Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

mbookb · Jun 28, 2008, 05:05 PM

What you suggest for an incoming college student? I'm thinking of buying my macbook with 2 gigs instead of paying the extra $180 for 4 gigs. My thinking is if I need the RAM, I can upgrade it myself later on if I need it.

Cold Warrior · Jun 28, 2008, 06:27 PM

Agreed. No need to pay Apple's high premium. What will you be using the MacBook for (apart from course work) -- video, photoshop, etc

mduell · Jun 28, 2008, 07:16 PM

From Apple? Never.
From a third party? Depends what you do.

mbookb · Jun 29, 2008, 12:04 AM

nothing way too intensive - ripping CDs, playing DVDs, music, occasionally some video editing, internet, messaging, etc.
I'm going to order with the standard 2 gigs

Simon · Jun 29, 2008, 04:14 AM

Order with 2 GB. Then get a 4 GB kit from Newegg for $75. You could sell off your stock sticks to get the cost down even more, but I'd keep them around in case you ever need to have Apple or an AASP do warranty repair. They like to blame everything on third-party RAM.

idykenano · Jun 29, 2008, 09:21 AM

me = college student.
i actually ordered a refurbed macbook spring 08 with 1gb, and the newegg 4gb for ~$70. you can never know exactly what you'll need, and with the price of ram right now, its a great deal. i find that the ram gets used up when I am doing editing with imovie along with several other things. also, word 2008 is somewhat of a power hog, and when I open my 30 page papers I'm glad for the 4gb.
you are correct, don't pay over 2x retail to get the ram from apple.
to replace the ram simply remove your battery and remove the 3 screws holding the lil silver plate in place.

applesbiggestfan · 04:02 PM

Hey, everybody. I'm 14 and I'm going into my first year of highschool, and I've loved Macs since I first saw one and I'm on the Apple website all the time. I'll put it straight: I'm going into highschool, my laptop is nearly 4 years old (490MBs of RAM, 1.4Ghz processor, and 56Gb HD) and I want a Macbook. I wouldn't do any high-tech stuff but I will: surf the internet, play some games, Microsoft Office, chatting, downloading music, a little bit of photoshop and some really basic video editing. My parents are pretty strict about getting me a new laptop (I don't know why) ------ and I want to know if a 2.4Ghz macbook with 2GB RAM will be enough for what I do... or should I upgrade it to 4GB? By the way, I do not live in the U.S.A. Thanks!

Edit: I'm sure you don't want SPAM being sent to your email address by the bots that crawl these boards. Emailing you also won't give you any constructive advice or help people in the future.

calverson · Aug 5, 2008, 09:49 AM

I have had my 1st Gen MBP with 1.5GB RAM now for... ages (since about 1 week after it was released) and I am totally happy.

I will upgrade when the new line of MB/P's come out (even if that is like 1 year away - and by 'new' I mean new body.)

I am on my MBP 8 hours a day, I am a web-designer and all I do is write straight HTML/CSS in Smultron, use Firefox and Entourage, and a bit of Photoshop/Imageready, and I am fine.

I, however, do not do video editing on it and rarely handle any files bigger than 10MB in Photoshop, so I guess I am well off with what I have.

But you should look at what you are going to do... if your "basic" video editing is going to be in HD (even if it is just some stock iMovie filters)... you might like the extra 2GBs. As always, more is better.

(and idykenano... Use Pages 08... Much better file handling

)

applesbiggestfan · Aug 5, 2008, 10:16 AM

Thanks calverson for the advice. I think I'll stick with the 2GB of RAM instead of paying for the new RAMs... but I have one more question. The Macbooks graphics are shared with the RAM (so technically you have 1.86 GB of RAM and 144MB of Graphics Memory.... which is like having bad graphics and having less than 2GB of RAM: will it slow down the computer significantly?

calverson · Aug 5, 2008, 10:38 AM

Originally Posted by applesbiggestfan

Thanks calverson for the advice. I think I'll stick with the 2GB of RAM instead of paying for the new RAMs... but I have one more question. The Macbooks graphics are shared with the RAM (so technically you have 1.86 GB of RAM and 144MB of Graphics Memory.... which is like having bad graphics and having less than 2GB of RAM: will it slow down the computer significantly?

Yes, it uses the Intel GMA X3100.

