Worth going to 8GB on MacBook Pro for Aperture

[AlbertoDeRoma]

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I have a late model MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core i7) with 4GB. Despite the impressive specs, I still get the dreaded beachball quite a bit when I use Aperture (64bit version). Now that memory prices have dropped, I am wondering if going from 4GBs to 8GBs will make a noticeable difference.

 

Any first-hand experience from people who have upgraded to 8GB would be very appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Alberto

[AlbertoDeRoma]

I have a late model MacBook Pro (2.66 GHz Intel Core i7) with 4GB. Despite the impressive specs, I still get the dreaded beachball quite a bit when I use Aperture (64bit version). Now that memory prices have dropped, I am wondering if going from 4GBs to 8GBs will make a noticeable difference.

 

Any first-hand experience from people who have upgraded to 8GB would be very appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Alberto

 

Call me impatient, but since I did not get any replies I decided to just go for it. I bought 2 4GB modules for the MacBook Pro for ~$150 (at Fry's Electronics) in Palo Alto. Took me 5 minutes to open the MacBook and change the memory.

 

Does it make a difference? YES!!!!

 

Adios beachball. Everything is faster: scrolling through a bunch of pictures, editing, etc. And I know it's not just because I had to shut down and reboot the system, I started a bunch of application and 2 browsers (Chrome and Safari). After a few minutes of opening and closing tabs on the browsers and editing photos, I had already gone over 4GB of usage. If I only had 4GBs, this is where the system would start swapping like crazy (i.e. page data in/out from the virtual memory (i.e. disk) to the physical memory (i.e. RAM.)

 

I'll post an update in a few days - after more normal usage, but my guess is that the performance gains are here to stay.

 

I hope this helps somebody out there - DO IT! It's not a subtle difference, at least not in my case with Aperture 3.1.

 

Alberto

[perb]

And if you replace the mechanical hard drive with an SSD it will be faster still

 

Regards

Per

[AlbertoDeRoma]

And if you replace the mechanical hard drive with an SSD it will be faster still

 

Regards

Per

 

Thanks. I've been thinking about that ... but I am waiting for the prices to drop a bit. The 500GBs are still quite expensive.

 

Alberto