Will ML run slow on 2GB RAM iMac?

I have an early-2008 iMac with 2GB RAM. I'm concerned that my system will slow down if I install Mountain Lion. I know that Apple says my iMac has the proper requirements, but I've read a few articles that suggest running at least 4GB RAM for better results.
Has anyone with a similar computer to mine installed ML and been happy with the results?
Thanks in advance for any advice or guidance,
Sunny

It depends on what software you use and whether you try to run more than one program at a time. It will also depend on whether you are upgrading from Lion or Snow Leopard. If you are upgrading from Snow Leopard you will notice that switching from one program to another takes longer. Some programs that require a lot of memory (Microsoft Office programs come to mind) will run noticably slower. If you are upgrading from Lion you probably won't notice a great deal of difference.

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MacBook Pro running slow even after RAM update.

I upgraded from 512 to 2GB of memory because Mac was running slow such as applications would some times take forever to open especially files on quicktime. After the upgrade though i have the same problem, Slow performance. Any advice or solutions?

Hi Vetty, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
It would help to know exactly which model of MBP you have.
Also, how much free space do you have available on your HD? If under 10%, that is likely the problem.
Some things you can try:
Background Maintenance in Terminal
1. Log in to an administrator’s account.
2. Open Terminal (located in Applications, Utilities).
3. Copy and paste in the following command (or type it exactly):
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
4. Press Return.
5. Type in your password when asked (note: you will not see anything being entered as you type your password).
6. Hit Return.
7. Wait until the Terminal prompt returns; this can take 5-10 minutes, but is usually under 5 minutes (the prompt returning will be your only notice that the tasks have finished).
8. Quit Terminal.
Repair Disk: Boot from install disc (insert disc>restart>immediately hold down c key and keep holding it until you see “Preparing Installation”)>at first screen go to Installer Menu>open Disk Utility>select your HD in the panel on the left side>click Repair Disk at bottom of main window. Run this at least twice, and keep running it until it says “appears ok” twice in a row. If that doesn’t happen, you may need a stronger utility such as DiskWarrior or if the directory is damaged beyond repair, you may need to reinstall the OS, or you may have a damaged HD (repair utilities can only repair the directory structure, not the HD itself).
Repair Permissions: Applications>Utilities>Disk Utility>select HD in panel at left>click on Repair Permissions at bottom of main window and allow process to finish before quitting DU.
Safe Boot
PRAM Reset
SMC Reset

Slow with 2gb RAM?

I clicked on microsoft word and it took almost 9 seconds for it to load.. Hows that possible.. i figured it would take only 2 seconds for a program to load.... its not just word, i remember watching steve jobs work on his Mac at the San francisco forum, he;d click on an icon/ program and poof it would open.. no waiting period.. is my computer slow.. or somethingh wrong with the RAM, the system profiler does show 2GB of RAM.. so what could be the problem.?

True, Office is slow due to it running under rosetta, but 9 seconds is about double what Word 2004 takes to load on my system. You may wish to run through the suggestions the previous poster mentioned. Also be sure your office is up to date. I've applied all patches to mine, and the performance of Office 2004 has went up dramitically (possibly due to their patches, but most likely attributed to Rosetta tweaks Apple has been sneaking into the Tiger updates). At one point I dropped Office and Photoshop CS2 al together for OpenOffice and GIMP, however after 10.4.7 I realised I preferred the products from Adobe and Microsoft and went back and noticed Office and and CS2 performed much better and was completely tolerable this time around.
Anyhow, make sure everything, including Office is updated. Also try those suggestions to improve disk performance.
As side note, my hard drive is 7200 RPM v 5400 RPM, so that could make a slight difference. Though I do have another MacBook with a 5400 RPM and again Office is not that slow to load, but still takes a good 6 seconds.
http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads.aspx#Office2004
Nick
 MacBook Black Mac OS X (10.4.9) Core 2 Duo, 2GB Ram, Black Video iPod

Windows running slow on 512 RAM

i was just wondering if running windows on the macbook on 512MB RAM will be really slow. cuz i heard that the ram is designed to be really fast for the mac os but when you run windows it's different. I'll only be using the macbook for photos, music, school stuff, movies. let me know if you have anything else to say about this like maybe upgrading the harddrive or whatever.
thanks.

It is difficult (nearly impossible) to compare RAM performance under MacOSX vs. Bootcamp WindowXP (Or Windows system in general). Benchmark out there are only for reference and different people have different sayings which is simply confusing.
However, there are tons of reviews on the net that shows Bootcamp Windows performance is similar to other notebook PC on the market. Apple Macbook performance is definetely not the best, but not too bad.
So the general rule for upgrading notebook applies to MacBook as well. If you have cash, dish out more RAM. This will benefit the overall machine performance significantly.
I agree with the other poster here regarding the requirement of RAM under MacOSX and WinXP.
I've upgrade my brothers Macbook to 1.25GB and my Mac Mini to 1.25GB. Both machine shows significant improvement on most operation.
So if you have $, try to spend as much as possible on RAM.

