After doing some digging around, it sounds like the limitation has to do with the IntelHD graphics SW that is used by OS X.Ī 2010 i5/i7 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM running MountainLion/Mavericks will kernel panic during normal boot.

I believe there is an EFI limitation in OS X Mountain Lion that will not allow the 2010 i5/i7 Macbook Pro's to be upgraded over 8GB RAM. The type of RAM needed is DDR3 PC3-8500 1066. If you have a 2010 MacBook Pro Core2Duo (13'), then you are in luck and you can upgrade to 16GB RAM. The following table shows that the max RAM supported by your Macbook Pro based off size (mid 2010) is 16GB (officially 8GB).Īny mid-2010 MacBook Pro i5 or i7 is limited to a maximum of 8GB RAM.

OWC continously tests the max RAM which apple computers support - which is usually more than Apple officially states. Note that for all-around computing, the SSD might actually outperform the 8GB memory, since some programs have modest memory needs, but access the drive significantly.(Note: The original post said 'No', which was right at the time it was written, but as of February 15th, 2014, the OWC page says that you can install up to 16GB of RAM on mid 2010 MacBooks (2.4GHz).) It Depends. The SSD is also a huge improvement, but having 8GB is a better choice than the SSD for this type of work. The gray bar is the standard Apple configuration- miserably slow performance.įor this workload, 8GB memory is clearly the best first-choice performance optimization. That’s because the problem size for the diglloydMedium benchmark used here approaches 16GB.

If the MacBook Pro could accept 16GB memory, times would likely drop another 50% or so.

A solid state drive provides a compelling benefit for performance when memory is too low.

Too little memory, e.g., 4GB, just kills performance: it’s a threshold effect.

General observations apply to other Macs. Therefore, results with 4GB are also shown. But the MacBook Air is limited to 4GB (an upgrade at the time of ordering only), so a reasonable inference can be made as to the severe limitations for serious work with the ’Air. Memory prices have plummeted for the 2010 MacBook Pro, so it’s foolish to even consider a 4GB configuration for a MacBook Pro. I do not in general recommend just any solid state drive as some have issues. I used the OWC 8GB memory kit and the OWC solid state Mercury Extreme Pro and Pro RE drives for this test. As a proxy for all these tasks, the diglloydMedium benchmark was used as a reliable way to test the limits of drive speed and memory.

How to get BIG performance gains by upgrading the memory and drives in your MacBook Pro.įocus here is on demanding tasks, such as Adobe Photoshop editing, Lightroom 3 and video. Send Feedback Related: hard drive, how-to, laptop, MacBook, MacBook Pro, memory, Photoshop, RAID, RAID-0, software, SSD, storage

2010 macbook pro ram upgrade 16gb