Q: Should I Add Ram?
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Feb 11, 2014 4:48 PMby Michael Black,ElfLord10 wrote:
Ok maybe i'll do an upgrade. I'll have to do research between if I can use 8GB or 16GB. From what I have heard, I can only use 8GB max. Would you stick with the apple ram (really expensive) or would you go with Crucial or PNY (about half the price)?
OWC does their own in-house testing of every configuration they sell, so I trust what they say will run. I have had one of their 8GB kits in my late-2008 MBP for two years now without a problem.
Apple actually does not make RAM - they just buy the same stuff as everybody else uses (well, Apple buys and uses high quality RAM). I have had Apple machines ship new direct from Apple with Samsung RAM, with Crucial RAM, one with Kingston RAM. There is nothing special about Apple RAM other then the quality of the specifications they demand from the manufacturers. And there are literally a mere handful of actual RAM chip manufacturers in the entire world (Crucial and Kingston being two, Samsung may be the biggest single source).
You can safely use Crucial or Kingston Apple system specific RAM (avoid Kingstons "value RAM" line - it has not met the QC tests for Apple's specifications), OWC, or Samsung. Those are the only brands I've personal experience with in Apple equipment.
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Feb 11, 2014 7:19 PMby ElfLord10,Ok, so I looked around and if I do the upgrade I'll probably use Crucial ram. It's not cheap but it might help the problem a little. I still have some thinking to do though because I found other threads about how Mavericks is a hog for ram even if you have 8GB. Either way I have to do some thinking and maybe make a purchase. It's a pretty expensive upgrade for a 4 year old computer. Thanks for all the help guys. You all responded very quickly and were a big help!
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Feb 12, 2014 7:43 AMby Michael Black,I would be wary of people claiming Mavericks is a "memory hog", especially on machines with 8GB RAM or more.
Mavericks uses a very different memory usage model than any previous release of OS X. It is much more aggressive about using RAM overall and keeping as much data as possible in RAM to avoid disc activity (and not merely swap file related disc i/o, but any and all disc activity, as much as possible).
So people will see that they have far less free RAM in Mavericks then they had with any previous OS X release. That is not a bad thing at all. In many ways, free RAM is wasted RAM - simple keeping RAM unused is pointless if there is something that could be moved there. Mavericks will try to cache program data and all sorts of other running data that previous releases left on disc. But that is not hogging memory, that is in fact maximizing your available memory to avoid disc and I/O bus activity.
An optimal system, in some sense, would be one with all or nearly all RAM constantly in use, and as little or no disc activity. That would be maximizing available resources. Constatly having large amounts of RAM un-used or free simply means you payed for something that you are not even using.
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Feb 12, 2014 10:23 AMby Network 23,I would also disagree with the Mavericks memory hog accusations. Lack of free RAM does not necessarily mean "memory hog" unless you're using a 1998-era operating system. Watching Activity Monitor before and after the Mavericks upgrade, before Mavericks OS X was always piling up the swap files and it looked like I should add more RAM. After Mavericks, OS X uses swap files a lot less, which indicates more efficient use of the RAM I do have, and avoiding swap also lets the computer run faster because it isn't hitting the disk to get at the swap files.
The net result is that before Mavericks I thought I should buy more RAM, after Mavericks my Mac acts like I have enough RAM already. If that means I don't have to add any more RAM before I upgrade to my next Mac, then Mavericks' new RAM handling just saved me some money and made my Mac run faster.
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Feb 12, 2014 6:06 PMby ElfLord10,Thanks for all input. It makes sense that the computer should be putting most of its ram to good use instead of letting half of it sit all the time. They designed Mavericks well and I really like it. The only thing I noticed is that with Mavericks my system is slower. Not by a lot but it is a slight noticable difference. I also seem to get the multicolored spinning wheel of death a lot more now (especially when using iMovie) but it goes away after about a minute. I'm still thinking and trying to decide on whether to buy more ram. It couldn't hurt but I don't want to waste a $100 either. Thanks for all the help guys. This is one of the friendliest forums i've been on.
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Feb 20, 2014 4:09 PMby James Williams2,I'm having similar issues--poor performance for months and have tried everything but RAM upgrade. I always have a flat green 'Memory Pressure' graph with physical memory 4.0GB, Used Memory 3.94ish, Virtual 4.09, with 0 Swap Used. This discussion sent me to DISK info for the Reads In/Out info. My graph was 80% red with Writes out at 261/sec, and In at 49:
I have an early 2009 24" iMac 2.66GHz Core Duo, 2TB hard drive with 4GB of RAM...running Mavericks. Based on this info could a RAM upgrade help? I've noticed audio/video synch issues now while playing a simple QT video. Finder takes 3-4 secs to do anything, moving one file to the Trash may take 5-6 seconds, etc. Mav started out poor, and has gotten worse.
Please let me know what you think. As I've said, I'm down to this step or a new computer.
Thank you for your insight and time,
C
