Ram: 2 Gigs vs 4 Gigs Macbook Pro 2.2

Hello All,
As a 30 day old Mac user (yippee so far) I have a new macbook pro 2.2 with 2 gigs ram installed. I have read a ton of posts about people installing 4 gigs total ram even on new machines. So the question is:
Do you all just have $$ burning in your pockets for Ram upgrades? or does it REALLY make that big of a difference? I have running Leopard.
Thanks in advance!

Do you find the computer stalling, and bogged down alot? If its running fine, and you arent having any issues with the above, you probably don't need the extra 2GBs.

It depends what you are doing really. 2 GB is enough for most people but if you are really multi-tasking and doing lots of multimedia work or video games than 4 would be worth it.

Going from 2GB to 4GB made a dramatic, noticeable difference to me.

My primary desktop (Windows XP) and my MBP are very similar from a CPU standpoint... They both have 2.4GHz Core2Duos, though the MBP has a slower bus speed. They also both have (or had, in the case of the MBP) 2GB of RAM, though the desktop has 4 512MB sticks of DDR400 and is running an i865 chipset (yes, you can run the C2D on an 865... if you know which board to get), while the MBP had 2 1GB sticks of DDR2-667, and is running an i965 chipset.

The MBP was ALWAYS slower than my desktop, to the point where I began considering selling or returning it. The most obvious, annoying issue was that typing in text boxes like this one was laggy to the point of dropping letters if an icon in the dock was bouncing. A fresh install of OSX did not cure this (not that this is surprising, the issue appeared the first day I owned the machine). Going to 4GB effectively eliminated this issue, and all of the other lags and slowdowns I was experiencing. I can now switch back and forth between the two without tearing my hair out while on the Mac.

For someone that is used to a slow machine, someone that doesn't have particularly high expectations of performance (read: someone who's never used a fresh, clean install of XP SP2 or 2k with nothing but the device drivers, AVG, Firefox and an IM client installed on a high end dual core/dual processor workstation), or someone who only uses their machine for basic stuff-not running as many as 20 or 30 Firefox tabs at once, plus Adium, Colloquy, Skype, Hardware Monitor, Photoshop and Winamp via Crossover like I do-2GB is sufficient.

If, on the other hand, you want the most performance you can get out of your SR MB/MBP, consider 4GB of RAM a necessity.

RAM is the most important upgrade you can give to your computer in terms of the effect it will have on performance. Like the previous poster said, if you aren't happy with your performance or think it could be better, then more RAM is what you want.

A tip I picked up off another forum is that RAM for laptops isn't always available in later years. You may not need it now, but in 3 years when applications and MacOS have advanced and become even more RAM hungry, you may want it....and the RAM you need may not be sold anymore.

If you're already spending over $2k for the MBP, and extra $320 at Crucial.com for 4GB RAM doesn't seem like a whole lot. Hopefully, you'll be able to sell your old RAM to someone, too.

The more programs you run, the more RAM you want. Watch your RAM usage, and if you start getting around the 75% used range it would be a good investment to go with more RAM.

Mac_Biodiesel said:

RAM is the most important upgrade you can give to your computer in terms of the effect it will have on performance.

Click to expand...

is that so?

Mac_Biodiesel said:

RAM is the most important upgrade you can give to your computer in terms of the effect it will have on performance. Like the previous poster said, if you aren't happy with your performance or think it could be better, then more RAM is what you want.

A tip I picked up off another forum is that RAM for laptops isn't always available in later years. You may not need it now, but in 3 years when applications and MacOS have advanced and become even more RAM hungry, you may want it....and the RAM you need may not be sold anymore.

If you're already spending over $2k for the MBP, and extra $320 at Crucial.com for 4GB RAM doesn't seem like a whole lot. Hopefully, you'll be able to sell your old RAM to someone, too.

Click to expand...

320$ for ram? yike....160ish from newegg.... 2x2gb 667