Yosemite on 15" Retina Macbook 2012 with 8gb RAM

[Valkyre]

Hello folks.

I am very satisfied with how Mavericks runs on my 15" 2012 Retina macbook with 8gb ram. But at the same time I want the extra stuff Yosemite offers.

I am hesitant to upgrade because my machine only has 8gb of ram and I assume that it will page much more frequently than it currently does with Mavericks.

So my question is simple. Should I go ahead and upgrade to Yosemite, or is 8gb ram not enough?

My usage will be moderate. Not extreme, like running parallels or such, but it wont be just web browsing and word documents either. I will use photo and video editing programs and I dont want to see any beachballs...

Will appreciate any feedback on this.

 

[The Economist]

Hello folks.

I am very satisfied with how Mavericks runs on my 15" 2012 Retina macbook with 8gb ram. But at the same time I want the extra stuff Yosemite offers.

I am hesitant to upgrade because my machine only has 8gb of ram and I assume that it will page much more frequently than it currently does with Mavericks.

So my question is simple. Should I go ahead and upgrade to Yosemite, or is 8gb ram not enough?

My usage will be moderate. Not extreme, like running parallels or such, but it wont be just web browsing and word documents either. I will use photo and video editing programs and I dont want to see any beachballs...

Will appreciate any feedback on this.

Why wouldn't 8 GB be enough?

 

[leman]

I am hesitant to upgrade because my machine only has 8gb of ram and I assume that it will page much more frequently than it currently does with Mavericks.

I am confused. Why would you assume that? I have Yosemite running here on multiple machines, from 4GB to 32Gb configurations and I don't see any noticeable increase in RAM utilisation. It is on par or even below Mavericks.

Of course, if you upgrade, you might get some performance issues, but that is the risk associated with any kind of complex OS upgrade.

 

[Valkyre]

I am confused. Why would you assume that? I have Yosemite running here on multiple machines, from 4GB to 32Gb configurations and I don't see any noticeable increase in RAM utilisation. It is on par or even below Mavericks.

Of course, if you upgrade, you might get some performance issues, but that is the risk associated with any kind of complex OS upgrade.

Sorry, I was under the impression from early seeds of Yosemite, that RAM usage is more demanding due to the new features such as window transparency effects etc.

I thought that it required more RAM resources than Mavericks and I also thought that due to the transparency effects, my machine would lag (due to the retina resolution and all).

Has the final build of Yosemite eliminated such issues? By the looks of what you say, its a no brainer to upgrade, but I just want to be sure.

 

[LV426]

I am very satisfied with how Mavericks runs on my 15" 2012 Retina macbook with 8gb ram. But at the same time I want the extra stuff Yosemite offers.

I have the same setup, and Yosemite runs like a dream. Absolutely no performance issues for me. Glad I did the upgrade.

It shares largely the same memory management scheme that was introduced with Mavericks, so its use of your 8GB is pretty efficient. Just don't fall into the trap of having a heart attack when it reports that nearly all your RAM is being used – that's the way things should be.

 

[Valkyre]

I have the same setup, and Yosemite runs like a dream. Absolutely no performance issues for me. Glad I did the upgrade.

It shares largely the same memory management scheme that was introduced with Mavericks, so its use of your 8GB is pretty efficient. Just don't fall into the trap of having a heart attack when it reports that nearly all your RAM is being used – that's the way things should be.

So no beachballs or UI Lag at all?

If so then this weekend is going to be time to upgrade.

 

[leman]

Sorry, I was under the impression from early seeds of Yosemite, that RAM usage is more demanding due to the new features such as window transparency effects etc.

Transparency does not require more RAM, it only taxes the GPU (and RAM bandwidth). In fact, OS X has been using compositing window manager since forever, and that has always required every window to be drawn separately to an offscreen buffer in the first place.

Has the final build of Yosemite eliminated such issues? By the looks of what you say, its a no brainer to upgrade, but I just want to be sure.

My machine runs it very well. Your mileage might vary. At any rate, I don't think that judging performance of an OS by its early preview is a good strategy Yosemite has improved tremendously since the first DP.

 

[newellj]

Hello folks.

I am very satisfied with how Mavericks runs on my 15" 2012 Retina macbook with 8gb ram. But at the same time I want the extra stuff Yosemite offers.

I am hesitant to upgrade because my machine only has 8gb of ram and I assume that it will page much more frequently than it currently does with Mavericks.

So my question is simple. Should I go ahead and upgrade to Yosemite, or is 8gb ram not enough?

My usage will be moderate. Not extreme, like running parallels or such, but it wont be just web browsing and word documents either. I will use photo and video editing programs and I dont want to see any beachballs...

Will appreciate any feedback on this.

My rMBP with 8gb of RAM runs Yosemite great - no difference from Mavericks. And although I recently upgraded the RAM in my Mini to 8gb, I ran Yo on it for a while with 4gb of RAM and it was perfectly fine - and there was no difference going to 8gb. Memory pressure on both runs 10-12% consistently. I had initial problems with the Mini but I think it was a corrupted installation. I erased the disk and did a fresh installation using internet recovery (from Apple's servers) and that solved the problems completely.

 

[Valkyre]

Transparency does not require more RAM, it only taxes the GPU (and RAM bandwidth). In fact, OS X has been using compositing window manager since forever, and that has always required every window to be drawn separately to an offscreen buffer in the first place.



My machine runs it very well. Your mileage might vary. At any rate, I don't think that judging performance of an OS by its early preview is a good strategy Yosemite has improved tremendously since the first DP.

Τhanks for your reply. I will do the jump this weekend! Just needed a little push thats all.

 

[LV426]

So no beachballs or UI Lag at all?

if you run OS X long enough, you're always going to encounter a beachball occasionally. I've encountered very very few with Yosemite on my rMBP.

 

[ABC5S]

if you run OS X long enough, you're always going to encounter a beachball occasionally. I've encountered very very few with Yosemite on my rMBP.

Agreed. Even I see an occasional beach ball with my 15 inch MacBook Pro Mid 2014 and 16 GB of ram