MBP 13 extra memory

Hades · 30 Dec 2010 at 12:14

I currently have an MBP 13 2.26ghz with 2mb RAM. I do most of my development work on my Windows desktop because it is much more powerful (quad core, 8gb, 30" TFT). But I love the silence of my MBP when docked to the screen so am tempted to start using it docked more.

However, I notice it stutters occasionally when running lots of things. Is this likely to be significantly improved by upgrading the RAM or is it likely to be the low end CPU? Unfortuantely it's hard to tell if it's paging a lot because there's no hdd light to watch.

Also, is the RAM the same in my late 2009 MBP 13 as it is in the current 2010 MBP 15's (just in case I upgrade in the future)?

NightShadow · 30 Dec 2010 at 12:27

The late 2009 and the 2010 Macbook both use 1066Mhz DDR3 RAM. Upgraded my one (same specs as yours) to 4GB and don't notice any slowdown but then I also upgraded to a 7200rpm HDD and only ever have 3, maybe 4 programs running at once (one being iTunes or Spotify for background music).

GeForce · 30 Dec 2010 at 12:58

I think the RAM is more your issue than the CPU. Upgrading to 4GB will probably produce a noticeable improvement.

Look in activity monitor under the System Memory tab, and see what your memory usage is like. If "wired" and "active" memory make up most of the pie chart, then you're likely to see an improvement by increasing the amount of RAM.

Also have a look and see what the Page Ins/Outs look like in activity monitor. Page ins occur anytime something is moved into Active RAM whether that is from Inactive RAM, the swapfile(s), or another file on the hard drive. Pageouts occur anytime anything is moved out of Active RAM which includes mapping into Inactive RAM, as well as writing to a Swapfile. Page outs should be less than 20% of page ins, some people aim for about 5%.

In general, you don't want the system to have to force memory to be inactive to make it free for other applications, or for the system to be forced to write to a pagefile. So page outs should be a pretty small value (compared to page ins).

For reference, screenshot from my 2009 2.53GHz 4GB 13" MBP. As you can see, page outs are very low, so I'm not getting to the limit of my RAM capacity.

Hades · 30 Dec 2010 at 12:59

NightShadow said:
The late 2009 and the 2010 Macbook both use 1066Mhz DDR3 RAM. Upgraded my one (same specs as yours) to 4GB and don't notice any slowdown but then I also upgraded to a 7200rpm HDD and only ever have 3, maybe 4 programs running at once (one being iTunes or Spotify for background music).

Thanks. Were you getting any slowdown previously?

The reason for asking is that I'm at a bit of a crossroads and can go three ways:

1) Stay with my MBP 13 for portability and a Windows desktop for heavier stuff.
2) Sell the desktop (as I rarely game now) and upgrade the MBP 13 for use as both a portable machine and docked with my TFT.
3) Sell both and move to a higher spec MBP 15 which would be docked. but this would be less portable and cost quite a bit of money.

I just like the idea of one machine which is used wherever I am, and the portability of the 13 is fantastic. And if I dock it long term then I'd want to get a Henge dock which would also be a cost and the 13/15 models are different of course.

GeForce - Thanks for that too, I'll take a look.

GeForce · 30 Dec 2010 at 13:09

Ignore.

IceBus · 30 Dec 2010 at 13:34

Sorry to hijack this thread a bit, but I've got a similar MBP (13" 2.4Ghz, 4GB) and I'm getting WAY more page outs than GeForce and I was wondering if there's any reason?

GeForce · 30 Dec 2010 at 13:57

IceBus: it depends hugely on how you've been using your machine. For example, if you had Photoshop open with a few large image files, when you subsequently closed the program, all of that memory gets marked as Inactive, which counts as a Page Out.

What you really need to do is monitor the number of page ins/outs during use. Remember that paging in includes switching memory inactive->active, so you'll get a lot of page ins when you start an application. During using the application, you want to avoid having lots of page outs, unless you do something explicitly that would free memory (eg. closing an image in Photoshop).

I realise it is a bit difficult to tell which page outs are acceptable and which are not - it's really just a matter of keeping an eye on the System Memory and Disk Activity tabs in Activity Monitor, and checking that the system is not being forced to page out all the time due to not enough RAM. If a jump in page outs corresponds with writes out in Disk Activity, that's probably a pagefile write (bad).

NightShadow · 31 Dec 2010 at 07:53

Hades said:
Thanks. Were you getting any slowdown previously?

The reason for asking is that I'm at a bit of a crossroads and can go three ways:

1) Stay with my MBP 13 for portability and a Windows desktop for heavier stuff.
2) Sell the desktop (as I rarely game now) and upgrade the MBP 13 for use as both a portable machine and docked with my TFT.
3) Sell both and move to a higher spec MBP 15 which would be docked. but this would be less portable and cost quite a bit of money.

I just like the idea of one machine which is used wherever I am, and the portability of the 13 is fantastic. And if I dock it long term then I'd want to get a Henge dock which would also be a cost and the 13/15 models are different of course.

GeForce - Thanks for that too, I'll take a look.

Can't say for sure with slowdown prior to the upgrade as I had only had it for a couple of weeks so was still getting used to owning a Mac! I will say it plays games in Steam a lot more smoothly but that is probably not much help to you!

In your position I would go for the RAM upgrade and trial it out, should only cost you £40 to get 2 x 2GB sticks and you can always sell them on or sell your old memory after.