Q: Should I Add Ram?
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Feb 11, 2014 11:47 AMby Michael Black,When you are using it, open Activity Monitor (in your utilities folder) and see what the RAM usage graph looks like
see http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5890
If the Memory Pressure graph is displaying RED, then that indicates that you are running out of RAM resources and actually would be swapping out to disc because of that. In that case, yes, adding RAM would definitely improve performance.
If your Memory Pressure graph is routinely GREEN though, then RAM is not the limitation on your system.
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Feb 11, 2014 12:13 PMby ElfLord10,Thats the strange thing. The memory pressure is always green. Even if I really try to bog it down I can't get it to turn red. But if I look to the left of the memory pressure to the stats that says how much memory is being used it says that I am using 3.05 GB and thats just with safari open on the Apple forums. If I add a load to the computer I can easily peak at 4.00 GB used. When I look at the cpu information it is only using half or a little more while under load. I would think that adding ram would help my situation greatly but maybe not. What do you all think?
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Feb 11, 2014 12:21 PMby Michael Black,To be honest, I would not expect it to help "greatly" at least by my expectation of that use of phrase. It will probably help incrementally, but since your system does not appear to be more then on the cusp of being memory bound, the increased performance is not likely to be spectacular.
To be honest, the single biggest bottleneck on your system is the same as my late-2008 2.53Ghz MBP - that is the outdated Core 2 Duo cpu, its less than stellar onboard cache, and the associated logicboard chipset.
Still, RAM is a pretty cheap upgrade, and it will help some.
P.S. OWC has the 8GB Kit for $105 - http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3
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Feb 11, 2014 12:20 PMby Courcoul,Look at how much swap space is being used on the HDD and the page ins and outs. If the system has to resort to doing lots of I/O due to paging activity, performance will go down the crapper, even if pressure is green.
I have 16GB on mine and can go for months without taking up ANY swap space (page in/out == 0), cause it all fits in the physical RAM. In your case, MacTracker is giving me conflicting info: says the 13" model can take up to 16GB but the 15" and 17" only up to 8GB, which may be wrong.
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Feb 11, 2014 12:28 PMby Michael Black,As long as the graph is green, I've never seen a system with any page outs. I'm not saying it's not possible, just seems odd to me that if you had a pressure graph that was always green, why there would ever be any page outs in the first place since RAM is not exhausted?
Page Ins are meaningless - that just means the system called for a page that was already in RAM anyway - no disc I/O involved at all with a page in.
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Feb 11, 2014 12:35 PMby ElfLord10,Swap used is 0 bytes. I was worried about that a few months ago. I always felt like I should be able to get the system to use some swap but never could even if I seriously loaded it down. I ended up calling Apple and after half an hour talking to the standard tech support they sent me up to a superviser. We talked for another 2 hours trying to get the problem resolved but never could. We reset caches, PRAM, and tons of other stuff. Finally his conclusion was that it was something to do with Mavericks and that it felt that it didn't need to use swap or something. He also said a future update might fix it but it never did.
I'm not sure where the page ins and outs are. Are they listed under the disk tab of activity monitor and labeled reads in/ sec and reads out/ sec?
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Feb 11, 2014 12:39 PMby Michael Black,Mavericks does use RAM compression now too. I suppose if your system is being pushed up to but just not quite beyond your RAM limits, you could see a bit of a performance hit from agressive compresson/decompression of RAM? Adding RAM could help with that, as your system may actually not use much less compression, but may not have to decompress as often as it is now.
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Feb 11, 2014 12:57 PMby ElfLord10,I heard about the RAM compression. It's amazing what apple does to help with older computers. Are the page in and outs listed under the disk tab of activity monitor and labeled reads in/ sec and writes out/ sec? If so then under a little bit of load my highest for reads in was 97 and at another point my highest for writes out was 76 (they bounced around a lot though and were lower most of the time). At idle my in's is 0 and my out's will range from 0 to 10 but it is usually near 0. I haven't tested to see what my in's and out's are under heavy load yet. My IO graph is all over the place. The blue will bounce almost to the line under the word IO and the red will bounce almost to the bottom of the graph when under load.
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Feb 11, 2014 1:11 PMby Michael Black,Those are pretty trivial page outs, but it does indicate you may often be operating right at the cusp of your systems current RAM limits. So all told, it does sound like you would benefit from more RAM. Exactly how noticeable a difference it will make is impossible to say, but if your system is always straining at the upper edge of its performance bounds for RAM, it will be worthwhile to upgrade.
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Feb 11, 2014 2:08 PMby Donald Morgan,Here is the straight scoop.
Mac's have always been historicly picky when it comes to Ram.
DO NOT use bargin basement or cheap Ram
If you stick with top of the line Ram you will have less chance or NO CHANCE of problems.
Crucial is considered to be the best by many users.
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/
Both of these are the best you can buy for Mac.
Good Luck
Cheers
Don
