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Running Lion with 3GB of RAM

Drew017

Drew017

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 29, 2011
1,254
11
East coast, USA
What kind of speed would I get with 3GB of RAM? Right now with only 2GB, running Snow Leopard is great. I'm just not sure if I'll get the kind of speed I have now with Lion, which is why I'm considering this. Any thoughts or suggestions? I really don't have the money to buy 4GB along with Lion. It would have to be one or the other...
 
Lion will run just fine on 2 GB of RAM. The OS overhead in terms of system memory isn't greatly increased over Snow Leopard. Upgrade to Lion first, then ask yourself if you really need more RAM.
 
On the contrary, Lion is terrible even with 4GB. My 2009 MB Pro frequently pages out, the memory management is terrible. This never happened with SL.

You can try it out yourself, but don't be surprised if the same happens to you (it will probably happen 2x faster because you have half the RAM).
 
Yea... possibly it also has to do with the computer's age/ HD size/ or what you have on it. I have a 3 year old macbook, well taken care of, and only a handful of Applications on it. I think I'll be OK. If I feel more memory is needed, I'll buy it. Thanks for the input, guys! :cool:
 
Before you go and wipeout your Snow Leopard install you might want to re-partition your boot HD into two partitions. You can do this without loosing any data from the partition where Snow Leopard is installed. Once the boot HD is re-partitioned, install Lion on the new partition. Reboot the Mac to the Lion install and play around with it and see if the RAM installed is causing you an issue. If it does not work then all you have to do is reboot to the Snow Leopard partition and remove the partition where Lion was installed.
 
I hear there are issues with performance for using two odd RAM sticks however. Apparently it's much better to have two of the same RAM modules.
 
Taz Mangus said:
Before you go and wipeout your Snow Leopard install you might want to re-partition your boot HD into two partitions. You can do this without loosing any data from the partition where Snow Leopard is installed. Once the boot HD is re-partitioned, install Lion on the new partition. Reboot the Mac to the Lion install and play around with it and see if the RAM installed is causing you an issue. If it does not work then all you have to do is reboot to the Snow Leopard partition and remove the partition where Lion was installed.
Click to expand...

That's a good idea... I think I'll do that
 
If your machine is currently fine on Snow Leopard, I'd buy 4gb of RAM (instead of Lion) and hold off for Mountain Lion.

4GB will do more for performance for you than Lion will.


However, if your machine can take 8gb (its about 50 bucks), I'd save a little longer, upgrade to 8 and then move to Lion later. Unless you have some pressing need to get Lion?

Lion and mountain Lion will use more ram than snow leopard, application sandboxing doesn't come for free.
 
I have a 2007 MacBook running lion. I have 4 GB ram installed but only 3 is addressable. It's slow. Lots of page outs with just using iTunes and Firefox. Never had this issue with snow leopard. I should go back but don't want to deal with the hassle. I would suggest not upgrading.
 
ezramoore said:
Lion will run just fine on 2 GB of RAM. The OS overhead in terms of system memory isn't greatly increased over Snow Leopard. Upgrade to Lion first, then ask yourself if you really need more RAM.
Click to expand...

I ran Lion on 2GB on my early 2008 macbook pro. I wouldn't recommend it. I had so many page outs, it was basically unusable.
Once I upgraded to 4GB, Lion was much more fluid and certainly faster.

So unless you use one or two active apps, I would not recommend 2GB. SL is much faster than Lion on 2GB. I suppose 3GB's okay but you lose the benefit of dual channel memory, unless you get 2x1.5GB sticks. 4GB is, I would say the minimum for a nice overall experience.
 
Okay, so a bit of an update here...

I decided I'd wait to see if 2GB of RAM was enough for me, and I'm doing fine with Lion surprisingly! I'm actually very pleased with its performance. I will get 3 or 4GB at some point, but for now, 2 is enough... I haven't even had 1 page out!
 
emoore said:
I have a 2007 MacBook running lion. I have 4 GB ram installed but only 3 is addressable. It's slow. Lots of page outs with just using iTunes and Firefox. Never had this issue with snow leopard. I should go back but don't want to deal with the hassle. I would suggest not upgrading.
Click to expand...

Same here, except mine is a late 2006 C2D MBP (purchased from Apple in March '07). My experience has been weird. Some days my normal activities work flawlessly, most other days, however, lots of beachballing/system freezes. I've clean installed Lion 3 times now, & while 10.7.4 has been the best by far for me (other than the 1st 48 hrs or so for whatever reason), I feel like my 3 GB of (slow) RAM just doesn't cut it.
 
I get beachball only if you are working on FCPX with Seagate GoFlex USB external so I had to go with GoFlex Firewire 800 the beach ball is gone so I thought my 4GB ram is not enough but everything else seems speedy. I believe the internal hard drive that is slow (5400)
 
Drew017 said:
Okay, so a bit of an update here...

I decided I'd wait to see if 2GB of RAM was enough for me, and I'm doing fine with Lion surprisingly! I'm actually very pleased with its performance. I will get 3 or 4GB at some point, but for now, 2 is enough... I haven't even had 1 page out!
Click to expand...

10.7.4 has improved performance a lot.

My mini currently runs Lion server and browsing in safari with it is usable.

You'll still get vastly improved performance with even 3 or 4 gb though.

I had 3gb in my mini for a while until one of the DIMMs died and i only had a 1gb dimm spare to replace it :-\
 
The Secret to Running Lion with low RAM

I have a MacBook Pro vintage 2006 running 3GB RAM and months ago tried installing Lion, got frustrated because it was so slow!!! Ended up reverting back to Snow Leopard. Recently, as a last ditch effort to get maybe one more year out of my old Mac, I decided to try cleaning out my hard drive in preparation to re-installing Lion! I freed up approx. 100GB of space where previously I was running with maybe 10 - 20GB of free space. Now I re-inastalled Lion and it is running like a new machine!!! Unbelievable what a difference it makes having lots of freed up hard drive space! I truly believe that this is the secret to anyone attempting to run Lion on an older machine! Try it!!!
 
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