Memory upgrade

My 2012 Macbook Pro 13 non-Retina has 8GB RAM and is never starved for RAM. If your mbps feels slow, it is like will not change if you add RAM. Take this little test:

—is the computer slow to boot up?

—are big apps slow to launch?

—once launched, do those apps seem to run at acceptable speed?

three YES answer says your factory mechanical hard drive in the bottleneck, not a paucity of memory. NO amount of extra RAM will make the mech drive cany faster.

Let's do data: I upgraded my 2012 first from 4GB to 8GB RAM, then later changed out the old mech drive for an inexpensive solid-state drive (SSD). Here are the performance changes I observed at each step:

• As shipped with 4GB RAM and mech hard drive: Office and Photoshop Elements took 15-18 seconds to launch
• Doubled RAM from 4GB to 8GB: no change in those launch times;
• Installed solid-state drive: Both apps are fully ready to use in under 4 seconds.

Data is good.

If you really have the non-Retina version (has an optical drive bay), it was the last Macbook Pro that allowed easy access to replace RAM, storage, an the battery. I used this SSD "kit" for my upgrade and it made my Macbook Pro a pleasure to use again:

https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/Y3SSD6E500/

Either OWC or the Crucial MX series (not the odler BX series) SSDs seem to give best performance and service in this application.

IF you have a Retina Macbook Pro , its factory SSD should be fast if healthy.

carnate176 wrote:

Can you upgrade memory in a 2012 2.9 GHz dual i-core-7 Mac book Pro with 8GB total memory?

mid 2012 Non-Retina is 16GB total...

ref: Memory RAM Upgrades for MacBook Pro (2012 - Late 2016)

However the memory in a MacBook Pro 2012 Retina —cannot be upgraded. Only at the time of purchase.

Only the SSD on thiss retina model....https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Memory/OWC/Apple-MacBook-Pro-Retina-Upgrades-2012-2013

I completely agree with @Allan Jones' assessment. Memory is not likely the problem.

Check the Memory tab in Activity Monitor after the laptop has been running a while with your normal workloads. If the memory pressure graph is showing red, then you don't have enough memory. If yellow, you have a borderline amount of memory. If the graph is green, then check the "Compressed" and "Swap" (or "Swap Out") values....if they are showing GBs even when the memory graph is green, then you may not have enough memory for the way you are using the laptop.

If memory is a problem, then I suspect the rest of the laptop's resources are probably not up to the task any more such as the CPU.

An SSD upgrade is a simple & affordable upgrade option especially since you can re-purpose the SSD as an external SSD once you retire the laptop.