1
I use a Mac Pro with dual 2.4 Ghz quad-core Xeon processors. The machine has 6 GB of DDR2-667 RAM and two 500 GB drives in RAID 0. I am running OSX Snow Leopard because newer versions of OSX are not compatible with my hardware. I very often need to have 10 or more programs open at one time. As an example, I might run Photoshop, InDesign, Microsoft Word, Excel, a Bible software program, Outlook, two web browsers (Safari and Firefox), a Windows 7 virtual PC using VMWare Fusion, Acrobat Pro with Pitstop, Flightcheck, and Calibre. In addition, Time Machine runs periodic backup as I work. The machine runs very slowly with all this going on at once, but I am constantly going from one program to another, so closing APPs as I go and reopening each one again as needed is not an option. I can upgrade to 12 GB total RAM for $180 or to 20 GB of RAM for $380. Other than one bad ethernet port the hardware is in perfect working condition, so I hate to purchase a new machine if the one I have can be upgraded to solve the problem. And now my question: Do you think upgrading the RAM to 12 GB or 20 GB would have significant impact on performance in my situation, or is upgrading to a newer machine the only option to improve performance?
You should check your
Activity Monitor
to see where your bottleneck is. If during your situation as described above the CPU is at 100%, then you'd need to look into CPU/PC refresh options. If it's memory, then your question of "how much" becomes relevant. Until then, you're getting ahead of yourself. Unless I missed it in your question, how did you determine that RAM may help? Did you do other diagnostics not mentioned? – nerdwaller – 2013-10-17T06:04:16.730Generation is an important distinction to determine "old", based on Wikipedia I assume you have the 2010 Mac Pro with Bloomfield (Nehalem-based) CPUs which is currently 4 gens "old". – justbrowsing – 2013-10-17T08:23:45.993
Also, I suspect a SSD might be the answer if you are running backups (disk intensive). – justbrowsing – 2013-10-17T08:26:14.237