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Upgrading my 13" Macbook Pro.

N

NinjahKitteh

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 30, 2012
17
0
I have been thinking over the last few days and I have made a decision that I want to upgrade the ram in my 13", early 2011, i7 2.7ghz macbook pro. I use my macbook a lot, and I defiantly notice that when I have a lot of things open at the same time it starts to feel very sluggish. Things like photoshop, msn, skype, steam and other things seem to be slowing down my computer. So here is my concerns. Is it the lack of ram that is slowing down my computer or is it due to the CPU or Intel HD 3000 possibly? Will 8gb ram be good for personal use or would it be a better deal to go with the 16gb ram? Is there any chance that upgrading the ram could improve performance while playing games? Will installing the ram manually void my warranty? I paid for the extended warranty so I am a little worried about that.


Anyways, those are just a few of my concerns. Thanks for all your help!
 
NinjahKitteh said:
Is it the lack of ram that is slowing down my computer or is it due to the CPU or Intel HD 3000 possibly? Will 8gb ram be good for personal use or would it be a better deal to go with the 16gb ram? Is there any chance that upgrading the ram could improve performance while playing games? Will installing the ram manually void my warranty? I paid for the extended warranty so I am a little worried about that.
Click to expand...
Many say RAM is cheap, so get as much as you can, even if it's not needed. However, RAM prices continue to fall, and if more isn't needed now, waiting to buy at a later time when it's actually needed will probably result in a lower price.

To determine if you can benefit from more RAM, launch Activity Monitor and click the System Memory tab at the bottom to check your page outs. Page outs are cumulative since your last restart, so the best way to check is to restart your computer and track page outs under your normal workload (the apps, browser pages and documents you normally would have open). If your page outs are significant (say 1GB or more) under normal use, you may benefit from more RAM. If your page outs are zero or very low during normal use, you probably won't see any performance improvement from adding RAM.

Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor

Installation of user-installable parts such as RAM does not void the Apple Warranty or the AppleCare Protection Plan, unless you damage something in the process.
 
Another vote for 8gb of ram. I upgraded to 8gb and the machine is much more snappy©

16gb will help as well, but perhaps not as much as 8, that is after 8 you may not see that much more improvement. YMMV however.
 
One last question. I often use Final Cut pro as a hobby. The performance of running it seems to be pretty bad on my 13 inch early 2011 i7 2.7ghz. I was wondering if ram would help this or would I be looking at having to get a better mac with more processing power and a better GPU? The intel 3000 hd seems to run games pretty well but would it be the limiting factor for why final cut is so slow? :p
 
NinjahKitteh said:
One last question. I often use Final Cut pro as a hobby. The performance of running it seems to be pretty bad on my 13 inch early 2011 i7 2.7ghz. I was wondering if ram would help this or would I be looking at having to get a better mac with more processing power and a better GPU? The intel 3000 hd seems to run games pretty well but would it be the limiting factor for why final cut is so slow? :p
Click to expand...

It all depends on where the slow downs occur whilst using Final Cut Pro, if your using really large files, and your page-outs increase whilst using the application, then you may be running out of RAM; in which case, more RAM would be beneficial. However, the main bottleneck when using Final Cut Pro will be your GPU, the worse the GPU the longer the rendering times in Final Cut Pro, hence the slowdowns whilst using Final Cut Pro. But yes as the poster above said, increasing the RAM will increase the memory available to the Intel HD 3000 from 384MB to 512MB, which will increase the GPU's ability to work with larger sized renders.
 
Yes, as the user above me pointed out, the Intel HD3000 shares a percentage of RAM. 4GB = 384MB and 8GB = 512MB. If you increase the speed of your RAM by buying 1600MHz sticks, it seems logical that you would also see an increase in the memory clocks of the Intel HD3000.
 
I just did the very same upgrade tonight on my early 13 Mbp. But since I put the memory in, my battery won't charge....very strange. Has anyone heard of this? I bought the ram direct from crucial....
 
maflynn said:
Another vote for 8gb of ram. I upgraded to 8gb and the machine is much more snappy©

16gb will help as well, but perhaps not as much as 8, that is after 8 you may not see that much more improvement. YMMV however.
Click to expand...

I agree, 8 is fine, I have 16 in my iMac, but that does a lot of heavy lifting. Newegg, Crucial both good places to start.
 
v2kea412 said:
I just did the very same upgrade tonight on my early 13 Mbp. But since I put the memory in, my battery won't charge....very strange. Has anyone heard of this? I bought the ram direct from crucial....
Click to expand...

Make sure the battery plug didn't accidentally come loose. That's happened to me before when I upgraded the hard drive and RAM. :D
 
w00t951 said:
Yes, as the user above me pointed out, the Intel HD3000 shares a percentage of RAM. 4GB = 384MB and 8GB = 512MB. If you increase the speed of your RAM by buying 1600MHz sticks, it seems logical that you would also see an increase in the memory clocks of the Intel HD3000.
Click to expand...

Can a early 2011 13 inch MCP use 1600mhz ram? I have only found 1333 mhz and 1066 mhz for it. 1600Mhz would seem like it would do wonders but I have yet to see some 1600 mhz ram that would fit in MBP
 
v2kea412 said:
I just did the very same upgrade tonight on my early 13 Mbp. But since I put the memory in, my battery won't charge....very strange. Has anyone heard of this? I bought the ram direct from crucial....
Click to expand...

UPDATE: Upon further inspection of the cable, it appears that my 2 year old cat has taken a liking to chewing the cable of my power cable... GRRRRRR... I plugged in the power adapter from my wife's white MacBook and it charges just fine. I was all but certain I messed up the MBP...
 
v2kea412 said:
UPDATE: Upon further inspection of the cable, it appears that my 2 year old cat has taken a liking to chewing the cable of my power cable... GRRRRRR... I plugged in the power adapter from my wife's white MacBook and it charges just fine. I was all but certain I messed up the MBP...
Click to expand...

Where did you buy your ram from and what were the prices?
I have been looking at here to buy it, but I dont know if buying from somewhere else would be better.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233215
 
NinjahKitteh said:
Where did you buy your ram from and what were the prices?
I have been looking at here to buy it, but I dont know if buying from somewhere else would be better.
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233215
Click to expand...

Bought mine from Crucial.com. Free shipping instead of 9.99. But will be almost a wash. My total came to like 48$... I do ALL of my component shopping on Newegg, but was confused with the different types of DDR3 1333....there was a 1066, a 10666, or whatever.... See? I am still confused! I just went to Crucial and told them I had an early 2011 13" i7 2.7ghz MBP and **POOF**.
 
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