Macbook Air RAM

[Burnsey]

I'm considering buying the base 13 inch MBA to replace my aging MBP but had a question regarding RAM. The base 13 comes with 2GB, which is the same as in my MBP. When my MBP runs out of RAM it accesses the disk, which cripples performance. Wouldn't the flash drive on the Air resolve this? In other words wouldn't it theoretically have 128GB of RAM?

Is it worth the extra $100 to get the 4GB?

 

[stridemat]

Flash based storage will greatly increase the speed, so in effect yes (I guess).

Edit* Of couse actual RAM is much faster.

 

[Fuchal]

I'm considering buying the base 13 inch MBA to replace my aging MBP but had a question regarding RAM. The base 13 comes with 2GB, which is the same as in my MBP. When my MBP runs out of RAM it accesses the disk, which cripples performance. Wouldn't the flash drive on the Air resolve this? In other words wouldn't it theoretically have 128GB of RAM?

Is it worth the extra $100 to get the 4GB?

Yes and no, paging to the disk will certainly be much faster with the flash memory instead of a standard hard disk. But system RAM is much faster than the storage flash memory, up to 10 times, so performance is much better if you can keep it in RAM.

 

[spinnerlys]

No, it won't have 128GB of RAM, as the flash memory is not as fast as RAM, which is multiples faster than the flash memory. Though the paging will be a bit faster in the case of having not much RAM left and the OS copying data from the RAM to the flash memory.

Current DD3-SDRAM with 1066MHz offers up to 8533MB/s, more than 40 times faster than the flash memory.

 

[ProstheticHead]

Virtual Memory will never be as fast as true RAM.

The flash memory should be faster than a standard HD though.