MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) RAM upgrade.

When doing editing in Photos my MBP stutters a bit, gets very sluggish and jerky and I think a bit more RAM would help. I've hunted around on the net and am reading conflicting reports as to whether one can in fact add RAM to this model.

This Apple site https://support.apple.com/kb/SP669?locale=en_GB quite clearly says that it can be upped to 16Gb.

Has anybody got any experience of this please, can I or can't I add RAM?

cheddar-caveman said:

When doing editing in Photos my MBP stutters a bit, gets very sluggish and jerky and I think a bit more RAM would help. I've hunted around on the net and am reading conflicting reports as to whether one can in fact add RAM to this model.

This Apple site https://support.apple.com/kb/SP669?locale=en_GB quite clearly says that it can be upped to 16Gb.

Has anybody got any experience of this please, can I or can't I add RAM?

Click to expand...

Technically...the RAM in that model MacBook Pro can be upgraded...but ONLY at the time of purchase (it would need to be configured with 16gig of RAM at time of purchase). After you have the computer in your hands...RAM is NOT upgradeable (it is soldered onto the logic board).

- Nick

That's what I thought but I just spoke with Apple Chat and they advise that it can be done and given me a site to go to to get the stuff.

I'll keep you updated!

cheddar-caveman said:

That's what I thought but I just spoke with Apple Chat and they advise that it can be done and given me a site to go to to get the stuff.

I'll keep you updated!

Click to expand...

Yikes...if the MacBook Pro model described in the thread title is correct...there has got to be some serious confusion on the Apple Chat representative's part...or that Apple Chat person is seriously under-trained. As soon as the term "Retina" is mentioned...that automatically means RAM is NOT upgradeable after purchase!

Yes...please keep us updated. Very interested to see what site the Apple rep. sends you to for the upgrade!

- Nick

p.s. The only possible upgrade path I could see is...purchasing a new logic board with 16gig of RAM soldered on it. But this would be wayyyy too expensive of a way to "upgrade" the RAM.

Agree pigoo3, I'm also pretty sure it's not upgradable having seen the the RAM chips on the board! Looks like I'll have to try and speed it up some other way.

My main issue is when I'm doing a lot of photo editing in Photos. It gets jittery, keeps hesitating before completing an instruction.

I've only recently noticed this, I run Onyx weekly to clear out but that's it. Any advice would be much appreciated as I am no expert on these things!

cheddar-caveman said:

My main issue is when I'm doing a lot of photo editing in Photos. It gets jittery, keeps hesitating before completing an instruction.

I've only recently noticed this, I run Onyx weekly to clear out but that's it. Any advice would be much appreciated as I am no expert on these things!

Click to expand...

Yes...doing some photo editing in Photos really shouldn't be an issue for this computer. Pretty sure your MacBook Pro has dual graphics hardware & a quad-core cpu.

- Have you tried rebooting?
- How many apps do you usually have open at the same time?
- How many browser tabs open at the same time?
- Are the MacBook Pro fans running very fast when this happens (loud fans)?

If nothing mentioned helps...next time this happens...open Activity Monitor & see how much CPU resources are being used.

- Nick

Since you're talking about upgrading, I assume you currently have 8GB of memory. Have you run Activity Monitor to see how much RAM is being used by apps? How much free space do you have? What are the specs of your machine?

Thanks guys, I'll put the Activity Monitor on the Dock so it's readily available and the check.
122Gb disc space available.
When in Photos I don't have anything else open, no apps and not running Safari so no tabs.
I re-boot several times a day and also run Onyx at least once a week.

I'll keep a check on the Activity Monitor.

Just booted Photos with AM running and the single biggest user of memory is the kernel-task (what ever that is!) 950Mb

Mac specs?

Are you running any cleaning or antivirus software?

These can be anywhere from useless to real resource hogs.

Thanks. The quad core CPU should be able to handle the tasks at hand, the issue might be that you are loading images that take up a lot of memory and with 8GB, you might end up swapping to the disk. Looking at Activity Monitor will help answer that part of the equation.

I had a similar vintage 2012 rMBP with a 2.2 GHz CPU but 16GB memory and that machine was an absolute workhorse with multiple VMs running at the same time doing some serious work.

cheddar-caveman said:

When in Photos I don't have anything else open, no apps and not running Safari so no tabs.

Just booted Photos with AM running and the single biggest user of memory is the kernel-task (what ever that is!) 950Mb

Click to expand...

Adding to what Ashwin just mentioned. When you're editing inages in Photos...how many images do you have open at the same time...and how large are these image files (or what resolution are the images if you know it)?

- Nick

In hindsight it's probable that Safari was running in the background, I'll make sure that's off.
I only have the one image open at a time and they're on average around 12Mp
I wonder if it is sometimes swapping over to the disc sometimes, that would certainly slow things down.
All of these are why I was hoping I could up to 16Gb!

Your guess is as good as ours on what's actually happening, thus the request to look at Activity Monitor to figure out what's happening. If free memory drops a lot, then it's likely swapping (though the SSD is pretty darn fast).

Yes...same thing as Ashwin mentioned. Your MacBook Pro has an SSD/flash storage in it...MUCH faster than old "spinner" HD's.

- Nick

Thanks guys!

Decision made - having just "cleaned" our iMac and sold it, I feel confident enough to do the same on the MBP so I'll back it up and do a full format and reinstall the OS, spring cleaning!

I have been doing some editing while running the Activity Monitor along Sind and Photos definitely uses a whole lot of available CPU. While cropping and other edits like exposure, colour and the like, it takes around 63% of capacity but when I finish editing something called photolibraryd shoots up to 90%+ and photos shows 144% (not sure how you can get more than 100%?). so photos is certainly very greedy when it comes to CPU usage!

You get more than 100% because the CPU has multiple cores. 144% means you are using about 1.5 cores for processing. And yes, photo processing is CPU and GPU intensive, movies even more so.