Is my MacBook pro beyond redemption?

[estabya]

Your experience may vary, but I too put an SSD in this iMac and formed a Fusion Drive which is topping out SATA 3 speeds; great. However I do not regard that event as high as when I increased the RAM. For one thing, the OS works with what is known as delayed write so it stores in memory (RAM) info to write to disc at an opportune moment and not disturb present work. This eases pressure on disc usage and decreases importance of disc read/write speed. Another thing is, when an app is open, and when the computer is on and running come to think of it, and the OS is up, everything is going on predominantly in RAM. All your graphic display is functioning in RAM, GPU RAM. The OS kernel, drivers etc. are all in RAM so essential operation is conducted in RAM. ROM (disc) is used basically to get data to write into RAM, when you open an app, for instance, and to save information permanently, for instance saving a file you have edited. So if you have a lot of RAM, the OS and apps have more space to work. More RAM also eliminates the need for paging, where pages of data are written out of RAM to ROM to free up space for other data. This little exposure of RAM-ROM activity I present to you do try to solidify my argument that RAM is more important than ROM (disc). Even gaming takes place primarily in RAM; even if you had the fastest SSD in the world your game would not run any quicker if you didn't have enough RAM (including GPU RAM of course) to handle it.

Yes, everything that is happening on your computer is stored in RAM. That is the only way the CPU can access it. Increasing RAM may increase performance more than installing an SSD in some use cases.

However, for most people going from an HDD to an SSD will provide a more perceivable increase in speed for many reasons. (I would like to point out that creating a fusion drive with like you did is not a fair comparison to a standalone SSD).

First, there is no seek time while waiting for the drive to spin up and the head to move to the right place on the drive. This makes random reads and writes orders of magnitude faster than on an HDD. Also, the actual read and write speeds are far superior; most modern SSDs saturate the 6Gbps bandwidth of SATA3, vs a hard drive that might yield 1Gbps. This results in faster sequential reads and writes, like when opening a large app or booting the system.

This increase in speed and decrease in latency also means the CPU uses less time waiting on and actually performing delayed writes. It also means that if memory pressure is high enough to require paging to the disc, those pages files will read and write significantly faster.

Most people don’t saturate their computer’s amount of RAM in everyday use, so recommending that upgrade is dependent on specific use cases. However, virtually EVERY SINGLE user will experience a vast speed improvement when upgrading from a HDD (especially a 5400rpm one) to an SSD.

 

[vkd]

Yes, everything that is happening on your computer is stored in RAM. That is the only way the CPU can access it. Increasing RAM may increase performance more than installing an SSD in some use cases.

However, for most people going from an HDD to an SSD will provide a more perceivable increase in speed for many reasons. (I would like to point out that creating a fusion drive with like you did is not a fair comparison to a standalone SSD).

First, there is no seek time while waiting for the drive to spin up and the head to move to the right place on the drive. This makes random reads and writes orders of magnitude faster than on an HDD. Also, the actual read and write speeds are far superior; most modern SSDs saturate the 6Gbps bandwidth of SATA3, vs a hard drive that might yield 1Gbps. This results in faster sequential reads and writes, like when opening a large app or booting the system.

This increase in speed and decrease in latency also means the CPU uses less time waiting on and actually performing delayed writes. It also means that if memory pressure is high enough to require paging to the disc, those pages files will read and write significantly faster.

Most people don’t saturate their computer’s amount of RAM in everyday use, so recommending that upgrade is dependent on specific use cases. However, virtually EVERY SINGLE user will experience a vast speed improvement when upgrading from a HDD (especially a 5400rpm one) to an SSD.

Yes, but my point is that RAM use is constant whilst ROM use is intermittent. Having sufficient RAM to hold all your OS and program data at all times and avoiding paging is a constant and noticeable benefit to the user. Faster ROM access is intermittent and only noticeable when booting the computer and opening apps for the first time. Once the computer is up and running and apps are open, disc speed is negligible. On the other hand, if insufficient RAM is provided, the whole use of the computer, from booting onwards, will be crippled.

 

[kschendel]

... Faster ROM access is intermittent and only noticeable when booting the computer and opening apps for the first time.

This is incorrect in general. Most apps need to refer to various files on the filesystem and those accesses can be a significant part of processing time. SSD can generally improve this by eliminating seek latency and improving transfer rates. In general, overall response time is limited by the slowest element, and if there are any file accesses involved, that slowest element will likely be file access time.

I am a fan of having sufficient RAM, but one has to look at the big picture correctly.

 

[hallux]

I upgraded the RAM in my 2012 within a month of buying it. Yes, that made a difference at that point. As newer versions of macOS came out, they became more desirous of an SSD for full performance. When I installed my SSD (already having 16 GB of memory) it was like an entirely new computer.