Does 8GB memory stick work on MBP 2009 13?'?

I have MBP 2009 13’’ but one slot is out, so only one slot works.

I put 4GB in that remaining one slot, but it’s still slow. I’m thinking of buying an 8GB stick, to see if it will work. Does anyone know if it works?

 

I don't think so but I could be wrong. Nevertheless, an SSD would provide a much bigger upgrade over adding 8GB of RAM (or even 16GB of RAM) on the 2009 13" MacBook Pro. At this point, the bottleneck is going to be the hard drive and the CPU in there which, if I remember correctly, is a Core 2 Duo.

 

no in 2009 models it will not take 8GB sticks. ( nor will any 2010 models and many 2011 )

 

I have a bunch of stuff stored on the current 1TB hard drive. I will have to take it out and before I do so I will have to move the contents to an external hard drive. The only external drive I have is the WD cloud which is extremely hard to use, you can move only a few files at a time and that pretty slowly, and heavy files like bluray won't even transfer.

So I guess I'll have buy a new external drive that isn't cloud, and then put in a SSD and then maybe get rid of the CD slot to put the 1TB as well for storage.

Does putting in that SSD make the virtual memory go up?

Hmm would it be better to just buy a high end laptop instead of trying to update this thing? Can you replace the processor with a better one?

 

The 2010 13-inch will take 16 GB, but not the 15- or 17-inch. All 2011 models take 16 GB, depsite what Apple's official documentation says.

1) Probably.

2) Only the RAM and hard drive are upgradable in these Macs.

 

I think that all depends on what type of performance advancements you are trying to get out of it. If you're looking at generally speeding up day-to-day operations, buying and installing an SSD would be the least expensive route while being perfectly acceptable. However, if you want to make it so that the system actually runs (and not loads) complex programs faster (Photoshop) while cutting down on the exporting of HD videos, you would be better off buying a newer system. An SSD would make that MBP boot to OS X a lot faster, load programs faster, etc. However, it won't help when it comes to running CPU and GPU intensive programs. Things will load faster but, as I said, the bottleneck on your system (aside from the HDD) is going to be the Core 2 Duo CPU. It's still fine for everyday activity like running Office, surfing the internet, and watching SD videos (though, if your MBP has an Nvidia GPU, it should be able to play HD videos too, just not 1440p or 4K). If that's all you're looking at speeding up, an inexpensive SSD (maybe a 128GB SATAII SSD for about $50) would do fine.

 

What does "cutting down in the exporting if HD videos" mean?

 

According to both EveryMac.com and Mactracker, the mid-2009 13" MacBook Pro can only accept a maximum of 8GB of RAM, indicating that each RAM slot will only accept a maximum of 4GB per slot. You could try bringing the computer to a computer store (not big box), and see if they may have a used 8GB stick that you can use to test the computer's ability to accept more than 4GB sticks. However, YouTube may be your friend in this case. Try searching for a video on RAM upgrades for your particular MacBook Pro.

 

It means just that, cutting down in the time it takes to export HD videos. Extra RAM and an SSD won't help with CPU intensive tasks like encoding videos, you would need a newer system to do that. Like I said, extra RAM and an SSD will only really help with day-to-day activities on a system that old. So it all depends on what type of performance gains you are hoping to get out of this. If you want to speed of Photoshop or encoding SD/HD videos, you won't see much of a difference with more RAM and an SSD. If you want Chrome to load faster, the system to boot into OS X within ~20 seconds, or for programs to load quicker, an SSD and extra RAM will do exactly that.

 

How is it still possible when both sites say that it can only accept a maximum of 8GB?

 

He's not saying it is, but rather to experiment yourself. Though in your case, I would strongly recommend having someone else do the installation for you, and make sure whatever you buy is returnable should it not work.