New user with a memory question

I'm new to the mac, i currently have a mac book pro with 2gb of ram, is it worth making the jump to 3gb of ram? I don't mind paying the extra money because i know its expensive. Just curious to see if it makes any difference.

Thanks,

short answer, no

long answer, you will have unpaired RAM and the ammount of money you will be spending on at 2GB stick will not be worth it in the end.

I agree with skye23412. I have 2GB on my PowerMac, and use MenuMeters to show me a continuous measure of memory usage in my system menu bar. Even under heavy load (Photoshop, Safari, Thunderbird, Skype etc.) all loaded, I have never seen my Mac report full 2 GB of RAM usage. Right now, bumping to 3 GB is likely not worth the expense.

Now perhaps if you are doing heavy video editing, it might be worth it.

I would recommend getting the iStat Pro widget and use it to monitor your memory usage. If you find that you *are* maxing out your memory, then it might make sense. Hopefully, per the above though, you will see that 2 GB is suiting you just fine.

I agree with Mac57 and skye23412. I have 2 Gb in my MacBook and have never been in need of more.

thanks for all your suggestions, i'm going to monitor it

thanks again, i love this forum

Not looking into the technical aspects of the build, I would assume that the RAM not being paired should not effect the systems use of it. The motherboard should be coded for using these optimally correct?
Would 4GB (Paired 2GIG) be better? Sure, plus the added 1/4x memory availability.

Would be interested in seeing bench tests on equal machines with 2GB and 3GB installed performing photoshop functions.

I went to look for some benchmarks, but realized that for myself photoshop being my largest concern with memory would need to wait for CS3's universal version to get any real numbers. The application running in rosetta or other performance inhibiting manner won't give a true picture.

2GB is enough for me as well. So no don't bother getting 3

The way I understand it is that after 3 gig the chipset in the mac laptops doesn't read the ram, so after 3 gis you really lose the last gig.