Just upgrade RAM on Mac Unibody

Hi,

I have just upgrade RAM from 2 to 4GB for Macbook Unibody (2.0 / 466)
just wondering for any new determination I could see
I've been manage photos with Lightroom, but haven't see any difference (or, I wasn't notice that) *LOL*

Maybe from all of your review can provide more information to maximize fo 4GB RAM ;-)

Cheers,

 

the ram will help it run faster but it won't make anythign look better

 

Well, the extra RAM will help Photoshop and the computer run faster when you have many images open, it will also speed up the processing time when applying heavy filter effects.

Make sure you adjust Photoshop/Lightroom to use the maximum amount of available RAM in the programs preferences.

 

You can run VMware faster and have both desktops at 2gb instead of 1gb each. I dont prefer VMware though, unless youre running apps that dont require the gpu.

Fps should also increase slightly in games. but im not sure if games really use more than 2gb.

 

I'm about to do the same upgrade on my mb unibody.... and was planning on posting benchmarks and impressions this weekend.
But I don't expect to see any difference until I have pushed the system to its max, ie running VMware, and or photoshop with lots of images open.
This is my main reason for getting the extra ram as I was running out of it during those two specific tasks.
a

 

It doesn't go any faster, it just doesn't' lag when you are running memory eating applications.

 

Ok so I did the upgrade and so far everything is going well. Here are my thoughts on the whole experiance
a


Background:
The price of DDR3 memory has dropped a lot over the past few months... and its now at a point that its not a huge outlay of $$$ for a 4 Gb kit. I paid 45€ + shipping for my generic brand kit from Macway. The instal was fairly straight forward. Remove the battery. Undo the 8 screws on the bottom panel and lift it off to get access to the memory slots.
Replace the memory and put everything back. It took about 5 min once I had found a small enough philipshead screw driver. But the real question is was the upgrade worth it ????

Test Results:
I ran some basic benchmarks (Xbench) before and after the upgrade and as you can see below there is really no obvious difference in general performance. And in day to day tasks (email, web) I haven't noticed any change at all.
But when I fired up VMare, things suddenly didn’t grind to a halt... I was able to switch between OSx and Windows with easy. Expose worked as smoothly as it should.
The other area that saw huge improvements was Photoshop. Before opening up a lot of large images at once used to slow it down to a crawl, now its the opposite and things again run silky smooth.

Conclusion:
If you are constantly pushing your Macbook (or any PC) to its memory limits, then increasing the RAM is always a great idea. If not then wait until prices reach an absolute low... eg DDR2 is the cheapest it will ever be right now so upgrade away on that front.

 

VMware is decent for light 3D rendering, even light gaming. I've loaded up a few games and they actually ran MUCh better than expected for a virtual machine. Where I'd expect like 5 fps, I could pull 20-30... even in higher graphic (older) games like Oblivion. At lower, but not quite minimum, settings was pulling like 15 FPS.. which is awesome off a emulated video card running in a virtualized OS in a window on OSX. i figure in another 10 years, it wont matter if its in a virtual machine or not. Especially if nVidia and AMD/ATI would get off their butts and add virtualization tech at a hardware levels in all their GPUs, like Intel and AMD/ATI has in their CPUs.

 

Wow, i didn't know that the macbook had only one fan. Your must be very silent!!

 

I remember the MB of a friend, even him couldn't tell if it was on or off when the screen was off

 

If you don't notice the performance increase, it's probably because you didn't need the extra 2GB anyways. You'll be surprised how efficient today's memory managers are.

 

Yeap she is very nice and quiet.

The new memory seems to be working great too... I was worried that 3rd party ram might cause some problems as there were lots of reported issues late last year.
But thankfully nothing so far.
a

 

i bought a 4gb kit with micron chips and every thing works flawlessly.

 

I think apple got the idea that people were going to be using alot of 3rd party rams so instead of having to deal with all the people coming in with "broken computers" due to ram they made it more 3rd party friendly.

 

because it doenst have a 9600m.

 

Interesting chart.
So should I upgrade the ram? (it barely make a difference)
How about game performance?

 

^^^
It all depends on what your doing. If your NOT doing RAM intensive tasks, such as large image manipulation, running a virtual machine or heavy multi-tasking, then no there isn't a great deal or reason to upgrade.
Its really no surprise that there is no difference in those benchmarks either... the ram speed is the same and the tests are not dependent on RAM as 2Gb was already in excess thus not rate limiting.
I re-ran the Xbench test with VMware and PS running so that the amount of free ram was drastically reduced. As you can see, there is a small decrease across the board in performance.
So again you'll only see the benifit of the extra 2gb of RAM if you using up alot of memory in the first place.
a

ps I'm not a gamer so sorry I can't help you out there, but at a guess the extra ram isn't going to hurt, but its not going to give 20fps extra either.

 

When it comes to RAM, you have to look at it as increasing "headroom" versus increasing performance. In other words, stuff won't work better, but you can do more stuff before your performance degrades.

Plus, with current RAM prices, it's a relatively cheap upgrade that you can do yourself. At the least, check for various sales/deals and scoop up a set when it's marked down.

 

You said that you had bought a 4gb kit, how about trying it again? I had sent you a link where i had bought my ram. May be you could buy yours there.