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CREB

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 24, 2012
5
0
I currently have 4GB RAM of memory in my early 2011 MBP 13inch model and I want to upgrade this to a 8GB or 16GB 1866MHz
Problem is I'm not sure what the differences between the two will be, graphics performance wise.
I know that upgrading to 8GB increases VRAM to 512MB. What would happen when you upgrade to 16GB?
Also is upgrading to 1866MHz a good idea?

quoting dusk007 from another thread
I always forget that some people do gaming on a HD 3000.
Yes it does add bandwidth that a CPU will happily take. Very much depends on the game but some high streaming games like CoD should benefit a lot, high shader games like Crysis probably much less.
There is a lot of Apples to Oranges comparisons but you still can expect some 10%+ increase in fps with 1866 over 1333. Synthetic benchmarks are the only show some 6% increase, but games like bandwidth usually more than syn. benches. If that is worth the money opposed to the price of 1600 is your decision. In a 15"/17" I think 1866 is a poor idea in a 13" there is some point to it.
 
vRam doesn't go past 512mb. So when you go all the way to 16gb, you're making your computer a lot faster, but you're not doing a whole lot towards directly improving gpu capabilities
 
The highest I've seen in the forum was a screenshot of an 8GB 1600MHz.

I also found some information about 8GB 1866MHz from amazon review
I bought this RAM for my brand new early 2011 macbook pro, with a 2.3 ghz core i7 processor. I installed the ram and my mac was off the wall fast! But i noticed the laptop getting very hot and after about 10 minutes the computer crashed, yah, a mac, crashing. I turned it back on and read the error report, a simple kernel crash, which can happen after new hardware is installed, so I just carried on. It happened about 20 minutes later, and then kept happening continuously. After about 5 minutes my laptop would be extremely hot and then would crash shortly after. I ran memtest and got a ton of errors, and thinking it was a bad memory set that I had received I called Kingston. It turns out that the macbooks only support up to 1333 mhz RAM, and 1866 overclocks by itself, runs the fans at too high of a speed and then crashes the kernel. I returned the RAM to Amazon for a full refund (and amazon is awesome about returning products!) and ordered two 1333 mhz 4gb sticks. Moral of the story: check to make sure the product is compatible, if it is, buy this RAM, its amazing!

So 1866MHz for mbp 13 2011 is out of the question?
 
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