Upgrading ram worth it?

[tlcashda]

Hey everyone, here are the specs on my macbook pro. I primarily use it for graphic design (adobe products) and playing Diablo 3. I also have it dual booted so I can use SolidWorks. Do you think upgrading my ram to 6gb or 8gb will give me more speed?


Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB


AMD Radeon HD 6490M:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 6490M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

 

[GGJstudios]

Do you think upgrading my ram to 6gb or 8gb will give me more speed?

That depends on your current and projected RAM usage. 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

 

[gentlefury]

Depends what you do. I max out my 16GB daily. I am not the average user.

 

[FuNGi]

Yes. Get 8 GB especially if running a virtual machine. It's cheap.

 

[SlyMac]

8GB is good. It depends on your useage but if your doing a lot of graphic heavy tasks more ram is always good. Its dirt cheap too. Whe I bought ram for my pro it was 21.99 per 4GB stick of Crucial.

 

[tlcashda]

GGJstudios: Thanks, I'll look into that.

SlyMac: Do you happen to remember where you got your sticks?

 

[Interstella5555]

GGJstudios: Thanks, I'll look into that.

SlyMac: Do you happen to remember where you got your sticks?

I'd check out either TigerDirect or Monoprice, you should be looking at ~40/50 for the RAM.

 

[thermodynamic]

Hey everyone, here are the specs on my macbook pro. I primarily use it for graphic design (adobe products) and playing Diablo 3. I also have it dual booted so I can use SolidWorks. Do you think upgrading my ram to 6gb or 8gb will give me more speed?


Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro8,2
Processor Name: Intel Core i7
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number of Processors: 1
Total Number of Cores: 4
L2 Cache (per Core): 256 KB
L3 Cache: 6 MB
Memory: 4 GB


AMD Radeon HD 6490M:

Chipset Model: AMD Radeon HD 6490M
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
PCIe Lane Width: x8
VRAM (Total): 256 MB

I work with Photoshop and Dreamweaver extensively.

Upgrade to 8GB.