[solofx7]

How big of a performance jump will I see if I am not doing a lot of intensive stuff on the mac side, but I play games on the Windows XP side?
I am trying to justify the $160 price for the memory if there is a difference in performance.

I have a 2.4ghz MacBook Pro w/2gigs of ram...
I was looking at Crucial ram...
thanks in advance....

[Chongo]

more RAM is always better, less disk paging

[solofx7]

Any idea of the performance increase?

[CollinG3G4]

When i went from 1GB to 3GB, there was not necessarily a performance increase, but rather a new consistent rate of performance. In that, slowdown due to RAM paging in and out from the hard disk was eliminated. Extra RAM is always is worth it.

[Chongo]

I have noticed that programs load faster, as well as files.

[mduell]

I like Crucial, but if you're tight on cash the upgrade can be done for under $100.

Biggest change will be when you have a lot of apps open at the same time, or large files open in your apps. Not much change in games.

[solofx7]

hmm..
I am a huge multitasker.
so this may be worth the upgrade.?
where can I do the upgrade for less than $100?
Any links?
Thanks again everyone for the help...
I love this site and the people. Always so helpful...

[EndlessMac]

Originally Posted by mduell 

Biggest change will be when you have a lot of apps open at the same time, or large files open in your apps.

I agree. I recently upgraded my RAM and noticed the biggest difference is when I have several programs open or when I work on large files in Photoshop. Basically there is less of a lag or no lag when doing those two activities.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by solofx7 

I am a huge multitasker. so this may be worth the upgrade.?
where can I do the upgrade for less than $100? Any links?

Yes, it would be a worthwhile upgrade for you.
2GB module for $40... $87 for two with shipping.

[glideslope]

Originally Posted by EndlessMac 

I agree. I recently upgraded my RAM and noticed the biggest difference is when I have several programs open or when I work on large files in Photoshop. Basically there is less of a lag or no lag when doing those two activities.

Agreed. If your a big multitasker then 4 is the minimum IMO. I tend to work with one app at a time, so 2g in my MP 2.66 is fine for what I do. I rarely have more that 2 images open in PS3 simultaneously. If I had a need to work with more images open I would say 4g would be the minimum. 8 probably being ideal.

I have used Crucial for years. They a #1, IMO

[jogi]

the biggest bottleneck is the hard drive. If you are multitasking and using the hard drive to load / save / process then that will slow you down and extra memory cannot help.

Check your task manager when using all your programs/applications and check for your swap file utilisation. Mine is 0... So i dont need more memory than the 2gb I currently have.... ;-)

[solofx7]

thanks a lot for all of the help.
I have the 7200 rpm drive on my laptop so i see good speed there.

[MacosNerd]

I noticed a large boost in performance when I upgraded to 4gig on my MBP.

I use aperture, photoshop and VMWare's Fusion pretty heavily and I typically have a number of them open at one time. I found that with 4 gig thinks were very "snappy"

[SEkker]

4GB was a noticeable speed bump on my MBP, too - even running just a few apps. Surprising, really.

[CMYKid]

any reason why the sellers are making a distinction between the other upgrades and the 4GB "kits"? I'm assuming its just two 2GB sticks they ship you.

[chipchen]

Originally Posted by CMYKid 

any reason why the sellers are making a distinction between the other upgrades and the 4GB "kits"? I'm assuming its just two 2GB sticks they ship you.

Same reason Costco makes money selling larger packages. Cheaper to package and ship two sticks than one... higher profit margin. Easier to just sell a kit for the manufacturer, easier to just buy a kit for the consumer.

Granted, some kits, like Mac Pro RAM requires identical RAM pairs, but MacBooks and MacBook Pro's don't need this.

[CMYKid]

Require might be stretching it a bit but yeah, and I'm well aware of the economy of scale, especially being a package designer. I guess I just found the term odd, thats all. Kit makes me think of building things.

[mduell]

Even with the Mac Pro you can buy two seperate FB-DIMMs and install them; you don't have to buy a kit.

