2GB of RAM and games

[acastic]

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Hi,

I'm looking to get a current gen 11 or 13 inch Air. I plan on using it for some gaming while on the train to work. That being said, is 2GB of RAM enough? I plan on playing games like Starcraft 2, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, etc. I'm okay with low to medium graphics setting on these games, as I just play single player. Does anyone have any experiences they could share? Money is a factor and I'd most likely grab a refurb, which for the most part, only have the 2GB models.

Thanks!

 

[iStudentUK]

I wouldn't buy an Air without 4GB of RAM full-stop. If you want to keep it for any length of time you really should look at 4GB. Remember, in the new Airs the RAM is not upgradeable later. Think if 2GB will be enough in a year or two?

New Airs are rumoured to be imminent (days/weeks), so more refurbs of the "old" Air may appear then.

 

[Photics]

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That being said, is 2GB of RAM enough?

With my Mac Mini... I had 1 Gig of RAM. It was writing to the harddrive a lot... which slowed things down. So, I upgraded it to 4 Gigs. That was a really nice upgrade. My Mac felt a lot faster and things ran smoother.

I don't know what you should do. But me... I would likely upgrade the Macbook Air to 4 gigs... especially because I don't want Virtual Memory running on an SSD.

There's an application called Activity Monitor that I use to see system performance. When I don't restart my computer for a couple of days, the kernal_task balloons to rather large sizes. The total used memory can hit 3.5+ GB. So, I'm glad that I have 4 GB of RAM. It means that my Mac has enough space to work comfortably.

 

[torbjoern]

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Hi,

I'm looking to get a current gen 11 or 13 inch Air. I plan on using it for some gaming while on the train to work. That being said, is 2GB of RAM enough? I plan on playing games like Starcraft 2, Dragon Age, Call of Duty, etc. I'm okay with low to medium graphics setting on these games, as I just play single player. Does anyone have any experiences they could share? Money is a factor and I'd most likely grab a refurb, which for the most part, only have the 2GB models.

Thanks!

It's madness to buy a MacBook Air with only 2 GB of RAM these days, and especially if you intend to play games on it. You only have one chance to alter the RAM configuration for your device - and that's before you purchase, not after.

 

[acastic]

I wouldn't buy an Air without 4GB of RAM full-stop. If you want to keep it for any length of time you really should look at 4GB. Remember, in the new Airs the RAM is not upgradeable later. Think if 2GB will be enough in a year or two?

New Airs are rumoured to be imminent (days/weeks), so more refurbs of the "old" Air may appear then.

That's a good point. I'd like to keep it for at least a year. I might have to camp on the refurb section of the Apple store and wait for a 4GB model. I'd love to get the new revision Air, but it sounds like the Intel video card is trash. I have a couple friends that have the new 13" MBP and they struggle to play Starcraft 2 on low settings.