Yes / No RAM question

[Merackon]

Hi, very quick question.

Early 2011 15" MBP here, 6490m peasant, laggy UI and general slowness in Yosemite, >3GB RAM usage pretty much all the time.

Will getting an 8GB set resolve most of my issues or am I forced to live with it?

Thanks in advance,

Jack

 

[cjmillsnun]

Yes to extra RAM, it will help, but not eliminate the issues.

Mavericks and Yosemite seem to be optimised for SSDs. This may be the better first step for you (as you will already have 4GB RAM)

 

[Merackon]

Sorry, failed to mention, I already have an 840 Pro in the system. Thanks for the answer. Is it graphics related, and if so, will the additional iGPU VRAM from the extra RAM assist in resolving the issues with the bolshy animations?

 

[simonsi]

Doesnt sound like it would help, open Activity Monitor and see what it is doing, you may have a process or two unecessarily chewing cpu and causing it.

 

[cjmillsnun]

OK.

Did you clean install Yosemite or install over Mavericks (or previous OS X)

 

[Merackon]

OK.

Did you clean install Yosemite or install over Mavericks (or previous OS X)

I formatted the disc because I had the Open Beta running on the machine only, and you couldn't upgrade from that to the final release for some reason. Put Mountain Lion onto the computer and then upgraded from there.

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Doesnt sound like it would help, open Activity Monitor and see what it is doing, you may have a process or two unecessarily chewing cpu and causing it.

Activity Monitor norm is about 70-90% idle every day. I do not game and can't really do anything photo or production related due to the GPU cock up.

 

[Meister]

Activity Monitor norm is about 70-90% idle every day. I do not game and can't really do anything photo or production related due to the GPU cock up.

Simonsi meant the memory pressure. Is it in the green?
Yosemite, like mavericks will always show >3gb used. Do you have an ssd installed?

 

[Merackon]

Simonsi meant the memory pressure. Is it in the green?
Yosemite, like mavericks will always show >3gb used. Do you have an ssd installed?

If you mean the colour of the waveform it is green at the moment

 

[Meister]

If you mean the colour of the waveform it is green at the moment

Then more ram will make no difference.
The problem lies elsewhere.
My guess is it's either software (install the OS again!) or harddrive (install an ssd!/new hdd) related.