Should I upgrade the RAM?

I'm working alot in Adobe CS6 at school e.t.c. and home, I'm doing a lot of gaming. Then I read that if Swap used is over 1GB that's a sign that you should upgrade your RAM. I have a 13'' MacBook Pro mid 2012.
I checked activity monitor, and here's the result:
Free: 879 MB
Used: 3,14 GB
Swap used: 1,31 GB

You should upgrade your RAM. Anytime swap space is used, it means you have run out of physical memory and your system needs to use your hard drive as a scratch disk. This greatly slows down performance. Upgrade to 8, 12, or 16 GB:
2012 MacBook Pro 13" 15" – Up to 16.0GB 1600MHz DDR3 Memory

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Purchase it with the faster CPU. RAM may be increased later via third party chips at much lower cost if and when required.
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I bought this lovely machine so that when i come back home, i can push aside my 12" toshiba work laptop and enjoy working on my music and photos and internet browsing on the imac.
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hope someone out there has some ideas for me!
cheers

Thank you all for the replies! I'm going to work through what each of you have suggested and see how much it helps. The 40 minutes of processing time is not an exaggeration. In fact, it sometimes takes longer than that - but I think it's hanging - so i've forcibly shut down the application.
Al - cheers for your immediate tips - they have certainly helped. I disallowed other shared libraries, dropped the shadow and reduced the photo size to approximately a small thumbnail and the speed has most certainly improved! it still takes a few minutes every now and then, but it's decidedly better.
Dan - I'll try Onyx (first i'll figure out what it is!) to clean things up, i imagine.
Jerry, thanks for the tip on iphoto buddy. i'll certainly try it when i have the time. it'll also help me keep the photos i don't want everyone to see aside, i imagine!
And Rod - these are all jpegs from my NikonD70, i haven't started shooting RAW as yet, as i have to figure out how to process those first! I'll probably upgrade the RAM to 2gigs and to ilife'06 in the next week or two. I'll go through the routine that you suggested for checking for directory corruption as well.
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I don't want to go over $1,800, so I can only upgrade to 16GB RAM with a 256GB SSD, or 8GB RAM with a 512GB SSD. I will be running a lot of VM's, so I was originally going to go for the first option, with 16GB RAM, but I heard that if you use more than 80% of an SSD's capacity, it degrades more quickly due to the way the wear leveling algorithms work. I'm intending to get at least 4 years of use out of this machine. In summary, which option should I go with? Thanks in advance!

H.S.G.,
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Should I upgrade the RAM, the Processor, and add an ATA/133 card?!

Hello!
I have a few more questions...
I only have 2 internal drives...
(one 300GB which is the main one that runs the applications and one 60Gb used as extra storage mainly for my video projects)
Do I need an ATA/133 PCI controller card for them?
will it really be worth it?
(meaning will it actually make a difference in speed or not?)
or do you only need one of those cards if you have 3 or 4 drives?
also,
would adding more RAM (up to the 2.0 GB limit)
(my comp is currently at 1.25 GB)
make a huge difference?
and the processor...
if i upgrade it to the 1.8 GHz
(it's currently at 867 MHz)
will it be a major improvement?
i guess I'm asking if i would benefit in upgrading
everything:
the RAM,
the processor,
and adding an ATA/133 PCI controller card
or would just upgrading/adding one or two of these be suffice?
I'm seriously looking into upgrading my comp but I want to know
what benefits me and what won't really make a difference
-Cristina-
p.s.
I know I posted this somewhere earlier,
but I'm just so anxious :/
I've been looking at so much information that my head feels like it's going to explode!

Hi-
You don't need a controller card.
If you keep your main drive(s) on the ATA/100 bus (rear carrier), and add (if you like) up to two drives to the ATA/66 (forward carrier) bus, for storage, archives, etc., you will have fine performance from all drives.
If you are going to add a drive, I would add a larger drive to the ATA/100 bus, and move the smaller (60gb) to the ATA/66 position, relegated to storage. Your graphics work (is it?) will then run well on the two drives on the ATA/100 bus.
In a G4, running with maximum RAM (2gb) is always a good performance move, and helps reduce the "spinning beachball", especially with large graphics files. As for "huge difference", not as such, but, RAM is one of the cheapest (especially now) performance buys that can be had, and more RAM is always better than less.
Upgrading to dual 1.8ghz processors would be a "Wow!" type of upgrade, compared to the current dual 867mhz processors. Be advised, that processor upgrades require that you be able to boot to OS 9 prior to installing the processor upgrade. This is to apply necessary "patches" to allow the system to use the new processors. If you don't still have a boot-able OS 9 installed on your machine, you will need to have that ability prior to a processor upgrade.
Another processor upgrade option, would be to change your processors to dual 1.25 or 1.42mhz processors from another MDD. The difference from a 11.25 dual processor, and the dual 1.8, is really between 10-15% increase in performance, with the 1.25mhz providing about 20-25% increase over the dual 867mhz processors. The main problem with this approach, is that there are some modifications that must be made, which aren't the average "do it yourself" type of work.
In the end, though, you may want to take the upgrade money, $600+, sell the MDD, $300+, and put the money on a new Mac. Don't get me wrong, I like upgrades, but it is as much to tinker, as it is to boost performance. And, at the end of the day, I don't need a new Mac. If you don't, either, you will be happy with the upgrades.

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Just why are you thinking of switching to a Mac?

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so upgrading your macbook might be a waste of money.
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good luck..

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Thanking you in advance. John
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View Solution.

DDR3 is cheaper and faster but the modules are different so they will not fit your laptop. You should be able to run 8 gigs but 4 gig modules of DDR2 are still prety expensive and I doubt the upgrade would do a lot for you. You have 3 gigs useable because of video use and also you likely have a 32 bit operating system. If you were going to try to run 8 gigs you would have to install 64 bit.

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No, the video card cannot be exchanged - you have a pretty decent GPU there; not sure why you'd want to switch it out. You can upgrade the RAM to a maximum of 16GBs. Apple recommends upgrading in matching pairs, so I don't really think I'd try 4GB and 8GB stick.
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Hi
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http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/309219.pdf
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09aparker,
The removal and replacement procedures are here: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c03163704.pdf
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I am an HP employee.

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They don't want hands poking around inside then a zillion calls from the hipsters that fried their mother boards.
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