Should I upgrade to 8GB MBA 13" 2013 if Mavericks compress RAM?

G

gpmarco

macrumors newbie
Hi, my MBP 13 mid 2011 got stolen, it was basic model i5, 4gb ram.. so i decided to buy a MBA 13" mid 2013... i'm getting the i5, i will be running basic stuff... itunes (always on the background), safari/chrome, word, excel, ppt... casual photoshop cs6 and lightroom.. so my question is...

now that Mavericks OS is coming out in the future, with all that compression memory stuff.... should i upgrade to 8gb of ram? or is it ok if i just stay with the basic model (4gb)

i used to run lightroom and photoshop on the mbp 4gbram .. and some times it got a little bit unresponsive ... (i edit RAW (14-18mb) canon photo files)... but like i said, casual use, not all the time running those programs ..

Thanks in advance
 
IMHO i would order 8GB of ram just in case :)
last couple of years there is no good OS X as Snow Leopard and both Lion and ML eat a lot of ram compare to SL and even if New OS X brings some improvements, as you said you like to do stuff on CS6 i would go for 8GB of ram just to be safe :)
 
As someone who builds and fixes computers for a living, 4GB is not even a question for the year 2013. You'll regret it in a year or so

8GB hands down
 
gpmarco said:
Hi, my MBP 13 mid 2011 got stolen, it was basic model i5, 4gb ram.. so i decided to buy a MBA 13" mid 2013... i'm getting the i5, i will be running basic stuff... itunes (always on the background), safari/chrome, word, excel, ppt... casual photoshop cs6 and lightroom.. so my question is...

now that Mavericks OS is coming out in the future, with all that compression memory stuff.... should i upgrade to 8gb of ram? or is it ok if i just stay with the basic model (4gb)

i used to run lightroom and photoshop on the mbp 4gbram .. and some times it got a little bit unresponsive ... (i edit RAW (14-18mb) canon photo files)... but like i said, casual use, not all the time running those programs ..

Thanks in advance
Click to expand...

You ask this.

Memole said:
IMHO i would order 8GB of ram just in case :)
last couple of years there is no good OS X as Snow Leopard and both Lion and ML eat a lot of ram compare to SL and even if New OS X brings some improvements, as you said you like to do stuff on CS6 i would go for 8GB of ram just to be safe :)
Click to expand...

This is the answer you're going to get, almost all the time.

I've had my base model for the last couple of days and its working fine but of course, it's still new.

I've had fellow macrumor posters tell me I'll be fine but it all depends how long you're going to keep the MBA for.. If it's more than 2yrs, you're probably better off getting the 8GB.
 
Similarly, get the i7 now because you can't upgrade it later.

Or, get the 13" with higher capacity battery now because you can't upgrade them later.
 
8

You've obviously made up your mind in getting the 8 GB model. That's what I did, I got the base i5 13" with 8 GB of RAM. Love it.

Upgrading i5 to i7 only gives you a slight processor boost (mobile i5 and i7 both have hyper threading), its not as worth it. You'll be happy with the i5 and 8 gigs of RAM.
 
Look at it the other way around: there is no reason NOT to get 8Gb RAM --
* price is ~100$, which is a very small ( <10% ) fraction of the price you'll pay anyway
* you cannot upgrade it later on if you ever want to
* it might make a difference in future OSX versions / app versions / whatever, even if you don't need it today - and "future" is likely within the next year or two
* it will hurt resell value since most people will want to opt for an 8Gb model for the above reasons

As a footnote for the i5 vs i7 - 90% of the cases, you won't notice the difference. In the rest of the cases, it won't be a large difference.

The only part of that "other" 10% that is noticeable is if you need advanced CPU features relating to data security (if you don't know about them it's more than likely you don't actually need them since they are business oriented).
 
Chatran said:
Similarly, get the i7 now because you can't upgrade it later.

Or, get the 13" with higher capacity battery now because you can't upgrade them later.
Click to expand...

Don't get the i7 because it's a complete rip off and adds very little performance.
 
I'm getting the 4gb this time around, even as an ex-owner of 8gb 2011 MBP (broken and not cheap to repair).
The 8gb can only be bought from the Apple Store for 1230€, but I can get the base model for 980€ from another store. 100€ is unfair but acceptable, 250€ for the RAM is a ripoff. And there are a lot of non upgradable 4gb macs out there, so Apple can't afford to drop support for all of them. And I think I'll be able to resell it for nice money either way in 2-3 years.
Oh, and soldering the RAM is a really lame practice. But the MBA rocks either way.
 
So.... i bought the MBA 13" i5 with 8 gigs of ram... i decided that since i had the mbp 2011 with the i5 and it performed well for what i did, that should be ok with the mba 2013...

and well.. on the benchmarks it seems that they're in the same range of performance.. and i'm going to be using it most of the time for non related photography or photoshop.. the i7 seems to me it is a lot of money for only just a little bit extra in performance, and just some mili or micro seconds in the operations (i think)

i'm still waiting for the MBA to arrive, and since my last mbp was called "petunia".. this one i think it's going to be named "little petunia"

thanks for helping me to decide
 
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