However, this is not "dedicated" graphics ram, which means that the computer can adjust the amount that it uses on the fly, and does eat into the overall performance. However, this is not really something that I think would pose a problem... the 2.4GHz Penryn processors are pretty damn fast, and it won't impact on the performance of most routine actions...

However, playing games on a Macbook might not be such a good idea - you will have to find out if the games you want to play will run on the specs of the machine you have.

If you are looking for a machine for (serious) gaming, then I suggest you get a Macbook Pro...

http://www.sampletheweb.com/2008/06/...macbook-srsly/

Simon · 09:26 AM

2 GB is sufficient for basic stuff like browsing the web, reading/writing emails, Office, etc.

But as soon as you want to do all of that together and add in something like PS and video editing, you will need 4 GB.

Just make sure you order extra RAM from somebody else than Apple.

applesbiggestfan · Aug 11, 2008, 02:55 PM

Okay thanks Simon.

I'm quite sure that I will have to do a bit of Photoshop and the occasional iMovie project, maybe some low-level animation (3D or 2D).

Should I get the RAM later if I notice I need it or should I just buy it immediately (not from Apple) and just get started with 4GB or RAM?

Thanks.

Simon · Aug 11, 2008, 04:30 PM

If I were you I'd get it right away. RAM is so cheap right now. You can get two of these for only $72. Of course if you're on a very tight budget you can always wait. But personally I find 4 GB RAM to be a huge advantage.

applesbiggestfan · Aug 11, 2008, 05:14 PM

Great!

Thanks Simon, I think I'll take your advice on the RAM as you seem to have a lot of Macs.

I do not live in the U.S.A. but I can get 4GBs of RAM for less than 100$.

But is there any difference between different RAMs... is there ANY difference between brands? Is there something I should specifically look for in the RAM before I buy some?

Thanks a lot... wow I love this forum.

Jasoco · Aug 11, 2008, 05:40 PM

I have a second generation MacBook from last June. Its max RAM is 3GB (2GB comfortably) since it came out before they upped to 4GB. It came with 1GB and I waited for this long but a few minutes ago I decided to finally order 2GB to replace it. What kind of speed increase am I to expect over the original 1GB?

mduell · Aug 11, 2008, 07:14 PM

Originally Posted by Jasoco

What kind of speed increase am I to expect over the original 1GB?

Depends what you do with it. The change may vary from dramatic to unnoticeable.

Simon · Aug 12, 2008, 02:06 AM

Originally Posted by Jasoco

What kind of speed increase am I to expect over the original 1GB?

Do you multi-task a lot? Do you have lots of page-outs and then see that spinning rainbow cursor (i/o wait)? If so you should see a nice improvement.

For Leopard I can't recommend running on a single GB of RAM. The system performs a lot better if there is more memory due to heavy caching. This is also the reason why so many people see better performance with more RAM even when they didn't see a whole lot of page-outs before.

mugenjyn · 08:42 AM

Great thread. You guys would really impress if someone could answer this detail about RAM:

Does Cas Latency matter as far as speed goes?

CL5 Ram is $75, and CL4 is $105 and they both are compatible for my Macbook (DDR2-5300 667Mhz 200-pin SODIMM). I've read that, in theory, CL4 RAM should be about 20% faster, but also read that it really makes no difference (and something about needing to overclock it). I'd be buying 2x2gb sticks for heavy Photoshop use (50+MB files) so could use the boost if it's there.

Simon · Aug 13, 2008, 09:26 AM

That is a huge price difference. In actual benchmarks using Macs running Leopard testers had trouble noticing a difference between CL5 and CL4 RAM at all. In the cases where they did see the CL4 RAM perform better it was within a few % (which coincidentally also happens to be the noise level of such benchmarks). Go ahead and get 4 GB of CL5 for $150. Put the saved $60 towards something you will actually notice. A big fast HDD for example.

mduell · Aug 13, 2008, 08:35 PM

Originally Posted by mugenjyn

Great thread. You guys would really impress if someone could answer this detail about RAM:

Does Cas Latency matter as far as speed goes?

No. Macs do not will not make use of the more aggressive available timings.

@pplejaxkz · Aug 21, 2008, 03:09 PM

Apple charges up the ass for RAM upgrades. You can get RAM elsewhere like Crucial for a fraction of the cost.