I've never really understood why they sell kits of two or even four modules; it just adds to the price comparisons I have do so since sometimes they're cheaper and sometimes they're more expensive.

[chipchen]

Fine... the specs "call for" matched pairs. And this will affect the performance of your system if the modules are too different. Of course it can run on non-matched pairs usually, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason for it. You don't need all four or five bolts to keep a wheel on the car either... but sometimes what manufacturers call for have pretty good reasons behind it.

[solofx7]

so everyone thinks that it is worth the $160 ?

[webextech]

I upgraded to 4GB for under $100. Check out the weekly specials from Fry's. I run vmware fusion and after upgrading I've noticed a slight increase in speed plus the computer seems cooler.

[CMYKid]

Originally Posted by solofx7 

so everyone thinks that it is worth the $160 ?

OWC has a 4GB kit for about $104, if youre the namebrand sort you can pay the $160 you mentioned.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by chipchen 

Fine... the specs "call for" matched pairs. And this will affect the performance of your system if the modules are too different. Of course it can run on non-matched pairs usually, but that doesn't mean there isn't a reason for it. You don't need all four or five bolts to keep a wheel on the car either... but sometimes what manufacturers call for have pretty good reasons behind it.

I don't doubt or disagree that you need matched pairs. But you can buy two of the same module instead of a kit if it saves a few bucks.

[VetPsychWars]

I got a matched pair of Mushkin RAM on the advice of my compugeek buddies from newegg for $125. I didn't necessarily see a performance boost, but what I did see was that nothing else slowed down while I was transcoding video.

So in that respect, the 4GB was worth it.

Tom

[JoshuaZ]

Extra RAM never hurts. If you can and think you may need it, do it.

[CMYKid]

....annnnd go figure. The OWC box came this morning and what did I get? Two separately packaged 2GB sticks.

So much for a "kit".

[zaghahzag]

Originally Posted by CMYKid 

....annnnd go figure. The OWC box came this morning and what did I get? Two separately packaged 2GB sticks.

So much for a "kit".

Yeah, well, what did you expect? A kit is two sticks stuck in a box together. It's not like they grow them in some kind of clone chamber.

"Matching" just means that they have the same specs. If you buy two identical sticks separately, you just made yourself a matching kit.

This isn't rocket science.

BTW, how did ram get so fracking cheap? 2 gigs for < 50$ is insane! That means that for 200$ you can have a box with 8 gigs. WOW!

[CMYKid]

Originally Posted by zaghahzag 

Yeah, well, what did you expect? A kit is two sticks stuck in a box together. It's not like they grow them in some kind of clone chamber.

"Matching" just means that they have the same specs. If you buy two identical sticks separately, you just made yourself a matching kit.

This isn't rocket science.

Thanks for defining some basic words that I already completely understood.

I was referring to earlier posts speculating about a "kit" being two sticks in one package. It wasnt.

Yeah, its insanely cheap now. The other day found some old receipts from my verrrrrry first machine, a 604e 9600/300 bought in pieces from LA Computers. I wish I had them in front of me at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I put a gig in that and it was about what you could buy an entire machine for now.

[zaghahzag]

Yeah the prices are completely crazy. I remember buying ram for a ppc 7100 and it costing like 500 bucks for what? 16 megs?

I just ordered some of that ram from newegg to go from 2->3 gigs in my mbp 2.16.

I use a lot of memory heavy things and I think its going to make a noticeable difference.

Sorry for the /snarkiness

[solofx7]

I had Apple support tell me that crappy ram makes a difference.
As a computer guy, I never thought that was or could be the case.

[zaghahzag]

Originally Posted by solofx7 

I had Apple support tell me that crappy ram makes a difference.
As a computer guy, I never thought that was or could be the case.

i think that you can get ram that has the same specs and different latencies. Also sometimes it doesn't cool very well - which in theory could cause a problem..

But the biggest difference is that apple charges you like 6x-8x as much. So to the Apple support guys it makes a huge difference. LOL.

