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CosmoPilot

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Nov 8, 2010
1,537
372
South Carolina
I've read several conflicting posts, and wanted some clarification.

Several users have needs identical to mine: Photo editing, Internet, light video editing, no-gaming, etc.

Several posts have mentioned more RAM would boost these systems. However, I've also read where these type tasks will not benefit greatly by increasing RAM.

What's the correct answer? Will increasing RAM make a notable difference regardless of the task ask of the computer?

Thanks
 
It depends. Typically, editing (photo or video) will benefit from more RAM, but it's also relative to how much you have installed. I can do some light-moderate photoshop on 4GB with no problems, but for more serious stuff, 8GB would be better. Internet it won't make a difference unless you have 3 different browsers with 20+ tabs each. If you already have 8GB, you probably wouldn't see a huge difference in performance, as RAM upgrades don't do much of anything unless they are needed.
 
Increasing RAM will increase performance if you use a lot of applications at the same time or some RAM hungry application at one time.
I currently have 8GB RAM installed (upgraded from 4GB) and I rarely experience slowdowns with a number of applications open.

What is RAM? - measured again in MB and GB
Random Access Memory (RAM) is the "working memory" in a computer. Additional RAM allows a computer to work with more information at the same time which can have a dramatic effect on total system performance.
 
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