As I mentioned in my last post, I wanted to get more performance out of my 2 year old MacBook Pro. When I purchased machine, I got it installed with the maximum amount of RAM that I could, 4 GB. Newer machines support up to 8 GB of RAM and I’ll definitely get 8 GB when I get a new machine. I had read reports of people putting 6 GB of RAM in my vintage machine and as RAM is one of the limiting factors in performance, I did a little investigating and everything I read said that there were no issues. Typically putting more RAM in a machine than the hardware supports leads to kernel panics and random crashes.
I decided to give the 6 GB of RAM a try as it would let me put the 4 GB in my machine in my wife’s machine (she had 2 GB) and speed up her machine a little. OWC had a 6 GB upgrade kit that wasn’t too expensive (the drive has dropped $15 from when I got it a month ago. (I realize it sounds like I’m spending money like crazy on things, but my computer is a tool that I use to earn money, so getting better tools, I can do my job better.)
The only downside to 6 GB is that there is a slight performance increase by having paired memory modules and 6 GB comes with a 2 GB and a 4 GB module. However, what I’ve read has shown that the increase in RAM outweighs the paired performance.
I easily installed the RAM and so far, I haven’t had a kernel panic due to the RAM (only kernel panic has been due to my machine hibernating with my new SSD). The extra RAM has been quite nice as I can run more apps at once without apps paging out to virtual memory. If you have a machine that is the same vintage as my MacBook Pro, I’d definitely recommend this RAM upgrade. It’s not that expensive and has huge benefits (more RAM is always better).