As for one ram vs another.. i'm putting in 2 gigs today. going from 2->3 in my MBP. I'll tell you if the cheap 50$ ram is slows down my machine and makes it unusable. My guess is it will improve my performance (I use a lot of memory intensive apps).

LOL.. And for a 250$ savings, I'm sure I'd not notice the difference between what i got for 45$ and what apple would tell me makes a significant difference.

[zaghahzag]

on another note, most of the benchmarks i've ever seen show almost no difference between cheap ram and expensive ram running at the same speeds. Expensive stuff tends to overclockable which in a mac is impossible anyway.

If there is any measurable difference in ram, we're talking like <3% difference in real world speed. The bigger difference is how much you have. Benchmarks that test just ram can show up the difference.

SyncMAX PC2-5300 PCSTATS Review - Benchmarks: SiSoft Sandra, PCMark05, 3DMark05

Does anyone know how a macbook pro works in terms of difference cas latencies of the ram in there? Does it just auto do the highest that works?

[zaghahzag]

lol, here's a benchmark where the "slower" memory was faster in a mac:

Low Latency Memory on the G5 Quad Core Power Mac

[tinkered]

I have seen bad ram make systems completely unstable. That said, I have had bad ram for numerous manufactures, I don't think there is any way to completely prevent erratum, only reduce it's liekly hood and offer a good retunr polcy if the RAM is bad. This is why I like Crucial for my important computers and expensive RAM. New Egg for less important computers, where I am willing to play roulette, and suffer an unstable system while I am still not sure the issue is the RAM.

[alligator]

I upgraded, and to be honest, I really can't tell that the speed has increased. I still wait for things, so life is not perfect. I'd suggest you do it if you can, if only to eliminate an doubt in your mind. Was it worth it for me? I'm not sure. My computer did not suddenly "get faster."

[EndlessMac]

Originally Posted by alligator 

I upgraded, and to be honest, I really can't tell that the speed has increased.

I've been told that one way to tell if adding more RAM will make a difference is to open Activity Monitor after using your computer for awhile on a typical day and see your ratio of page in/out. If your page out are too close to your page in then you'll most likely see a difference.

Before I upgraded my RAM I had a lot of page outs but after upgrading I have almost 0 or I average a low number.

[tinkered]

Page outs are bad. Anything more than 0 means that at some point you have run out of RAM at some point. I can say with confidence that unless I am really taxing my machine I don't get pageouts and that means no beach balls while an application is waiting for my slow HDD to catch up with a request of something that was pagedout.

[SierraDragon]

so everyone thinks that it is worth the $160 ?

RAM today is cheap, the bargain value of performance enhancers. IMO all laptop users except perhaps those with the lightest of needs should install max RAM.

I happily paid US$400+ for a single third party 2 GB RAM DIMM when my MBP was new a little over one year ago. So yes, I do think that two such DIMMs are worth $160. Do not spend $160 however, OWC (a solid vendor) sells 2x2=4 GB for about $100 today:
Memory Upgrade DIMM, DDR, DDR2, FB-DIMM, SDRAM, FPM, EDO, SIMMs at OtherWorldComputing.com

RAM anomalies are usually an expensive nightmare to track down. The cost of troubleshooting flaky RAM quickly exceeds any small savings achieved by purchasing questionable RAM from less than the best vendors.

RAM quality and RAM vendor competence do matter. Anyone who thinks all RAM is the same is mistaken. The easiest way to see that would have been to look at Apple's or OWC's Mac Pro RAM as compared to some of the lower quality RAM sold without heat sinks by NewEgg and others for Mac Pros. Even a moron could visibly see the difference that bargain shopping achieved. Of course, such RAM might "work" just fine, perhaps not showing the effects of poorly removed heat until months later.

Also, Quality Control and Quality Assurance are complicated, expensive processes. Where do folks suppose that super-discounted RAM comes from? IMO there is no doubt that some of it is simply product that failed QA/QC at some point in the manufacturing/distribution process, or came from batches with less stringent QA/QC.

