Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
What would give me best Speed
- Thread starter davidlw
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
More RAM does not speed up the Mac, it prevents it from becoming slow when you run out of physical RAM.
If you have to choose I think the RAM option is the better one since you can't change it down the road AFAIK in an Air.
If you have to choose I think the RAM option is the better one since you can't change it down the road AFAIK in an Air.
Dependable on how you use it probably not much, if you are just using it for email, browsing, the occasionally photoshop-video apps you should be OK with the i5.
If you choose the 4 GB model you most likely run into problems within a few years, with a lower specced CPU not so much, it should still work.
But, as I said before it depends on what you're going to use it for.
If you don't have specific needs which requires i7, I would recommend to go with 8gb RAM. That would be more future proof, next OSX possibly requires higher min RAM compared to higher processor.
What do you mean by "speed"? I mean, what do you want to be fast?
The i7 is good for CPU speed if you need CPU. Like Video processing.
The RAM is good for speed if you run a lot of Apps, particularly if you run virtual OS etc.
Max out everything, DUH!
I5 vs I7 - perhaps 15% by the numbers, but in real life, probly won't notice it.
If u want speed, you should really be looking at a desktop. Laptops are designed for compromise against weight, noise, battery life blah-blah-blah.
I5 vs I7 - perhaps 15% by the numbers, but in real life, probly won't notice it.
If u want speed, you should really be looking at a desktop. Laptops are designed for compromise against weight, noise, battery life blah-blah-blah.
I would go with more RAM than faster processor. Therefore, it might not be as fast, but you can do more at a single time without freezes or anything.
8GB of RAM will do you far more good in the long run. Seriously, the CPU is a minor upgrade. Doubling the RAM will make the MBA usable for a few more years.
A windows computer with an SSD doesn't exactly slow down either.
Also, I beg to differ. Macs do slow down, albeit not as dramatically as some people who (abuse) their windows computers.
May I ask you how so?
If there is new software this could be the case but OS X by itself does not slow down (Provided you stay on the same version), by not slowing down I mean considerably slow down, like 50% slower, OS X slows down by maybe a few % but that's about it.
Windows slows down because many people install and remove software, the directory gets clogged up, but there are more reasons for it to slow dow, dll's for instance.
Last edited:
So all the... it used to wake up INSTANTLY, now takes up to 10 seconds! What's wrong with my machine?!!!
That's not slow down, your Mac has sleep issues, like WIFI ,sleep issues have always been one of the weaker parts of MacOS.
It depends on how long you put it to sleep.
For up to an hour, everything stays in RAM, so wakeup is immediate.
After an hour, or when your battery is really low, the Mac writes RAM to the SSD drive, and then turns off the RAM, to save battery power. That way you still have most of your battery power after the Mac is turned off for a week. Now if you wake it up, memory has to be read back from the SSD drive which takes a few seconds.
that's exactly right. that's why it takes so much longer to wake back up when it goes into emergency standby when you run out of battery.