[Closed] MacBook Pro memory question - help please

I take it you meant Gb there instead of Mb ?

Firstly, you mean Gb not Mb.

It'll not be faster if you weren't short of ram before.

It'll use more ram as it caches more files - it uses the ram if it's there to use. It wasn't before but it is now, so it uses more now. This in itself will give some performance benefits but probably not noticeable depending on what you're doing.

Probably* nothing you can tweak. SSDs give the biggest performance boost to most systems than anything else. I'd not have (and haven't had for years now) a machine with just a HDD.

The real question is, what's too slow that you want to be faster?

(FWIW i'm also on a 2011 i7 MBP, 8Gb, SSD + HDD)

To expand on that probably*...

Given disk IO is normally the bottle neck, how full is your system disk? The more full it is the slower it is. Leaving out the "why" for now, if you want to know just ask...

Thanks folks, and yes GB - don't know why I wrote MB!

Hard disk is 500GB of which about 130GB is used?

I didn't know that about the caching, that's interesting. It is excel that really is sluggish. Run some fairly large models and it really slows up. They aren't uber complex, but i would have though it might be a bit faster. A processor issue (2.3 MHz i5) ?

Welcome any thoughts.

Well if you're not maxing out RAM running your excel then it's not a RAM thing, it's either CPU bound or IO bound (if loading a lot of data).

Have a look at activity monitor when it's running, see what's maxed out.

Could you improve your models to run faster? You might think something's not complex but it actually has a great deal of computational complexity. Often the "simplest" way to do something isn't anywhere near the most efficient. But I'm not going to get into that here...

Just ordered 16GB for mine because it's not having fun running Adobe CS. I did delete a lot of stuff in the hard drive to help things, but it's scary how fast that space is replaced...

Not expecting things to run faster, just hoping for fewer spinning wheels of doom when running Indesign and Photoshop together.

FWIW I'm on a 2011 Macbook Pro with 2.7 GHz i7 and 500GB hard drive.

IA - cheers. That's a good point. Unfortunately they are the client's models not mine.

More memory only makes a difference if that was the bottle neck. In terms of handling 10s of Gb of photos, I found swapping out the HD for the fastest SSD I could buy made a huge difference to the speed photo apps now run at.

Edit I bought the Samsung 500 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD, based on this review:

If I was upgrading a notebook computer or buying the primary drive for a desktop, I would get the 250 GB Samsung 840 EVO SSD for about $190, or the 500 GB version if I could afford to spend $370. Not only does it offer the same great value as its predecessor (our previous pick), it’s faster in many cases, thanks to some clever engineering tricks that we’ll cover in detail later, but for now, suffice it to say it costs the same as the last generation SSD from Samsung, but it can be in some cases up to 2x as fast in writes.

It’s faster than any other drive in its price range, and faster than a lot of more expensive drives, too. Virtually every SSD reviewer recommends it as a mainstream pick, even the ones who are extremely enthusiast-focused.

http://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-ssds/

Not expecting things to run faster, just hoping for fewer spinning wheels of doom when running Indesign and Photoshop together.

FWIW I'm on a 2011 Macbook Pro with 2.7 GHz i7 and 500GB hard drive.

you do know about allocating memory in the photoshop prefs don't you?
a thunderbolt/sata connected scratch disk would make a massive difference as would SSD.

you do know about allocating memory in the photoshop prefs don't you?
a thunderbolt/sata connected scratch disk would make a massive difference as would SSD.

I know a little, but never played with it. I'll have a look.

I have thought about an SSD - does it really make that much of a difference?

I have thought about an SSD - does it really make that much of a difference?

SSD makes the world of difference. Also people don't forget that upgrading your RAM will also mean the sleep image takes up more room as well unless you disable it and don't use sleep.

SSD makes the world of difference.

i wish I'd known this 12 hours ago. I might have spent that £100+ on RAM differently. 😆

excel?
are running offices for mac or is it bootcamped?

Office for Mac

All sage advice listed above, but something else to ask. Have you done plenty of routine maintenance to the machine, using something like Ccleaner (or just doing it manually yourself)? And have the disk permissions been verified and repaired recently?

Found upgrading my machine (same model but 2.7ghz i7 processor) with 8GB of RAM helped a lot, but then that's cos I usually have several applications running at the same time and my issue was memory rather than processor or HD related. That said, have since started to really notice the HDD slowing the machine down so am looking at getting an SSD in the future.

And have the disk permissions been verified and repaired recently?

Don't forget to regularly oil the machine too. I find snake oil works best 😉

The urge to make ever faster hardware seems to be match only by the desire to author software that slows it down 🙂

May or may not be relevant for you, but I had a problem recently with my MBP running very, very slowly.

I tried deleting all sorts of stuff, but for what I was running it didn't make sense why it was running slow.
I re-installed OS-X and that cured all my problems. The problem was basic system programs were eating up all the RAM which was cured by the re-install.

I've got a 2011 Mac book Pro. Replaced the 4MB ram with 8Mb (1333Mhz from Crucial). Running OS Mavericks.

I've got the same model of Macbook - processor and 4GB memory. Running like a dog after the update to Mavericks and I'm struggling to work out why. An older iMac, with slower processor, seems to run better.

I re-installed OS-X and that cured all my problems.

Considering this but not sure how to go about it on a mac now. I *really* don't want to have to reinstall all the apps (Office etc). What's the process?

Is it:
1) full back up to time machine
2) format partition
3) install OSx (from where? it was a download?)
4) restore from Time machine

Will that bring everything back as now?

Excel on Mac is just crap.

I bought 16Gb RAM for my 2011 MBP. Mostly because I find it hilarious that my computer has [Dr Evil voice] sixteen GIGA bytes of RAM. My first PC had 16mb. Having said that, 8gb would have been absolutely fine - on the odd occasion I've checked memory usage it's never gone above 8gb. Essentially now I never close programs so at any given time I'll have Chrome (x10 tabs), mail, word, excel, photoshop, iTunes, Spotify, VLC, endnote etc etc open and it never seems to bog down. Which is nice.

The side effect of having that much RAM is that the hibernate mode needs to write all that memory to your HDD. Which isn't a great idea on an SSD with a finite number of writes. I've disabled that feature, so when the battery goes flat i need a full reboot. No matter, though, since it only takes 16 seconds or something daft with my SSD.

The SSD was the best upgrade though - total game-changer. Can't recommend it highly enough.

bump?

What's the reinstall process when you've not got the OS discs? Always had disks to do it before.

You can create a bootable USB stick, amongst other ways. Google will sort you out.

Not read it, but first hit for "usb mavericks install"

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2013/10/how-to-make-your-own-bootable-os-x-10-9-mavericks-usb-install-drive/