[Shawn_230]

I upgraded my 512 megs of RAM on my 2.0GHz MBP to 2 gigs a while ago but I haven't noticed much of an increase in the performance.

Any ideas? Can I do some kind of test to make sure the modules are fine or something? There's little, if any, increase in performance in things like boot times, etc.

[slpdLoad]

Welcome to the forums. You can go to the apple menu and select About This Mac. If it says it has 2 gigs installed and the computer isn't crashing, the memory is probably fine.

What kind of things are you using the computer for? You will only notice signifigant increases in performance if you use memory-intensive applications or if you run lots of programs simultaneously. Boot times are more dependent on the hard drive, I believe, and can only be increased so much.

[Shawn_230]

I'm not new to the forums... I was a member but then my account got disabled and when I look at my old posts, it shows some gibberish username.

Anyway, I run regular old applications. For one, I don't notice any increase in the performance of Rosetta applications. Even my Dashboard, when I open it for the first time after rebooting, takes a long while to load up all (about 10) widgets.

[slpdLoad]

I think the issue is that you're not using all of the RAM. The OS can live quite happily within 512, especially just after restarting. Adding lots of extra room for the OS to use won't increase performance if you're barely using what you already had. The dashboard, although it does use RAM, could be having to access information off of the drive, and possibly the internet, making it relatively slow.

From what I understand, Rosetta performance will be better with more RAM. However, that's because after running for a while, it caches the information it needs in RAM so that as you run it more and more the performance should be a bit better. If you're restarting a lot, you're probably not getting this benefit. Also, is your computer slow as is? A 2 ghz MBP is a very fast machine. You can only speed things up so much.
Cheers

[Tomchu]

Load times of any sort the first time around will always be limited by the seek time and transfer rate of your hard drive, and adding more RAM will not improve that. However, with enough RAM (and 2 GB is a lot) OS X will begin caching the files and applications you access most, so that the next time you start them, you won't need to touch the hard drive.

The best way to get the most out of your RAM is to simply not shut down. Put the MBP to sleep whenever you're not using, and just avoid shutting down. You'll eventually build up a very nice disk cache, and things will be speedy. :-)

[fuzzball963]

So since I'm getting my Macbook Pro soon if I have say Divx and Firefox and several other apps loaded and then just close the lid without rebooting Mac OSX will keep those apps in RAM? That's one thing that I'm going to have to get used to. On the Windows side it's all about keeping as much RAM free as possible. I'm going to like being able to have my most frequently used apps almost instantly accessible .

[Tomchu]

Well, when you close the lid, the computer goes to sleep -- meaning it turns off everything but the RAM. When you open it again, things will be exactly as you left them. The disk cache doesn't have anything to do with this, but it is indeed awesome. :-P

However, disk caches work even when you close the application. Let's say you load up iPhoto, and it takes 4-5 seconds to load. You quit it, and then the next time you load it, it'll take 1-2 seconds because it's already been cached.

Basic rule of thumb: Don't shut down your Mac unless you really need to.

[fuzzball963]

When you say quit you mean click the button right not Force Quit? I was under the impression that Force quit unloads it from memory whereas just clickin the button keeps it in memory

[Tomchu]

When you click the red button in most OS X apps, you don't actually close the app -- just the document. Selecting Quit in the menu, or doing Apple+Q will quit the application, but it usually remains disk cached.

A "force quit" is a force killing of that application. Think of the regular quit command as asking the application to start its quit procedures, whereas force quit doesn't ask the application, the operating system just forcefully ends it.

[Shawn_230]

Lots of good information, thanks everyone.

One thing though... I read somewhere on here about people with new RAM doing tests with them. I remember reading that the tests took long so you'd have to leave it on overnight. Anyone know what that is all about?

[flabasha]

I believe those people are referring to "memtest", a freeware terminal app that exhaustively checks the RAM. I was thinking of running this myself, as my laptop seems slower, but there's some dispute over whether RAM can go "kind of" bad...

Some say, as another poster here said, that unless your computer is crashing, the RAM is fine. Others say errors in the RAM can slow it down, without crashing the OS.

Anyone else care to weigh in on this?

[Tomchu]

Errors in RAM will most likely cause a crash, but that's not necessarily guaranteed. They will not, however, make things slower.

People who claim that RAM goes bad over time, or that RAM going bad over time will make the machine feel increasingly more sluggish, have a lot to learn about computer architecture, and how RAM works in general. I'm not referring to you, flabasha -- just the crowd that has lead you to become misinformed.

[slpdLoad]

Take a look at this apple doc to see how to run the apple hardware test and check your RAM.