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What a difference 8GB of Ram makes in my 2011 MBP!

M

Molson1020

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 3, 2009
146
43
Wow!

I just popped in 8GB into my 17" 2011 Macbook Pro because it was a little slow when it came to Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator (and that's not even having them all open at the same time)...

With 8GB now these things FLY open! It's insane how much faster it is!

I am thinking about upgrading my 5400RPM HD to a 750GB 7200RPM HD... will I see a big difference in speeds there too?
 
Molson1020 said:
Wow!

I just popped in 8GB into my 17" 2011 Macbook Pro because it was a little slow when it came to Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator (and that's not even having them all open at the same time)...

With 8GB now these things FLY open! It's insane how much faster it is!

I am thinking about upgrading my 5400RPM HD to a 750GB 7200RPM HD... will I see a big difference in speeds there too?
Click to expand...

You'll see an improvement; though I don't think I'd say it would be as big as upgrading to 8 GB RAM considering your usage.
 
you'll see a slight improvement, maybe shave a few seconds off.
If you use photoshop, illustrator etc. often, you should think about an SSD with a HDD in the optical bay.

I've got 8GB of ram too, and a 120GB sata 3 SSD with my OS and photoshop on it... I dont even get a proper loading screen, just a flash of blue and its open (CS5).

Filters and working with really large documents (like for print) have drastically improved as well.
 
There isn't much difference between 5400rpm and 7200rpm. Now an SSD... THAT would make a huge difference.
 
I upgraded to 8GB a few days after I got my 15" MBP (i7 2.2Ghz). RAM has dropped a little since I bought it ($89).

I noticed the biggest difference in iMovie and iPhoto. The quad-core (8 with HyperT) just seems to "breathe" better with 8GB.
 
8 gb's makes a significant difference, when I initially got the machine and was editing in after effects I was maxing out my ram easily and it lagged now with 8 gbs I don't max it out and it's a lot easier to use
 
Here is a pic of mine.
 

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I just installed 8gb of ram to and I run Parrallels quite often to use Windows and with Parrallels running my computer would lag like crazy but after installing the 8GB of ram it as smooth as butter.
 
ok so basically the 8gb is for those who do alot of gaming???????? i'll be using my mac to surf the internet make powerpoints... etc..

im getting a base mac book pro 13.3 inch except for 750 gb hard drive (can't resist lol)....
 
Maschil said:
ok so basically the 8gb is for those who do alot of gaming???????? i'll be using my mac to surf the internet make powerpoints... etc..

im getting a base mac book pro 13.3 inch except for 750 gb hard drive (can't resist lol)....
Click to expand...

I don't game on my MBP (except for maybe Pinball). I do a lot of stuff with iMovie and iPhoto and the extra "oomph" was an inexpensive upgrade.
 
You've motivated me to finally add that 8GB kit to my Amazon shopping cart. I'll report back how it effects my CS5 editing.
 
I have 8gb in my 2010 15'' specs in sig and mac is constantly using at least 5gb not sure how people deal with less than 4gb.
 
Molson1020 said:
Wow!

I just popped in 8GB into my 17" 2011 Macbook Pro because it was a little slow when it came to Photoshop, Indesign, Illustrator (and that's not even having them all open at the same time)...

With 8GB now these things FLY open! It's insane how much faster it is!

I am thinking about upgrading my 5400RPM HD to a 750GB 7200RPM HD... will I see a big difference in speeds there too?
Click to expand...

For your purposes, the upgrade was definitely a good move. As far as HDD's go, not all 7200's and 5400's are the same, some 5400's I've used are almost on par with some 7200 models.

However I wouldn't expect much of a boost in terms of noticeable performance improvement, perhaps a few seconds cut from application launch and such. However if you want to try a rather inexpensive solution that appears to work very well in MBP's, take a look at the Seagate Momentus XT 7200 drive.

For ~150 US, you get a 500GB 7200 drive with a 4GB NAND and a large onboard cache. I use one in my larger notebook and the key difference between the XT and other typical 7200 drives is that if you use the same apps all the time, the NAND learns this and starts to load faster cutting time down.

However if you use a lot of different apps all the time, the NAND may not be able to figure out what apps are the priority since you can't configure the HDD in any shape or form to change this.
 
Hyper-X said:
For your purposes, the upgrade was definitely a good move. As far as HDD's go, not all 7200's and 5400's are the same, some 5400's I've used are almost on par with some 7200 models.

However I wouldn't expect much of a boost in terms of noticeable performance improvement, perhaps a few seconds cut from application launch and such. However if you want to try a rather inexpensive solution that appears to work very well in MBP's, take a look at the Seagate Momentus XT 7200 drive.

For ~150 US, you get a 500GB 7200 drive with a 4GB NAND and a large onboard cache. I use one in my larger notebook and the key difference between the XT and other typical 7200 drives is that if you use the same apps all the time, the NAND learns this and starts to load faster cutting time down.

However if you use a lot of different apps all the time, the NAND may not be able to figure out what apps are the priority since you can't configure the HDD in any shape or form to change this.
Click to expand...



The Momentus XT 500GB is $100 shipped from Amazon.



I know that my MBP will run with 1600MHZ ram, where can I find some?
 
I wouldn't bother going from a 5400RPM to 7200RPM drive. If there is a measurable difference, it's not very perceivable. If possible, I'd recommend getting an SSD instead. If you're going to spend money, you'll want to know it did some good.
 
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