Photoshop CS6 Running Slow After GPU/RAM/CPU Upgrade?

Hi all,
I recently upgraded my Mac Pro 1,1 with the following:
CPU Upgrade to 2 x 2.66GHz Quad Core
RAM Upgrade to 14GB
GFX Upgrade to ATI Radeon HD 5770 1024mb VRAM
Everything seems fine. My temperatures are normal and things are seemingly speedy.
My problem is that Photoshop CS6 seems to run a little slow. I'm only working on web files (72dpi) that are yes, sometimes quite long in length (5000px high), but that has never been an issue.
Some problems I've noticed:
When I click to edit text, it may take 2 seconds before I can start editing it
When I scroll upwards it chugs a little
If I grab an object/shape and drag it around too quick, it might lag a little
I'm not sure how to explain it really, but for the couple hundred dollars I spent on upgrading my maching, I wouldn't expect any of these things to be an issue.
Here are my photoshop performance settings:
Any suggestions would help. No trolls please.

thenewbeatTO wrote:
Any suggestions would help. No trolls please.
Something to try: Reset Photoshop's preferences to defaults.
Press and hold Command - Shift - Option immediately upon cold-starting Photoshop. If you get the keys down quickly enough - and you have to be very quick - you'll get a prompt asking you to confirm deleting your current preferences. Once you confirm that, Photoshop will start up with a default set of parameters, though you will still find you can select your named workspaces and (I believe) your Actions will all still be there.
Try immediately to see if the problem recurs. Then methodically make your preferred preferences changes, quit Photoshop, and restart, then test to see that the problem hasn't recurred.
With some luck, you'll have cleared up the sluggishness, and will have been able to make all your preferences changes you like without it recurring.
This really can work.
-Noel

HP Photosmart Studio running SLOW on my new iMac w/Leopard

We just became Mac users with our new iMac less than a month ago. We got the HP 4400 all in one with the computer as well. I unloaded pics from my camera's card today and used the editing software for the first time....it was incredibly slow. Is there a reason for that? Is it like a PC....could I be running other programs that I'm not aware of that could have been slowing it down? It actually "locked up" at one point which was extremely frustrating to me with a new computer. I used the unloading and editing software with my old PC and old HP printer with no problems, so I was very surprised when the "new stuff" was sub par today.
Anyone out there that can suggest something or help me out?

I also am a new Mac user and have purchased a C7280 printer with all the accompanying software. I have experienced exactly the same problem and looking at the Activity Monitor the PhotosmartStudio application is making a large number of Unix calls. I have already uninstalled and re-installed the Software and this has made no difference. The silly part of this whole saga is that I would much prefer to download direct into iPhoto, but I am not sure how to separate the applications and discontinue using Photosmart. I think it might be simpler to purchase another printer!

I have a late 2013 MacBook Pro without retina, should i upgrade to Mavericks? Or will it run slower?

Hi, I bought a late 2013 MacBook Pro without retina display and I want to know if I should upgrade to mavericks since I don't want to make it slower, is it worth it?

angie.ob,
if your MacBook Pro is non-Retina, then the newest model that it could be is a Mid 2012.
The worth of upgrading to Mavericks depends entirely upon your priorities. What is it about having Mavericks on your MacBook Pro that appeals to you? If Mavericks in its current incarnation makes your MacBook Pro run more slowly, do you have a plan by which you can easily go back to Mountain Lion?

New IMAC but Photoshop running slow

Hi There
Could some one help me? I just brought a brand new IMAC 21.5" the base model (NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics) with 4 gb RAM. I downloaded the trial version of adobe cs5 to check if it runs ok but when I am starting things from scratch like just creating things from a blank canvas it runs so slow like trying to paint stuff and render it comes up with a loading screen it just doesn’t do it straight away. But when I am working on photos it seems to run ok. Is there away to solve this issue? Do I need to updated my RAM to make it run smooth?

The mostly likely reason Photoshop will run slow is insufficient RAM and since you downloaded the demo, you got the extended version which is a huge memory hog. I found it slow on my similarly configured notebook but the regular version runs just fine for me.
What does seem odd though is that you say it isn't slow on photos, just when you are starting from a blank slate. So I'm thinking - check the pixel size and resolution of your default blank document and compare to a loaded photo. Is the size and resolution of your blank document larger? I'm guessing it might be. That points to RAM again but if you don't need that big a document or that resolution you can reduce it.

