rMBP 8GB to 16GB? Or Hard Drive Upgrade from 256 to 512 or even 768?

[Starfyre]

Thinking about the rMBP... heard parts are non-Upgradable unless you buy a whole new notebook.

Is 16GB really necessary and a more worthwhile than a space upgrade say from 256 to 512 or even 768?
Has anyone actually seen real performance gains with 16GB ram?

 

[PDFierro]

Depends on what your uses are and how long you plan to keep it for.

 

[Starfyre]

Depends on what your uses are and how long you plan to keep it for.

Did you get the 16GB upgrade? Why?

 

[8080532]

16gb upg.

I have the base model, this is sufficient for me. If I could have afforded more to spend, I would have upg. the ram to 16gb. I don't like the price to upg. SSD, the ram is something I would invest in bc it just make your computer future proof and allow you to maximize the load your computer can take when running multiple programs and etc.

 

[mcarling]

My uses just barely fit into 8GB without swapping. I would be swapping with 7GB. Many people have uses which are more memory-intensive than mine, so 16GB is valuable.

 

[KUguardgrl13]

I was using 2gb until a few months ago, so 8gb is plenty for me. A 256gb SSD is more of a necessity. I'm a student and need the file space.

 

[actuallyinaus]

My uses just barely fit into 8GB without swapping. I would be swapping with 7GB. Many people have uses which are more memory-intensive than mine, so 16GB is valuable.

what are you doing!? are you sure the figure you are reading does not include cached data? because its quite hard to get 7+GB of active data in hard to even get above 4gb...

unless you use virtual machines as they will eat your ram right up!

but generally the more ram the better as cached data will speed up your computer as a whole (as it does not need to load the data from the disk to the ram as it still has it in the ram from the last time you opened the file / program / whatever) however with a possible low latency gigabit pcie ssd the gains are going to be much less noticeable than if you had a 120mb/s hdd (high latency by nature)

 

[Badrottie]

I have 8GB 15" rMBP I opened Microsoft Powerpoint (3 slides), Photoshop (8 pictures), and Final Cut Pro X (4 minutes clip) yesterday leaving about 5GB free space. Not bad. 16GB is overkill for me I guess.

 

[bniu]

With soldered systems, I either buy the ultimate configuration with everything maxed out or I don't buy it at all. Right now, I'm sitting happy with a 2011 17" MBP turbocharged with 960GB of flash storage and 16GB of RAM

This machine is a beast and will continue to be one for many years down the road. I wouldn't be surprised if it lasted me a good 6-7 years. The 2011 quads were really overpowered at launch and it just shows in their longevity!

 

[FrozenDarkness]

i'm planning on getting 16gb RAM and 512GB SSD. I think 512 is the minimum if you want this to be your main computer. Between music, photos, and maybe a couple games/software installed, you'd already have used up the entirety of 256gb.

16gb ram is just a "because I can" upgrade. If you're the messy type like me, leaving couple tabs opened is going to slow down your computer considerably. 16gb will make sure you don't worry about RAM for quite a long time

although it blows my mind that upgrading to 16gb and 512gb ssd is as expensive as buying an ipad