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3GB RAM To 12GB - Worth It?

englishman

englishman

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 6, 2006
730
10
I have a 3GB 2010 quad.

I'm not convinced that upgrading the RAM to 12GB for £100 will increase my performance or am I wrong.

I've used monitor and there is always a bit of green even when eg video editing.

Spec is stock 2.8 but with SSD
 
Hello,

Only one way to find out before buying: check your pageouts. Restart your mac, and use it normally for a couple of hours. Then launch Activity Monitor (in Applications/Utilities), switch to the System memory pane on the bottom part, and check to see if you have a lot of pageouts. If you do, it's a good sign that more ram will help you.

Mac OS X will always let you have a little bit of a green line in your memory, as it will swap out the live memory to virtual memory on your disk.

But if you do any sort of heavy work on your MP, 3GB is not a whole lot in 2011...

Loa
 
FWIW you want at least 6GB these days. You are limited to 4 DIMM slots. Might as well get 3x4GB sticks for triple channel adherence and have it run as fast as possible. Alternately if you think you will never need 12GB for all you do a 3x2GB setup will give you the same performance until you start paging out but it is more cost effective to just get a large amount (you wont upgrade again and have to sell or throw the previous allotment. I can get over 3GB in use just with 10.6.8 core, Safari use for a few hours and a couple other cocoa apps.
 
If you are doing any video editing then you will gain a lot from this upgrade.
 
I am thinking about upgrading my Mac Pro early 2009 4.1 (Nehalem 2.66 quad-core) from 6GB up to 12GB or at least 24GB RAM. Have a look here. But 24GB should be kind of senceless not using any VM (Photoshop, sometimes Premiere Pro only) :D The only reason to do that would be, that I´d never have to think about upgrading again ;) I think I will go for 12GB the next weeks. And spend the saved money into a SSD :)
 
If you can, go for it (gonna do the same myself soon...ish... got a new house, so got other priorities before i get to upgrading my mac pro's ram)
 
ive gone from 3gb to 16gb (obviously ordered same time as ordering the mac pro)

My page outs (taken whilst rendering in FCP7 and having been on for 3 hours)

Free 12.54GB (green)
Wired 953MB (red)
Active 2.13GB (amber)
Inactive 395MB (blue)
Used 3.45 GB (what a surprise, FCP using no more than 4GB)

Page ins - 272MB
Outs - 0bytes
Swap used - 0

Is this good? If i run other apps will this effect FCP7 - surely the other apps will be using the remaining 12GB of RAM so as long as i dont render etc. in after fx / motion, I would not see a slow machine? Infact, how hard could i push it -

rendering Pro ress 422 lt in FCP7

doing stuff in Motion 4 / After FX and / or rendering in these apps?

how many / type of more apps could i run

Mac pro 5,1 2010 - 2.8 QC, supplied graphics.

Bummer though, the supplied 3GB of ram is worth around £2.50! didnt even sell it the last time it was on ebay -

hopefully someone will but it this time -http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/140641619085?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_943
 
Hello,

steveOooo said:
Is this good?
Click to expand...

Flawless.

steveOooo said:
If i run other apps will this effect FCP7 - surely the other apps will be using the remaining 12GB of RAM so as long as i dont render etc. in after fx / motion, I would not see a slow machine? Infact, how hard could i push it -
Click to expand...

As far as RAM goes, you can push it until you see too many page outs. A few isn't a big isn't a big deal, but if that number gets too high, the OS is going to push temporary memory onto your HD. If you have a SSD it's not as bad, but aim for a very low page out count.

Loa
 
I just can't understand only 3gb of ram in a Mac Pro. If you don't see a performance increase you don't need a Mac Pro for whatever you're using it for.
 
Ant.honey said:
I just can't understand only 3gb of ram in a Mac Pro. If you don't see a performance increase you don't need a Mac Pro for whatever you're using it for.
Click to expand...

True. But there's a few of us who just bask in the sheer luxury and decadence of the thing.
 
I have a 12 core 2.66 and 24gb isn't enough. I should have gotten a 6 core with 32gb.

It's good that you enjoy your machine. If you don't use more than 3gb in your general use, you probably are correct in assuming you won't see a performance upgrade with more ram.
 
I recently went from a 2008 Mac Pro to a 2009. Only a minor step up, but the 2009 takes DDR3 RAM, which is cheaper than the DDR2 RAM that the 2008 takes.

It cost me something like $120 (Australian dollars) to get 4 x 4Gb Kingston chips from a PC shop. For that cost, it wasn't even worth hesitating.
 
Ant.honey said:
I have a 12 core 2.66 and 24gb isn't enough. I should have gotten a 6 core with 32gb.

It's good that you enjoy your machine. If you don't use more than 3gb in your general use, you probably are correct in assuming you won't see a performance upgrade with more ram.
Click to expand...

Its not just the luxury but the graphics card is a big plus for me. The iMacs are out really as I prefer my own matte dual screens. I have used a mini. The SSD and flexible storage options are a plus too. I also managed to get a very good used deal on my MP. I wouldn't have bought if I had to pay new store prices.
 
How many page outs do you have?

If it is > 0 then more memory would help!

I thought 6GB was enough for what I do, then I doubled it and I do the same things and I STILL get page outs!

I bought 12Gb from OWC, although is about half what I paid now!
 
Hello,

Aiming for absolutely 0 page outs is not a worthwhile endeavour unless you have unlimited funds.

Currently I have 16 megs of page outs, and 2.45 gigs of page ins. That ratio is important. Doubling my amount of RAM would probably lead to 0 page outs, but it would certainly not lead to any kind of improvement. Similarly, removing the dust that settled on the dash of a race car won't really affect it's performance. If you're crazy or anal-retentive, you'll say that it does, but in reality it doesn't.

Having a very low page out to page in ratio is very important, much more than getting that absolute 0 page out.

Loa
 
Loa said:
Hello,

Aiming for absolutely 0 page outs is not a worthwhile endeavour unless you have unlimited funds.

Currently I have 16 megs of page outs, and 2.45 gigs of page ins. That ratio is important. Doubling my amount of RAM would probably lead to 0 page outs, but it would certainly not lead to any kind of improvement. Similarly, removing the dust that settled on the dash of a race car won't really affect it's performance. If you're crazy or anal-retentive, you'll say that it does, but in reality it doesn't.

Having a very low page out to page in ratio is very important, much more than getting that absolute 0 page out.

Loa
Click to expand...

Well, aiming for 0 all the time is abit extreme, but aiming so it's not in the thousands or millions is!

Mine after 24 hours is zero, but I've not being doing major things today.
 
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