I have a macbook pro 4,1 early 2008 model running on 10.6.8 snow leopard was wondering if upgrading to moutain lion will make my system run slow?

MBP 4,1 running 10.6.8 snowleopard and it runs great but i was wondering if upgrading to moutain lion will make run slower?

Lion is still available but you have to Call Apple to order it and then they send you a Redemtion Code to your Apple ID Email address that you use on the Mac App Store to download it.
But in all honesty even Lion is going to make your system run slower then it now does. Lion, like Mt Lion, uses more system resources then Snow Leopard. I can see the difference on my 2011 MBP with 8GBs of RAM and a fairly fast hard drive. Snow Leopard boots and runs faster then Lion and more so then Mt Lion.
What you need is a New or Newer MBP. If that is not an option then the only thing I can say is give Lion a try. That is AFTER you do a complete Time Machine Backup of your current Snow Leopard install just in case you need to go back.
By the way Apple replaced the Logic board in your system with the same Faulty NVidia chip install in it. Apple Never Updated the NVidia chip used on those logic boards. So odds are sometime in the future, Near or Far, that board will fail again.

New iMac 2.33 GHz w/2GB RAM VERY SLOW... slower than my non-intel iMac

So I just purchased a new Intel iMac with a 2.33GHz processor and 2GB of RAM. Seems like this thing should scream. I ran Migration Assistant upon starting the thing up in order to load on my 25ish software applications, 10,000 photos and numerous documents. Everything looks pretty good except that the computer hangs like crazy. On my old iMac which is only 2.0 GHz and 1GB of RAM I can have Photshop, Keynote, iPhoto, Mail and Safari all open at once, switching betwen them in order to get my work done. It's never been a problem. For some reason however, this new machine doesn't seem to be able to handle such tasks. Even the finder is slow. I'll click on a folder and it will take seconds for the items in that folder to show up. I just don't get it. The only thing that's faster is that the system boots much faster than my old iMac. Is it that all of this software isn't written for the intel chip? Is there some way in which I can test my system in order to be sure it's operating at full steam? Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks,
Ben

How long have you actually had the Mac? How many hours has it been actually active?
When an iMac is brand new Spotlight has to index the entire HD. Not just the Mac OS and Apple software pre-installed, but everything you have migrated as well (10,000 photo)! If it doesn't have some quiet time, a few hours depending on how many Gigs it needs to index, to accomplish this on it's own then the whole system will run slow as you force it to do what you want to do and it tries to do what it wants to do, both at the same time.
There is also plenty of evidence that Migrating more than your personal account and personal files, photos, music, videos, docs, etc. can indeed mess things up. The majority of PPC apps run OK with Rosetta, but there are a few incompatibles. It is almost always best to do fresh installs of PPC apps from install dicks or fresh internet downloads. Also have you checked if there are Universal binary updates available for any of your PPC apps.
Kappy (the Cobbler!) wrote a pretty good Migration user tip article. Maybe you should familiarize yourself and see if you made a mistake or two.
A Basic Guide for Migrating to Intel-Macs

Is an iMac 2.66ghz 2GB RAM, running Mac OS X 10.6.8, a few years old with massive delays fixable?

Is it possible to fix a 2006 iMac 2.66ghz 2GB RAM, SL OS X that gets hot after an hour or so of use, slows down functionality, causing delayed response, frequent disconnecting wireless mouse. Upon restart shows blinking folder until left to cool down completely and starts again normally? Could this be a RAM issue (2GB currently) or a Hardrive capacity issue (217GB of 317GB available)? Is this a sign of a dying computer or is it salvagable?

Backup the computer before doing the following:
Clean Install of Snow Leopard
     1. Boot the computer using the Snow Leopard Installer Disc. Insert the disc into the
         optical drive and restart the computer. After the chime press and hold down the
         "C" key. Release the key when you see a small spinning gear appear below the
         dark gray Apple logo.
     2. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue
         button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
         After DU loads select the hard drive entry from the left side list (mfgr.'s ID and drive
         size.) Click on the Partition tab in the DU main window. Set the number of
         partitions to one (1) from the Partitions drop down menu, set the format type to Mac
         OS Extended (Journaled, if supported), then click on the Partition button.
     3. When the formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Proceed
         with the OS X installation and follow the directions included with the installer.
     4. When the installation has completed your computer will require a restart after
         which you will be running a fresh install of OS X. When you setup your initial
         admin account in the Setup Assistant be sure to use the exact same username
         and password you used on your old system.
     5. Download and install Mac OS X 10.6.8 Update Combo v1.1. You can now begin the update
         by opening Software Update and installing all recommended updates to bring your
         installation current.
When this is completed you can begin to restore your files from your backup.

