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MacBook Pro 2011 Suddenly Died

Mac03ForLife

Mac03ForLife

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2017
158
25
Washington, DC
So I've been using my late 2011 macbook pro for gaming, productivity, and content creation up until about 2 months ago when i bootcamped it and installed windows 10 to the secondary partition. I've been SOLELY using the bootcamp partition for about 2 months, and just last night I started to notice it slow ..... downnn... like i COULD NOT open applications, Minecraft (a relatively lightweight game) REFUSED to work properly, SWTOR refused to launch/patch, and applications took 10-20 MINUTES to launch. Now, keep in mind that i have around 90-110 gb left on the partition, so it probably isnt to do with available HDD space.
I checked task manager, and it only reported the 3 applications i had open at the time as being active (Firefox, Discord, StreamLabs OBS).

Can someone help me?
I have a new 7200RPM HDD that my friend gave me that I plan to swap out with the 500GB one after a fresh install of Mac OSX 10.11.6 El Capitan. Will this help the scenario?
 
Audit13

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,862
1,834
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Get as much and pay as little as possible is what I suggest.

Replacing one of the 2 GB sticks with a 4 GB stick should help and be fairly inexpensive. You might consider going for an 8 GB stick if you can find one at a good price.
 
Lennyvalentin

Lennyvalentin

macrumors 65816
Apr 25, 2011
1,431
794
Audit13 said:
You might consider going for an 8 GB stick if you can find one at a good price.
Click to expand...
Don't install a single stick, you'll lose half your memory performance. The CPU has two memory channels, and with a DIMM installed in only one of them you'll get a noticeable performance deficit, especially if you're using internal graphics. (Graphics is MUCH more memory performance intensive than most CPU workloads, due to the way on-chip CPU caches work.)

Always - if at all possible - install your memory modules in identical pairs of equal size. So same manufacturer, model, capacity. DIMMs are typically sold in pairs anyway so not a big issue. Also is a good idea not to mix and match pairs of different makes/models/speed grades (going down to the revision of the DIMM itself) - it might work, but it also might not, because of Murphy.

Also, and with PCs it's not a genuine problem (they don't care if you have just 1 DIMM installed, it'll just run a tad slower), but the Mac might consider that improper since the machine is designed to come with 2 sticks, and might refuse to boot. I would speculate and say that is probably unlikely, since supporting just 1 DIMM installed is useful for servicing/troubleshooting, but you never really know with Apple. They make their own rules. So it's something worth keeping in mind. *shrug*
 
Audit13

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,862
1,834
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The performance drop from running the memory in dual channel is not noticeable by many people. 10 GB of ram running in single channel is better than 4 GB in dual channel in my opinion because there will be limited or zero use of virtual memory. Also, this laptop is 7 years old.
 
Mac03ForLife

Mac03ForLife

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2017
158
25
Washington, DC
Audit13 said:
The performance drop from running the memory in dual channel is not noticeable by many people. 10 GB of ram running in single channel is better than 4 GB in dual channel in my opinion because there will be limited or zero use of virtual memory. Also, this laptop is 7 years old.
Click to expand...
I see what you're saying.. i have a friend whos going to give me a 4GB stick to accompany the 2GB stick that will be swapped out. Im using windows basically ONLY on it anyways so it shouldnt make a huge difference
 
R

Rockadile

macrumors 6502a
Jun 11, 2012
500
210
Seems like hard drive entering its retirement.
Replace with SSD and never look back again :)
 
Mac03ForLife

Mac03ForLife

macrumors regular
Original poster
Sep 19, 2017
158
25
Washington, DC
Does anyone suspect that because I was running multiple heavy programs in the past (OBS, Inventor, Paladins, SWTOR, Osu!, Firefox) that due to the lack of thermal throttling under windows, that something in the hardware happened? i dont exactly know what would happen, but maybe that's the cause.
 
Audit13

Audit13

macrumors 604
Apr 19, 2017
6,862
1,834
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The cpu will throttle if the temperature gets to high but should ramp up as temperatures drop. Unless there is something that has caused the cpu to be throttle at all times, I don't think the lag would be due to hardware.
 
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