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Lab Tested: The ramifications of additional memory on a Mac

Albert Filice
@monstasaurous May 10, 2013 3:00 AM

It happens to every Mac (and every other kind of PC): The system slows down when its doing lot of things at once. If this happens to your Mac more than youd like, though, your system might need more RAM. Adding more RAM to your Macif you can add more RAMis one of the eaiest ways to improve your Macs performance. The crucial question is, How much more RAM do you actually need? Macworld Lab ran benchmarks on a couple of Macs at different RAM congurations and analyzed the results. Our conclusion: The impact of more RAM depends on the types of tasks your Mac performs. In some situations your Mac may benet from having as much RAM as you can afford; in others, youll be ne with the stock conguration. But before we dive into the results, lets take a brief look at what RAM is and why its important to your Mac. (This article focuses exclusively on the impact of RAM on system performance, but of course RAM isnt the only component that affects performance. Macworld Lab is currently working on tests that will allow us to take a similar look at how other componentsstorage, graphics, and CPUaffect 1 of 8

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |... performance.)

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami...

What is RAM?
Random Access Memory is a temporary storage medium that your Macs CPU uses for fast access to data its processing. The CPU can access data contained in RAM much faster than it can data held on long-term storage devices like traditional hard drives and even solid-state drives.

ALBERT FILICE (http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/04 /ram_assortment_types_museam_thingy-100034102-orig.png)

RAM designs vary for different computers and different needs.

Suppose that you want to work on a text le. Your computer will copy the text leand the necessary information for the text editor youre usinginto RAM. Next, lets imagine that you open Photoshop, while leaving the text editor open. Photoshop also loads data into RAM; so at this point, your Mac will have two apps loaded into RAM. The more apps you open without closing down other ones, the less available RAM will remain available to accommodate other apps and perform other functions. When your RAM is full and another app needs to use some of the space, somethings got to give. In this case, paging will occur: Your Macs CPU will move data that isnt in active use from RAM to a swap le on your storage device (hard drive or SSD), and the new data will go into RAM. Paging can make a computer that seemed fast a second ago slow to a crawl. The more RAM your system has available, the less your CPU will rely on paging (http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/04/ram_sys_information_photo100034812-orig.png)

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |...

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami...

ALBERT FILICE

A Retina MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAMa system that doesn't have user-upgradable RAM.

Can I upgrade my RAM?

Apple adopts a locked-down approach toward many of its Macs, including the MacBook Air and the Retina MacBook Pro. On these Macs, RAM is factoryinstalled directly on the motherboard as onboard memory. As a result, you cant upgrade the systems RAM later; on the other hand, this approach allows Apple to make laptops slimmer and more portable. In Apples current computer lineup, the Mac Pro, the 27-inch iMac, the Mac mini, and the non-Retina MacBook Pro have user-upgradable RAM. Crucial (http://www.crucial.com/store/drammemory.aspx), Kingston (http://www.kingston.com/us/memory/search/options/), and Tiger Direct (http://www.tigerdirect.com/sectors/campaigns/memory-nder.asp) offer online tools designed to tell you whether your RAM is user-upgradable, and to help you nd the correct RAM for an upgrade. NewEgg has a memory nder (http://www.newegg.com/MemoryFinder/). OWC offers an online RAM upgrade guide (http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/).

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |... http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami... ALBERT FILICE (http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/04/ram_onboard_macbook_air100034082-orig.png)
The RAM modules on this 2010 MacBook Air are soldered to the motherboard and thus are not user-upgradable.

Benchmarks: The effects of RAM

The more RAM a Mac has, the better it performsbut how much improvement will you see? To nd out, we ran tests, including our Speedmark 8 (http://www.macworld.com/article/2013458/measure-mac-performancewith-speedmark-8.html) benchmarking suite, on two computers equipped with three levels of RAM: 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB. The rst system we tested was a mid-2011 iMac with a 3.1GHz Core i5 processor and a 1TB hard drive. The second was a late-2011 MacBook Pro with a 2.4GHz Core i7 processor and a 750GB hard drive. Both systems carried standard congifurations and originally came with 4GB of RAM. Photoshop CS6 actions test 100MB le
4GB 8GB 16GB 141.3 seconds 98.7 seconds 98.0 seconds

250MB le
4GB 8GB 16GB 265.0 seconds 130.3 seconds 122.7 seconds

500MB le
4GB 8GB 16GB 330.3 seconds 178.0 seconds
Results are in seconds. Smaller results/shorter bars are better.

795.6 seconds

Our Photoshop test consists of performing a series of actions on a le. As the test results show, the effect of additional RAM on performance depends on the le sizes you typically work with. Its possible to see a diminishing return or a huge benet from extra RAM. Photoshop is a perfect example of an app that can take advantage of having a large amount of RAM available. It even lets you specify a maximum allowable amount of RAM for the app to use. Otherwise, Photoshop might eat your entire RAM pie, leaving just the crumbs for your other applications. (http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/04/screen-shot-2013-04-22at-9.43.59-am-100034081-orig.png)

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |...

