I’ve got a Macbook Pro that I’ve had from new but it is starting to seem a bit slow when using some software. At the moment it has 8gb RAM and the standard HDD. I know I could go up to 16gb RAM and get an SSD but how much more speed will these actually give me in the real world?

Is there anything else worth looking into to help too? Updating the OS to El Capitan (currently on Lion)? Clean install?

Any hints or tips appreciated

In the same boat as you. Updated to El Capitan and it’s now even slower 🙁 so I too would beer interested in any advice.

I would be filling it full of RAM first and doing an OS update to see how it goes. Lion is no longer being actively supported and has one or two security holes that won’t be patched. If the update and RAM make a difference that you are happy with then I would hold off on the SSD update until it feels slow again.

More RAM and an SSD definitely. I’m still using a 2009 MacBook Pro and it is fine on El Cap. The next version of OS X seems a bit more fundamental so I’ll probably stop there.

SSD will make the biggest difference. Fitted one to my 2008 iMac when the drive started to die and it still flies along for an 8yr old machine.

An SSD is a significant upgrade, you really have to see how much faster it is in real life to realise that you should have done it years ago. I have a 2009 MBP and did the upgrade a couple of years ago and it makes everything else feel piddly slow.
For example, you can power up and be at your login screen in about 8-10 seconds. Applications launch with just a few bounces and shut down just as fast. Battery life is improved. I hardly ever completely shut down, I just close the lid, and resuming where I was takes about 2-3 seconds.

Do it, it’ll be the best upgrade you’ve ever done.

Which software in particular is slow?

Did just that to my early 11 MBP.

16 g ram and 1Tb SSD.

Utterly transformed the speed. Feels quicker than new.

All purchased from Crucial. Seating the RAM was quite tricky as at first it wouldn’t boot but a quick removal/reinstall sorted it.

Saves ££££ on a new one!!

Edit: and to echo above, battery life much improved.

Different thing, but my 2009 iMac was grinding to a halt and increasing RAM from 4 to 12 Gb made the thing fly again. So ? Try that first, then the SSD?

SSD first, I very much doubt after that you’ll decide to add RAM. Upgrade to latest OS.

I upgraded the wife’s 2012 MBP from 4gb RAM to 10 (from 2+2 to 2+8) and it made virtually no difference. I put in an ssd and it now boots in 25 seconds instead of 3 minutes and loads apps immediately.

If you look at memory pressure in Activity Monitor you’ll see an 8gb ram machine is not under any pressue. If youndownload/run BlackMagicSpeedTest you’ll see avh hdd running at 50mps read/write whereas an ssd will be 250 or 500 depending upon machine age. 5-10 times faster !! An SSD will definitely make the machine much faster than when it was new.

There was another thread recently (jools started it) if you search it. I have now done 5 SSD installs in various mac’s happy to help via email or a phone call. Put an SSD in it males a massive difference.

I upgraded by 2010 MBP with more RAM and a 500Gb SSD, made a huge difference, probably bought it another 5 years of life…

OP here is the other thread, we have had a few over the years

Liinky

Nice one, cheers all. Definitely looks to be worth some hardware investment then.

It’s mainly photo stuff that is running slowly as they’re probably the most intensive things I do but even things like itunes and excel have been taking a good while.

Don’t forget to run the TRIMFORCE command from the terminal after the SSD is booted the first time. And wait for the reboot, it can take a while.

^^^ I believe that’s a bit of a myth, no longer needed. I have certainly never done that and Sata3 machines run at 500mps read/write

OP download BlackMagicSpeedTest and run it, I’ll wager your hdd is struggling along at about 35-40. Its just old now. A 500gb ssd costs about £120 (Samsung Evo you don’t need a Pro). 250gb are aboit £75. Assuming you have a time machine backup and a usb stick of 4gb min you don’t need anything else except small phillips screw driver and a torx 10 screw driver/key. A USB caddy (£15) is useful if you want to reuse the old disc as an external drive.

For RAM a single 8gb chip is £35 which would give you 4+8 = 12 or a 2×8 16gb kit is £65. As I said personally I don’t think you need the ram (unless you are doing video editing) but it’s easy to do, takes less than 5 mins and you do it any time.

I happily use a 2012 Retina MacBook Pro for development. 8GB is plenty, even with various virtual machines running. The SSD makes a big difference. Get one.

El Capitan was a good performance boost but you benefit most when it is a clean install. Read up how to create a bootable install USB stick. I do that for every upgrade.

Rachel

Depending on what you use it for, it might be worth trying a lightweight flavour of Linux on it before spending money. It made my OH’s white plastic Mac book usable again for a couple of years until our toddler threw a glass of water over it. I put that hdd into a donated 2006ish Pro which now runs great but unfortunately I lost all the wee screws so it’s held together with sellotape…