Do you have any ideas why Motion 5 would run slow on a computer? I have an Imac with 8Gigs of ram, and plenty of hard drive space, but it still gives me the beach ball when I add a few lights and effects. I'm at the end of my rope.

Do you have any ideas why Motion 5 would run slow on a computer? I have an Imac with 8Gigs of ram, and plenty of hard drive space, but it still gives me the beach ball when I add a few lights and effects. I'm at the end of my rope.

You probably don't really need 1080 at 60 for your finished projects but since you're just starting out with Motion, you need to lower your expectations. A long way. 1080 is about 2 million pixels per frame, DV is only about 400,000. That's not just five times as many pixels for the Mac to track; everything in video is exponential.
Explore the training tutorials available by Mark Spencer. You will get an idea of how his super powerful machine reacts with the software.
Adding a light roughly doubles the processing time over flat scenes. Two lights increases processing again. Reflections require processing the lights and then calculating the reflections so add another quarter of the time required for flat scenes. Add camera movement, motion blur, and depth of field and you need exponentially more processing time for every frame. The preload of renders into RAM is one of the cooler features of Motion, as comapred to After Effects, but that takes tons of time, to.
Try working in ye olde DV resolution for a few days. Get to know the software's limitations and what gets imposed by your Macintosh. Step up to 720p/30 and see how things slow down.

Photoshop CS6 keeps crashing. I am using a brand new IMAC, I have 16GB RAM recently updated as it was running slow with 8GB and lots of hardrive space. When it crashes, i lose all my presents and it changes my preferences, it also fails to save or produce

Photoshop CS6 keeps crashing. I am using a brand new IMAC, I have 16GB RAM recently updated as it was running slow with 8GB and lots of hardrive space. When it crashes, i lose all my presents and it changes my preferences, it also fails to save or produce a recovered file despite settings asking it to do so every 5 mins now. When i try to report the problem, it says it has found an issue and gives me a link to a solution....but wont let me click on the link.... PLEASE HELP! It's killing my productivity.

If the crash started right after you added RAM, it could be a bad Ram dimm. You can try this - change the amount of RAM in Photoshop to 4G, this should stop Photoshop from using the higher ram. If it doesn't crash, it's probably the ram. Or run a diagnostic app. You don't say when it crashes, what you're doing when it crashes - it there a pattern? Did it ever work on this computer? Did it work on your previous computer? Without a lot of data, it could be related to the new computer... What OS version? Did you recently update it? Have you updated Photoshop to the most recent update?
Do you have any plug-ins loaded? Try restarting Photoshop, and immediately press & hold the shfit key to turn off plug-ins.

Will this mac run garageband and if so what version? the mac i am considering is a Apple Power PC G5, Dual 2GHz Processors, 160GB hard drive, 2GB RAM, OS X 10.5.1 installed .

Hi, I am a newbie to mac's , but i am considering buying the following mac to hopefully run a version of garageband(though i am unsure as to the versions available and what will run on this mac?).
The mac is a power pc g5 with a 160gb hd 2gb ram osx 10.5.1 is installed(i am now aware that i can update this to 10.5.8 via apple) what verisons of garageband work best on this set up ? the mac would come with a disc ilife08 though i am not sure if this has any music software on it?
any help would be nice.
Many thanks J

Thanks for the reply, i am interested in this mac to try out this platform....i understand what you are saying.....but i do not wish to spend too much money on something i may not get on with(even though people say macs are the best).
I thought that the price i can buy this mac(£100 all in) was a good entry level to look at this platform and if i like it i can always invest further money down the line in an intel based mac.
Can anyone advise if this spec can run the garage band on the ilife disc?
Is it possible on the version on ilife 08 to use appleloops?
ANy help would be nice
Many Thanks Jay

IMAC early 2009 2GB RAM, 2.66ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, Im currently running Snow LEopard 10.6

So I have an iMAC early 2009 2GB RAM, 2.66ghz Intel Core 2 Duo, Im currently running Snow LEopard 10.6 & I tried upgrading to Yosemite 10.10 today and right before it finishes it cancels download and says unable to download application "NSInternalInconsistentexception" ??? how do i fix this

Mavericks is no longer available from the App Store, so your choice is Yosemite. One option is to create a new partition (~30- 50 GB), install the new OS, and ‘test drive’ it. If you like/don’t like it it, you can then remove the partition. Do a backup before you do anything. By doing this, if you don’t like it you won't have to go though the revert process.
Check to make sure your applications are compatible.
Application Compatibility
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Will ML run slow on 2GB RAM iMac?

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