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami...

ALBERT FILICE

Adjust your settings to prevent Photoshop from hogging all of your system's RAM.

VMware-PCMark on Windows 7
4GB 8GB 16GB
Results are scores. Larger results/longer bars are better.

1260 3456 3657

We ran Windows 7 using VMware with a relatively light set of tests. Virtual machines can require a lot of RAM, but not always. We didnt see any substantial improvement when allocating more than 4GB to the virtual machine; however, your experience may be different if you have a lot going on. The same factors that go into deciding how much RAM you need also apply to virtual machinesso if you do heavy lifting in your virtual OS, youll need the RAM to back it up. Mathematica
4GB 8GB 16GB
Mathematica results are in points. Longer results (and bars) are better.

1.62 1.66 1.73

Mathematica was the only other test that saw a speed boost of greater than than 5 percentbut the overall increase on this test was only about 6 percent. After doubling the RAM from 4GB to 8GB, we saw a 2.5 percent increase in performance. After quadrupling it from 4GB to 16GB, we saw a 6 percent increase.

Elsewhere, not much changed

After running our Speedmark test suite with three different RAM congurations, we concluded that maxing out RAM wont accelerate many computing pursuits. Of our 15 test results, 12 failed to show at least a 5 percent increase in speed when we upgraded our test systems from 4GB to 8GB or 16GB.

5Below, of 8 we list the results for the 12 tests where our systems showed minor or no

5/29/13 6:06 PM

Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |... http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami... improvement after we added RAM. Some test results even seemed to get slightly
worse after the RAM upgrades, although this effect is probably due to randomness. iTunes
4GB 8GB 16GB 101.33 101.33 105.33

HandBrake
4GB 8GB 16GB
Results are in seconds. Shorter results and bars are better.

119.00 117.67 113.67

Cinebench CPU
4GB 8GB 16GB
Cinebench CPU test results are in seconds. Shorter results and bars are better.

80.00 80.33 80.00

Cinebench OpenGL
4GB 8GB 16GB
Cinebench OpenGL test results are in frames per second. Larger results/longer bars are better.

40.26 40.23 40.11

Copy 6GB folder

4GB 8GB 16GB 199.86 201.76 207.27

Zip 6GB folder

4GB 8GB 16GB 337.36 349.36 316.14

Unzip 6GB folder

4GB 8GB 16GB
Results are in seconds. Shorter results and bars are better.

226.82 232.48 234.20

iPhoto import
4GB 8GB 16GB 119.33 113.33 114.00

Aperture import
4GB 8GB 16GB
Results are in seconds. Shorter results and bars are better.

89.00 87.33 91.00

iMovie import

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |...

4GB 8GB 16GB

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami...
76.26 73.48 73.98

iMovie export
4GB 8GB 16GB
Results are in seconds. Shorter results and bars are better.

55.59 54.27 54.36

Portal 2
4GB 8GB 16GB
Portal 2 results are in frames per second. Larger results/longer bars are better.

108.73 109.17 109.56

Whats the ideal amount of RAM?

Most new Macs come with either 4GB or 8GB of RAM standard. Thats enough for most Macs destined for general use. In the real world, every Mac setup is different, so if youre considering adding more RAM, be sure to keep track of your computers RAM usage during your normal workow. If you tend to leave apps open instead of closing them, or if you keep several browser windows open with dozens of tabs in each, adding RAM will probably help your computer run more smoothly. If you use an app that handles large les, it helps to have a lot of RAM.

ALBERT FILICE (http://images.techhive.com/images/article/2013/04/screen-shot-2013-04-22at-9.11.49-am-100034075-orig.png)

OS X's Activity Monitor shows that this system is currently using a little more than half of its available RAM.

Its not too hard to gure out the RAM sweet spot for your system and your workow. If your Mac is running slowly, open Activity Monitor (Applications > Utilities > Activity Monitor) and check out the System Memory tab at the bottom of the window. If youre low or completely out of Free or Inactive RAM and youre not doing anything unusual (editing a humongous Photoshop le, for example), adding 7 of 8

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Lab Tested: The ramications of additional memory on a Mac |... more RAM will probably speed up your performance.

http://www.macworld.com/article/2034655/lab-tested-the-rami...

Try not to get carried away, though, as adding stfuls of RAM that your Mac will never or rarely use is throwing money away. Even if you can think of a few scenarios where you might use all of the RAM that your system can handle, consider how often they are likely to happen and whether buying RAM to handle them is worth your money. Take a bit of time to diagnose your system and get a rough idea of how much memory youre using now; and think about what you plan to do in the future and how long it will be before you upgrade to a new Mac. Editor's note: Updated 5/13/13 to include the non-Retina MacBook Pro in the list of Macs that have user-upgradeable RAM. Also added Tiger Direct and OWC to the list of online resources for buying RAM.

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