the difference between 4gb of RAM and 8gb?

Some research has shown that the increased bump is actually really small from 4 to 8gb on SSD machines. And on a personal note, I've been using a 2gb MBP for the last 7 years, so really, anything is an improvement :p
Click to expand...

If you're ok with 2GB on your MBP, you'll probably will be ok with 4GB in a Macbook Air. The problem is resale value and future-proofing. I'd get a used one if my choice was for 4GB. I have a friend who just bought an used 2011/11"/4GB/128GB MBA and he's ok with its performance for Java programming. However, J2EE projects benefit more from fast I/O than from RAM.

I think 8GB is currently a standard. What do you thing about a base 13" rMBP? 128GB plus a Transcend JetDrive Lite can be a good compromise.
 
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