Thinking of a 8GB RAM upgrade for 2010 Macbook Pro i7

By Xtreme $niper
in Apple (macOS)

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Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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Guess there are no gfxCardStatus users here, then?

The price of the G.SKILL has dropped again. It's at $92.99 each here ( http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231265 ) and taxes + shipping included it comes to $222.35.

My trigger finger is itching... But I wonder how much lower it's going to go.

Proficient

Xenomorph

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My 15" Core i7 MacBook Pro was ordered with 8 GB RAM. 8 GB is a must for me. My Desktop has had that since last year, and with all the stuff I have running, plus all the Virtual Machine stuff I do, 8 GB is a must.

My older 15" MacBook Pro (Core 2 Duo @ 2.16 GHz), maxes at just 3 Gigs RAM (4 Gigs installed), and it really hurts. The OS eats a bunch, and leaves almost nothing for a virtual machine.

Games can eat 2 Gigs+, the OS works best with 2 Gigs+, all the normal apps like 2 Gigs+, and of course having Windows running in the background with 1 or 2 Gigs makes things nice when you need to run "real" MS Office apps.

Regarding RAM, I've used a lot of different types. I think my main Desktop has 8 Gigs of A DATA. It's been running 24/7 in an overclocked system for over a year without issue. Other than A DATA, I think all my other DDR2 systems are loaded with G.Skill.

Many of my Laptops have Corsair in them.

Memory is memory. If you can run it at the labeled speed and it passes MemTest86+, what is there to worry about?

Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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Yeah, I went ahead and put down an order for the G.SKILL after they dropped in price yet again. It's already shipped but I'm not sure when it will arrive. Probably Monday...

Does MemTest86+ run on Macs? I guess the bootable ISO version might?

And yeah, I can be pretty picky/paranoid when it comes to tech related purchases because I want to make sure I'm getting the best quality for the best price, and I normally buy computer components from local computer stores instead of dealing with online orders and shipping (and possibilities of RMAs, restocking fees, etc).

Anyway, we'll see how it goes when it shows up. I'll probably use it as normal for a few days and see if I experience anything odd, and then I'll run a test on it to make sure it all looks good too.

Rising Star

Auditor

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Hmm, it's just a tough call because the more I read into OWC, the more I realize that there will be tax (13%) and possible duties and handling fees on top of all that, making the total come to more than $280 (at least). But Canada's customs enforcement on these kinds of things are on-and-off so I'm really unsure of if I want to take the chance.

The only sure-fire bet right now is the G.SKILL RAM I listed above because it's shipped from Newegg.ca's warehouse in Ontario so no customs mess is involved.

G.SKILL vs OWC ... oh man.

Speaking on canada custom. I purchased $115 simple unlocked nokia phone through ebay and they charged $11 custom fee. Paying $280 got RAM is definitely overkill.

Grand Master

Xtreme $niper

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Just for a followup and for anyone else who may be interested... I did end up going for these: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231294&Tpk=F3-8500CL7D-8GBSQ (G.SKILL 2x4GB).

The prices continue to drop but I'm going to try to not be bothered by that because it's just the nature of things in the tech world.

I went ahead and installed the modules last night and it was a 2 minute operation (most of the time was spent dealing with the screws to open up the bottom of the laptop). Everything seems to be working fine so far. I've tested it a bit by opening all kinds of programs all at once to fill up the active RAM (VMWare Fusion running with 3GB of RAM, Photoshop, Firefox, Opera, Chrome, Safari, Mail, Skype, and various other apps) and it all looks good. Even went in for a quick round of TF2 and it all checks out.

Tonight I'm probably going to run memtest on it in single-user mode for 3 runs to make sure it's all good, though I probably don't have to do that.

Overall, I'm happy. General performance did not increase (as expected, it stayed the same) because the performance difference is only noticeable when you start running a lot of things together. When I did my "unscientific" test by opening up all those apps, it didn't beach ball on me at all. That's where I expected to see a difference, and I did.

Also: I did attempt to manually force the GPU to switch using gfxCardStatus and it worked fine.

Also also: The photos for G.SKILL RAM always shows different brand names on the chips themselves. I've seen Samsung and Hynix brands being on there in screenshots, though my pair seem to simply say G.SKILL. The stock RAM that I took out of my machine was Samsung.

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