MBP RAM upgrade

sanofi

sanofi

sanofi

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Just upgraded the RAM on my 2.4Ghz i5 15" MBP from 4Gb to 8Gb and for £30, its defiantly worth it to anyone who is thinking about it.

Easy to install and the responsiveness of opening applications, lots of browser tabs, even just loading iPhoto is much faster.

I upgraded as it was cheap and I needed the extra RAM as I use my laptop for Matlab but the benefits in Lion make it totally worthwhile.
 
I've just ordered 8GB for my 2 week old MBP.

My old MacBook with 4GB ran Snow Leopard just fine, active RAM was around 2 to 2.5GB and it never paged unless I started running multiple VMs.

Lion seems to need more RAM than Snow Lep. With a similar workload to the old machine and a single 512MB VM running it started seriously paging. Last time I saw that on a Mac was my 2006 MBP with the factory 512MB RAM running tiger and a load of Rosetta apps.

At £30 it's a no brainer at the minute. I feel a bit sorry for those poor people buying 2GB non-upgradeable MacBook Airs.
 
MagicBoy said:
I've just ordered 8GB for my 2 week old MBP.

My old MacBook with 4GB ran Snow Leopard just fine, active RAM was around 2 to 2.5GB and it never paged unless I started running multiple VMs.

Lion seems to need more RAM than Snow Lep. With a similar workload to the old machine and a single 512MB VM running it started seriously paging. Last time I saw that on a Mac was my 2006 MBP with the factory 512MB RAM running tiger and a load of Rosetta apps.

At £30 it's a no brainer at the minute. I feel a bit sorry for those poor people buying 2GB non-upgradeable MacBook Airs.
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The same machine on Snow Leopard was also nippy, Lion really does need a lot more RAM, whether it is just inefficient with it's usage or just needs more to run all the new features in the background.
 
sanofi said:
The same machine on Snow Leopard was also nippy, Lion really does need a lot more RAM, whether it is just inefficient with it's usage or just needs more to run all the new features in the background.
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Its not quite as simple as higher ram usage being bad. To run a computer quickly and efficiently, use of the ram is vital and the better the OS utilises the free RAM the better. Lower does not always equal better.
 
8Gb SO-DIMMS have come down in price quite a lot now. Have just ordered 16Gb for my MBP and 32Gb for my iMac.
 
fez said:
Its not quite as simple as higher ram usage being bad. To run a computer quickly and efficiently, use of the ram is vital and the better the OS utilises the free RAM the better. Lower does not always equal better.
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Indeed, RAM is wasted if its not being used. Having 7gb used out of 8gb total is better if its all being used effectively. Will mean apps will be more responsive as it pulls the data from RAM rather than loading back up from hard drive.

No point only having 1gb of RAM used and it constantly loading back up from hdd every time
 
Bunka said:
Did you go for the Crucial kit?
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was going to get the kit from crucial but got it from the rainforest place.
Had a lot of positive reviews from previous buyers.
I just installed the ram yesterday which took 5 mins and ran full memtest with no problems :)
 
Jimz said:
Whats the exact RAM model number so I know which one to buy!?
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It depends on which Macbook pro you have. Most websites will have a list of Macbook pro models/year and compatible ram.
If you go to your About this Mac you'll see what ram you have :)
 
JRY said:
It depends on which Macbook pro you have. Most websites will have a list of Macbook pro models/year and compatible ram.
If you go to your About this Mac you'll see what ram you have :)
Click to expand...

Ive got a Macbook Pro 7.1 I think, its 2009 (White Unibody)
 
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