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Is anyone considering a RAM upgrade?

MasterHowl

MasterHowl

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Oct 3, 2010
1,067
182
North of England
I've had my MBP for just under two years now, and considered upgrading my 4GB to 8GB a few times... but never really been able to justify it. 4GB has been perfect so far.

But since Lion's going to be a little more RAM hungry, I'm considering it again. I rang up my local store today and it would cost £88 for the upgrade.

Is anyone else considering an upgrade?
 
MasterHowl said:
I've had my MBP for just under two years now, and considered upgrading my 4GB to 8GB a few times... but never really been able to justify it. 4GB has been perfect so far.

But since Lion's going to be a little more RAM hungry, I'm considering it again. I rang up my local store today and it would cost £88 for the upgrade.

Is anyone else considering an upgrade?
Click to expand...

4 GB of ram is going to be perfectly fine for Lion. I think the next upgrade I'll be upgrading my 4 GB ram to 6 or 8 GB but for Lion it'll be perfectly fine.
 
I'm considering it, yes. My page-outs have gone up since installing the GM. (I have 4GB.)
 
I currently have 4GB and had been thinking about an upgrade to 8GB for a while. Have decided to do so after a week with the GM.
 
MasterHowl said:
I've had my MBP for just under two years now, and considered upgrading my 4GB to 8GB a few times... but never really been able to justify it. 4GB has been perfect so far.

But since Lion's going to be a little more RAM hungry, I'm considering it again. I rang up my local store today and it would cost £88 for the upgrade.

Is anyone else considering an upgrade?
Click to expand...

4 GB of ram is going to be perfectly fine for Lion. I think the next upgrade I'll be upgrading my 4 GB ram to 6 or 8 GB but for Lion it'll be perfectly fine.
 
I wish, I am maxed out at 3GB and I desperately need new hardware.

20110708102222am.png
 
SandboxGeneral said:
Nope. My iMac is already maxed out at ... 16GB. :cool:
Click to expand...

Whoa nice one! I'm a bit jealous...

DougieB said:
I currently have 4GB and had been thinking about an upgrade to 8GB for a while. Have decided to do so after a week with the GM.
Click to expand...

I might join you on that one. I'm not a developer so haven't had chance to try it out yet. I like how Snow Leopard runs lightning fast, and I'd like Lion to be the same!

ohla313 said:
what do the page outs mean? :confused:
Click to expand...

I'd like to know this too ^
 
Page in: Data pushed onto virtual memory
Page out: Data pulled in from virtual memory

If you're getting page outs, it means you're running out of memory and using the hard drive as secondary memory. Ideally, it should be 0, which means you're never running out.

(More important is page outs per second. If you're constantly paging out, then you really need more memory.)
 
Cinder6 said:
Page in: Data pushed onto virtual memory
Page out: Data pulled in from virtual memory

If you're getting page outs, it means you're running out of memory and using the hard drive as secondary memory. Ideally, it should be 0, which means you're never running out.

(More important is page outs per second. If you're constantly paging out, then you really need more memory.)
Click to expand...

That helps more than a Wiki Link, thanks :)

ajvizzgamer101 said:
I am living with 4GB(still pretty fast) till I get a new MacBook, depending how long my current Macbook Pro last for.
Click to expand...

I was thinking about doing this, but I need my MacBook Pro to last another four years (until I've finished University)... I bought it to last me through Sixth Form (two years) and my degree (four years). I'll have to upgrade eventually.
 
Cinder6 said:
Page in: Data pushed onto virtual memory
Page out: Data pulled in from virtual memory

If you're getting page outs, it means you're running out of memory and using the hard drive as secondary memory. Ideally, it should be 0, which means you're never running out.

(More important is page outs per second. If you're constantly paging out, then you really need more memory.)
Click to expand...

If thats the case then Lion is a super duper ram guzzler. Running Safari and iTunes will cause it to run out of memory. This is with 4gb's
 
MasterHowl said:
I've had my MBP for just under two years now, and considered upgrading my 4GB to 8GB a few times... but never really been able to justify it. 4GB has been perfect so far.

But since Lion's going to be a little more RAM hungry, I'm considering it again. I rang up my local store today and it would cost £88 for the upgrade.

Is anyone else considering an upgrade?
Click to expand...

Don't think there will be a big performance boost when upgrading from 4GB to 8GB. Maybe if you are doing movie editing etc could be handy.
 
MasterHowl said:
I've had my MBP for just under two years now, and considered upgrading my 4GB to 8GB a few times... but never really been able to justify it. 4GB has been perfect so far.

But since Lion's going to be a little more RAM hungry, I'm considering it again. I rang up my local store today and it would cost £88 for the upgrade.

Is anyone else considering an upgrade?
Click to expand...

Just noticed the price you quoted in your OP. I've ordered it via Crucial - it was about £55 for the 2 x 4 gig sticks.
 
Atarikid said:
Don't think there will be a big performance boost when upgrading from 4GB to 8GB. Maybe if you are doing movie editing etc could be handy.
Click to expand...

I upgraded my 2010 MBP from 4 to 8 and noticed things were significantly faster. Yes, I do use a lot of memory for things like VMWare fusion (often running 2 copies at the same time); so maybe that's why it really helped a lot.

I wish I could upgrade my home machine to 8; but it's older late 2007 and only goes to 4. :(
 
DougieB said:
Just noticed the price you quoted in your OP. I've ordered it via Crucial - it was about £55 for the 2 x 4 gig sticks.
Click to expand...

Could you give me more details on this please? I have a mid-2009 MacBook Pro with two RAM slots (currently occupied by 2x 2GB sticks)

It would be greatly appreciated :)
 
Cinder6 said:
Page in: Data pushed onto virtual memory
Page out: Data pulled in from virtual memory

If you're getting page outs, it means you're running out of memory and using the hard drive as secondary memory. Ideally, it should be 0, which means you're never running out.

(More important is page outs per second. If you're constantly paging out, then you really need more memory.)
Click to expand...

best damn explanation ever. I've always wondered and always got a fluffed up answer. thanks!

I guess my boost to 8GB RAM was a bit unnecessary but then again I plan to run Parallels! Bring it on Lion!
 
I've always half been considering it since I play games (both on and off VMs) and would like the extra leg room. In fact I was just looking around Newegg earlier today, thinking of grabbing one of these to put me at 6gb of RAM. Funny part is it's not really Lion but Safari eating up my RAM that has made me look into this.

Question actually, should I just go for a duel pack to put me at 8gb? Would the difference be worth it despite being low on money?

Mid 2009 17" MacBook Pro, Core 2 Duo 2.66, 4gb RAM, NVidia 9400M (9600M GT).
 
I've upgraded my 13" macbook pro 2011 (running lion gm), from 4gb to 8gb (crucial) and I'm really happy about it now!
I usually multitask a lot, so having safari open, with a song playing on itunes and a pdf in preview, is something pretty normal to me. In this situation I often had pageouts with 4gb. Sometimes things were really slow.
I also use Aperture for raw editing and with 4 gb I could barely open the application and start editing one photo, then the system would start swapping to the hard drive and all I could get were long beachballs. In short: Aperture 3 was not usable at all and I had to switch to Adobe Lightroom.
Since I've upgraded to 8gb, my system is reborn and even Aperture is really fast!
I was also considering getting an ssd, but since I've upgraded my ram, applications have more space for cache, so they are generally a lot faster than before to open and to run. For this reason my system is now good enough that I'm not considering an ssd anymore. Best 60 euros I've ever spent!
=)
 
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