Can a mid-2010 MacBook Pro accept faster RAM?

[King Mustard]

The 6,2 supports DDR3-1066 (PC3-8500) RAM.

If faster DDR3 RAM was installed, would the laptop still work? (though, of course, running the RAM at a slower speed)

 

[Raz0rEdge]

The MBP came with DDR3 RAM and installed faster RAM is useless since the memory bus will not make use of the additional speed. If the RAM, on the other hand, doesn't like to run at a lower than its native speed, you'll end up seeing a lot of issues.

If you want to upgrade the AMOUNT of memory, do so with the compatible memory.

 

[Slydude]

That's good advice.

I'll take things one step further when it comes to memory upgrades. If you already have 8 GB or more of RAM and you're doing basic tasks you may not significantly benefit from more memory. I've purchased more memory before and not had it make a significant difference in the Mac's performance

Before you purchase new memory, perform the following check to see if it's even needed:

1. Reboot your Mac.
2. Open your Utility folder and launch Activity Monitor.
3. Click the Memory tab and move the window to a point where you can see it.
4. Go about your normal tasks as usual. If you experience slowdowns check Activity Monitor. If the memory pressure consistently shows yellow or red you might benefit from more memory.

If you consistently see green on the pressure graph, adding additional memory probably won't produce a noticeable improvement in your Mac's performance.

If you have tasks that you don't perform often but do put the computer under significant load it might be worth checking those as well.

 

[Raz0rEdge]

A lot of people equate memory (or lack thereof) to performance and that's wrong in most cases. This is because the word 'performance' is overloaded in most cases.

If you have 8GB of memory and are doing photo manipulation of RAW files, you're going to see issues because the application is going to have a hard time keeping enough of the data in memory for manipulation and constantly swapping data between memory and the hard drive. In this case, increasing memory to 32GB or more will greatly benefit this use case.

If you have 8GB of memory and are compiling a complicated program and if the CPU isn't up to the task, the performance issue will manifest as very long compilation times. In this case, using a faster/better CPU will benefit the this use case.

It's important to match the machine (CPU, memory and so on) to the use case.