What to upgrade - SSD or RAM ?

I'd say SSD first, RAM second. Although your does seem to struggle with RAM somehow.

On the other side, I would never recommend to invest into a 5 year old computer. You should think about getting a new one.

 

In those photos, your ram pressure is green. This generally means that OSX is doing ok with your amount of ram. However, an SSD would be a large improvement over any HD.

 

Your biggest bottleneck is the HDD. Upgrade to the SSD will make you feel that your system much more responsive.

 

You completely ignored this poster's question. Please answer it. Your Mac is much more newer than mine and mine runs pretty smooth.

You might also be throwing money away by just purchasing an unneeded computer.

Agreed, what is the CPU doing that requires 96% commitment?

 

Sort systemstats if that is an issue,
stop running Chrome,
then SSD if you need to.
RAM looks fine.

 

Second vote on: stop using Chrome

• 
  I switched back to Firefox after using Chrome for almost 2 years.

Upgrade your SSD first:

• 
  I went versa-visa on my 2010 MBP however noticed more dramatic load, save, close times with SSD upgrade as opposed to RAM upgrade from 4gb to 8gb.

Keep an eye on your memory pressure and how many apps/docs you have open. You can get away with 4gb just fine if you watch what you have open and running. Also you'll get more bang for your buck with SSD upgrade, also prices keep dropping. I upgraded from 256GB HDD to 512GB SSD and now considering upgrading *again* to a 1TB SSD.

Keep in mind if you buy a new rMBP it will be more painful to upgrade the SSD and I think upgrading RAM is impossible since they are soldered onto the motherboard.

 

The systemstats is normal. It's schedule to run at 00:15 everyday (you can check your activity monitor, it should pops up every night, and use about 100% of your CPU for quite a few minutes), or may be triggered by some OS functions (activity monitor is one of them).

Also, it's not on the 6th Oct screen capture. That means it's not in a infinity loop. It was just a coincident that the systemstats was running when OP capture the screen on 4th Oct.

IMO, this 96% CPU usage is very normal for systemstats, unless it stick there for more than 15min, or keep opening new thread (e.g. 4 systemstats shows in activity monitor and use 350% of CPU).

 

RAM is fine. So is CPU. (But I would stop using Chrome too. It's not very a very efficient piece of software, imo.)

5 year old system, with a 5 year old disk drive (moving parts.)

Get an SSD, and if you can, reapply the thermal paste and clean the fans while you have the system open to upgrade to an SSD. If you're not comfortable doing the paste on your own, then skip it, but definitely give the fans a good cleaning.

When you buy a new one next year, this one should be good as a hand-me-down to somebody that just wants something to use to surf the web and send/receive email.

 

Buy an SSD, it's one of the best upgrades you can ever make. Then upgrade the RAM after as I doubt it will cost a lot for your computer.

 

Seconded - though I would do both the 4gb DDR3-8500 sticks are fairly cheap unlike the earlier DDR2-800 types of which the 4gb parts are horrendously expensive.

I would boot into the recovery partition by holding down option at boot and repair the disk permissions of Macintosh HD while it's unmounted which may alleviate some of the beach balls. Check the disk too for errors.

 

It could be the disk, these more modern drives seem to spin slower rather than go bang like the older types. Though I tell anybody with an older Mac that if they want it to feel like new upgrading to an SSD is a must. When I see a mid 2007 iMac 27 inch boot Mavericks to desktop with a Parallels 7x86 VM on login in less than 30 seconds it's the best upgrade you can ever give to an old Mac.

 

That's because the value for money combined with performance of a $49 spinning disk compared to a $79 or $99 solid state means I haven't installed a single stock spinning disk in any Mac bar the Mac Pro for the past year. For a five year old Mac and customers responses which are always 'blown away and over the moon' I am happy to provide the service

Plus it's a waste of my labour time having to wait to install on a HDD, they save my time which accordingly saves them money too. Unless they need a large capacity drive (over 512gb) where SSHD is an option the days of the traditional spinner in notebooks are now over booting OS X.

 

I agree, but the majority of users 256Gb is enough, even factoring in the 25% empty factor. It's only when you get past this figure to 750 and 1Tb where the economics/performance ratio is tighter but these drives which no doubt will not get hammered like an enterprise model still have a resale value sold second hand. They will fit in anything, even iMac's and Mac Pro with an Adaptadrive 3.5 adapter.

My hunch is probably like yourself is that in the OP's case it's probably got something to do with the HDD. Disk Utility repairing the permissions and checking the disk off the recovery partition may give more clues. But any client with a 2009 I would advise as an extended life refit to max the ram out and go SSD, for their benefits not only in terms of performance but also how much they have to pay me to do the work. Most post upgrade can't see the point in retiring it as upgraded it's an extremely capable Mac again, one far more capable than when they bought it new too.

 

+1 ssd

Like a lot of the other posters mentioned, upgrading to SSD will speed things up, restarts, application start ups, system wide speed up.... The ram upgrade will help if you are experiencing a slow down with particular apps open and drawing a lot of processing power from them.

 

Before throwing money at the issue, you should work on figuring out the root cause. If you have that stats file using 96% of your CPU, an SSD won't solve the issue.

I just posted a thread about a mid '09 MBP I just picked up to play around with and it still has an HDD and 8GB RAM and it is pretty speedy. Still going to throw an SSD in it, but honestly I agree with the others, you have an issue that goes beyond needing to upgrade hardware.

ETA: And that's what I get for not reading the whole thread. So systemstats is normal? Okay then, you still shouldn't be slowing down unless your HDD is failing. Also while you're in there replacing that HDD with an SSD, grab a can of compressed air and clean out the case/fans.