Looking @ upgrading the ram in my macbook to 4gb, bit confused why the [url= http://store.apple.com/uk/memorymodel/ME_13_2_26_MB_W_UNI ]Official Apple[/url] ram costs £160.00 & the [url= http://www.crucial.com/uk/store/mpartspecs.aspx?mtbpoid=18CAEA65A5CA7304 ]Crucial Memory[/url] costs £23.00. A massive difference in price.... is it just a massive profit margin for Apple?
Yes, I've always got my extra memory from Crucial and never had any trouble with it.
Yep. I put 8gb (so 12gb total now) in my iMac for £40 from Crucial. Do it. 🙂
As above. Dead easy to do so long as you've got the really small screw drivers, 10 minute job.
I bought 4GB from Crucial about six months ago and had no issues at all.
Cos Apple know that most people will buy their RAM elsewhere anyway, so for the few uninitiated people who don't, they charge an arm and a leg.
Is 4GB the max your machine will take? If not, then put 8GB in, RAM is so cheap again these days that you might as well max it out now, and future proof your machine somewhat.
The guy in the apple store told me to get my ram upgrade from crucial.
ive been thinking about doing the same. is upgrading from 2gb to 4gbgoing to make a noticable difference for what i use my macbook for? (safari, itunes, a tiny bit of iphoto and watching videos/films)
Is 4GB the max your machine will take? If not, then put 8GB in, RAM is so cheap again these days that you might as well max it out now, and future proof your machine somewhat.
4GB is apparently the maximum otherwise I would max it to the er... max.
4GB is apparently the maximum otherwise I would max it to the er... max.
I know this is going to sound stupid but are you sure the max is 4gig? i only ask because apple commonly change the max ram figure later. Software updates, memory availability etc.
Jammy111 - Member
ive been thinking about doing the same. is upgrading from 2gb to 4gbgoing to make a noticable difference for what i use my macbook for? (safari, itunes, a tiny bit of iphoto and watching videos/films)
It won't make things hugely faster, but it won't go slow as often. i.e. you won't see the spinning beachball of doom every ten mins
I disagree, I upgraded my Pro from 2GB to 4GB and it made a huge difference when loading preview pages of photographs in iPhoto or when searching for image to upload into EBay or similar.
the official max is usually not the real max.
(about to go from 8 to 16gb on my macbook-pro as the price is now £120, it was £1200 a year ago.)
Apple's software is in general, designed to take full advantage of any extra RAM you may have fitted. Apple has been running a 64 bit OS for a long time, and most of the software is 64bit now too, so by all means, go ahead and throw a tonne of RAM at it, it can only speed things up.
How much it speeds things up though is all relative. If you only ever run one app at a time, and are very diligent at closing anything you aren't currently using, 2GB should be fine for what you describe. If you're not, and you like to have lots of things open simultaneously, and you're a bit of a resource beast, get as much RAM as you can!
Apple often underquote how much RAM their machines can take. My new MacBook Pro for instance, they quote the max it can take is 2x4GB sticks for a total of 8GB. Crucial (and many others) will sell me a 2x8GB kit for a total of 16GB which is double the memory! And by the same token, new iMac's with 4 slots will take a massive 32GB in total, not the 16 quoted by Apple...
curvature - Member
I disagree, I upgraded my Pro from 2GB to 4GB and it made a huge difference when loading preview pages of photographs in iPhoto or when searching for image to upload into EBay or similar.
well it's down to personal opinion, but I've got two macbooks right next to me - one with 2 gb one with 4 gb. I'd personally hard pushed to tell a difference - aside from seeing less of the occasional slowdowns as per my post e.g opening a huge number of tabs in chrome, opening a big doc etc is less likely to result in the spinning rainbow (still happens though).
it's totally dependent on what you consider 'intensive use' rendering video, processing large amounts of raw files to tiff or working on large 1-4gb files in CS5 will all benefit from more ram.
the bottleneck in the system (if a newish mac) is the 5200 RPM hd in the laptops and a lack of scratch disk. (spare ram will be used as scratch though)
I need some for my Mac Pro actually. Why the blinking flip is RAM for those models so much more expensive than for just about every other computer going? 😡 Twice as much at least, as MacBook memory.
Still, stupid amount cheaper than it was a couple of years ago.
Wish SSD's would come down in price. 🙁
And what about Blu-Ray writers? Worth buying yet? They were silly money not that long ago.
Mind you, I remember when I paid £200 for a 16x CDRW....