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MBP: 2 GB vs. 4 GB RAM?
- Thread starter jackc
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I'm curious about this too. When I get my MBP I think I'll just see how it goes first-- I've never used more than 1 GB in a computer, I could find 2 GB to be perfectly satisfactory.
with a two gig model @ the 
store, you can only open all of ilife,PP,Word, the internet and photoshop,before the computer freezes. With a 4 gig model, you can do all this at a steady pace i believe. The real bottle neck I noticed while watching the activity monitor during my test was the drive speed. A 7200 rpm hard drive would help lots for app start up times.
store, you can only open all of ilife,PP,Word, the internet and photoshop,before the computer freezes. With a 4 gig model, you can do all this at a steady pace i believe. The real bottle neck I noticed while watching the activity monitor during my test was the drive speed. A 7200 rpm hard drive would help lots for app start up times.
with a two gig model @ the
Why would you want that many apps to be open at the same time.
with a two gig model @ the
Office apps are still PPC so I hope once Office 08 drops there'll be less of a hangup.
with a two gig model @ the
What? The computer freezes?!??!?!
Nah - just some beach balls or gets really sluggish while it starting paging to disk. And the faster disk will be noticeable when you do run out of RAM.
For me, having a browser open with iPhoto and iWeb brings my PB to a snails pace.
RAM is only important if you use it all. To give you an idea, I have a 2Gb MBP and I don't even use NEAR all of my 2GB's of RAM while running: Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Firefox, Mail, iChat, iTunes, and Word. Once you begin to use it all you will notice a considerable lag. So you will see the difference once you have LOADS of things open at the same time or are doign something HUGE.
Not that I WANT to use all of them at once, I simply needed to push it to the limit to define it.
Oh yeah, forgot about that. Rosetta is using processor muscle not Ram.
NAh, i doesn't "freeze", But i hangs for like a minute. My partners PB also snails along when I have Safari open and am putting together 24"x36" PS projects. When i Get my MBP I will spring for the 7200 RPM HD, Ram can wait till i "need" it.What? The computer freezes?!??!?!
Nah - just some beach balls or gets really sluggish while it starting paging to disk. And the faster disk will be noticeable when you do run out of RAM.
For me, having a browser open with iPhoto and iWeb brings my PB to a snails pace.
Actually, Rosetta isn't a processor hog, it is a memory hog. Looking at activity monitor running EverQuest Mac on an iMac G5 with 1.5 GBs of memory it uses about 440.1 MBs - 700 MBs of memory and about 70% of the CPU, on my MacBook Santa Rosa with 2 GBs of memory it uses about 700 MBs - 1200 MBs of memory and about 65% of the CPU, so yes, once you take in account that C2D processors are far advanced over G5s, Rosetta takes processor muscle, but it also takes a ******** of memory. EverQuest Mac is not universal but runs great on my MacBook.
Photoshop itself can take advantage of 3 Gb of RAM, it runs its own caching. So depending on the size of your projects, you can get noticeable speed up from >2 Gb RAM even with only Photoshop running.
With RAM being so cheap right now (no guarantee it will continue to fall in price either) there is no reason NOT to get 4GB IMO... I mean, you can get 4GB of quality RAM for like $100 delivered. Seems to be a no brainer to me. Just get 2 of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820141297
*Edit* and it even looks like it uses Micron chips FTW.
*Edit* and it even looks like it uses Micron chips FTW.
It's not often that you'd use all of the above apps at the same time. But you'd definitely notice a difference while emulating Windows and running a couple of OS X apps simultaneously.
I'm a RAM hog, RAM RAM RAM. I use multiple apps at the same time upto, and including, VMWare Fusion so I can really hammer ram usage. 2GB should be fine for your average user, if you are doing video or photography 3-4GB isn't unreasonable anymore. Personally I consider 2GB to be the minimum RAM needed on a "modern" a.k.a. new computer.
The more ram the better, if you don't need it now chances are you will in future just load up now an forget about it.