2GB or 1.5GB of RAM in a Core Duo MacBook Pro?

[OllyW]

I've just picked up a seven month old used MacBook Pro for a bargain price.

It's the original base model Core Duo 1.83GHz with 512MB of RAM so I'm looking to upgrade the RAM.

Crucial are doing 1GB for £61 or 2GB for £122 and I'm wondering whether upgrading to 2GB is really worth an extra £61 for another 512MB?

I've got 1.5GB in my dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac and that seems to cope with what I'm doing at the moment. I'm just wondering if the extra 512MB will be worthwhile, or am I better off putting the money I'll save towards buying AppleCare?

 

[jsw]

I...or am I better off putting the money I'll save towards buying AppleCare?

Bingo.

Yes, 2GB is better than 1GB, but the jump from 0.5GB to 1.5GB will get you 90% of the benefits of the jump clear to 2GB.

 

[iJawn108]

will you be running parallels? cause if you''re ever going to be running VMs you'll want more ram. I went from 512 to 2gigs and it its just comfortable.

 

[72930]

It completely depends on what you want to do - will you be running multiple OSes simultaneously with PPC apps?

In most cases, 1.5GB is great...

 

[TBi]

Crucial are doing 1GB for £61 or 2GB for £122 and I'm wondering whether upgrading to 2GB is really worth an extra £61 for another 512MB?

I'd get 1 stick now, then if you think things aren't fast enough you can always buy another stick later.

 

[OllyW]

Thanks, I'll try the 1GB upgrade and see how I get on.

I'm probably going to try Parallels, is it a memory hog?

 

[smokeyrabbit]

Thanks, I'll try the 1GB upgrade and see how I get on.

I'm probably going to try Parallels, is it a memory hog?

Parallels is not, but Windows XP doesn't run very well with less than 512 MB. I have mine set at 768 MB and it runs OK. If you want to simultaneously use Windows and other memory-hungry apps, get the 2 GB or wait for all that paging.

 

[rogersmj]

Parallels is not, but Windows XP doesn't run very well with less than 512 MB. I have mine set at 768 MB and it runs OK.

Damn, what are you running in XP that requires that much RAM? XP runs perfectly fine on even 256MB of RAM -- remember, that was about the most you could get pre-installed in a computer when XP came out. I have my Parallels VM set at 384MB, and it's perfectly fine for Outlook, Visual Studio, uTorrent, and a couple other odds and ends.

 

[CanadaRAM]

Damn, what are you running in XP that requires that much RAM? XP runs perfectly fine on even 256MB of RAM -- remember, that was about the most you could get pre-installed in a computer when XP came out. I have my Parallels VM set at 384MB, and it's perfectly fine for Outlook, Visual Studio, uTorrent, and a couple other odds and ends.

XP runs in 256 Mb, but it hits the Swap file like a sailor back from an 18 month cruise. Performance is much better if it has at least 512 Mb real RAM.

 

[whateverandever]

I've just picked up a seven month old used MacBook Pro for a bargain price.

It's the original base model Core Duo 1.83GHz with 512MB of RAM so I'm looking to upgrade the RAM.

Crucial are doing 1GB for £61 or 2GB for £122 and I'm wondering whether upgrading to 2GB is really worth an extra £61 for another 512MB?

I've got 1.5GB in my dual 2GHz G5 Power Mac and that seems to cope with what I'm doing at the moment. I'm just wondering if the extra 512MB will be worthwhile, or am I better off putting the money I'll save towards buying AppleCare?

Keep in mind that if you run at 1.5GB of RAM you'll lose most dual channel functionality, so if going to be running apps that benefit from high read/write speeds to RAM, 2GB is the way to go (or 1GB, if you're on a budget).

Honestly, if you go with OCZ ram instead of Crucial you can probably get 2GB for close to the same price. Crucial is quite pricey and doesn't necessarily provide any benefits over other RAM. Kingston is quite nice and has a great RMA policy.

 

[Eidorian]

Keep in mind that if you run at 1.5GB of RAM you'll lose most dual channel functionality, so if going to be running apps that benefit from high read/write speeds to RAM, 2GB is the way to go (or 1GB, if you're on a budget).

In before the dual channel debate over a 2-3% performance gain. Oh wait...

Don't forget about Intel Flex Memory.