Individuals make their own decisions about RAM quality vs. price. However, in that process no one should ever think that "All RAM is the same."

Regarding the semantics of the term "kits" I believe that is simply a term vendors use to help communicate to buyers that they are not receiving a single DIMM. E.g. when I bought my 2-GB DIMM such single 2-GB MBP DIMMs were rare but 2x1 GB kits very common. When used, the "kit" term helped me to differentiate.

-Allen Wicks

[mduell]

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

RAM anomalies are usually an expensive nightmare to track down. The cost of troubleshooting flaky RAM quickly exceeds any small savings achieved by purchasing questionable RAM from less than the best vendors.

Also, Quality Control and Quality Assurance are complicated, expensive processes. Where do folks suppose that super-discounted RAM comes from? IMO there is no doubt that some of it is simply product that failed QA/QC at some point in the manufacturing/distribution process, or came from batches with less stringent QA/QC.

Individuals make their own decisions about RAM quality vs. price. However, in that process no one should ever think that "All RAM is the same."

Here's a second to that. At the same time, I have no qualms recommending Transcend's TS256MSQ64V6U module ($83 for a pair shipped at Newegg) due to the numerous positive reviews and lack of negative reviews. I don't see a reason to pay a 25% premium for OWC.

Originally Posted by SierraDragon 

RAM quality and RAM vendor competence do matter. Anyone who thinks all RAM is the same is mistaken. The easiest way to see that would have been to look at Apple's or OWC's Mac Pro RAM as compared to some of the lower quality RAM sold without heat sinks by NewEgg and others for Mac Pros. Even a moron could visibly see the difference that bargain shopping achieved. Of course, such RAM might "work" just fine, perhaps not showing the effects of poorly removed heat until months later.

No one should be advertising memory as Mac Pro compatible if it doesn't have the oversized heatsinks that the Mac Pro requires, and I don't believe any memory from Newegg does so. There may be some confusion with FB-DIMMs with smaller heatsinks for other systems for servers with adequate airflow and tigher module spacing or marketing shots of the modules with the heatsinks removed.

[zaghahzag]

Maybe I've just been lucky, but in my history of using "cheap" ram, I don't think I've ever had a failure. The example of mac pro RAM, that is not sticking to a very stringent requirement being a bad idea is true. That's a bad idea. For normal consumer RAM, there isn't much if any difference unless you're overclocking.

As for it being hard to track down, most ram failures result in the machine crashing. Remove the RAM and if the problem goes away, you have bad RAM. How is that hard to track down? Given the RAM is solid state, it generally degrades extremely slowly. If it's going to break, it's usually when you install it.

As for buying the expensive stuff, look at the writing on the little black chips on the RAM, compare it to the writing on expensive little black chips, and it's the same.

With that said, buy your RAM from a reputable dealer like Newegg or OWC, so if its DOA you can send it back without a hassle.

RE: My ram upgrade - it's definitely helped when i have a lot of stuff going on. Pageouts is now zero.

[mduell]

Originally Posted by zaghahzag 

Given the RAM is solid state, it generally degrades extremely slowly. If it's going to break, it's usually when you install it.

The Intel Pentium (FDIV bug) and AMD Barcelona (TLB bug) are also solid state. They're fine most of the time, but fail miserably in that edge case.

Originally Posted by zaghahzag 

As for buying the expensive stuff, look at the writing on the little black chips on the RAM, compare it to the writing on expensive little black chips, and it's the same.

They all come out of the same factory (there are only about 4 or 5 companies in the DRAM production business), but the level of testing there and after being assembled onto modules certainly varies.

[legacyb4]

So can someone confirm whether a black Macbook 2.0Ghz from January 2007 will see the full 4GB or will it be capped to 3GB?

Would be mighty handy for Fusion...

[zaghahzag]

wiki is your friend:
MacBook - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it looks like it will do 3gb.