How bad is 2GB Ram on a mac?

LudinK

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Jul 23, 2014
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So im looking to get this macbook air i found and and everything is good except it is 2GB ram. Now i have never owned a macbook before and dont know whether it uses less ram then pc's do. I only browse the web, and play League of legends on my laptop so im wondering if this laptop will be able to do it. It's specs are:
OSX 10.11 El Capitan
1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
2 GB Ram
256 GB SSD
 
Solution
There are a couple of different MB Airs that use 1.86 GHz core2duo CPUs. The gpu would either be a gforce 9400m or 320M. I had forgotten that they used the 320M. For integrated graphics, it's actually not too bad. It's slightly better than the Intel HD 3000.
There are some reports of League being playable on the Macbook Pros with the same gpu, but those usually had much faster CPUs and more RAM.

I still would recommend finding a model with 4gb RAM. They don't usually cost much more.
It's usable for internet, but it won't be good. If you can get it for $150 and need the portablility-fine, but otherwise, you can probably get one with at least 4gb and an i5 for not much more money. You certainly could not expect to game on such a low spec.
 
1.86Ghz Core 2 Duo was a lower end processor in 2008. I've got an extra laptop with a Core2 P8400 2.26Ghz with 4GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD and it's fine just for browsing. 2GB of RAM will make having anything more than a tab or two open at a time unusable though. You would want to add memory.

I can play Civ IV on that laptop but it bogs down using more than one AI civilization as an opponent.
 


I'm no expert on LOL settings, but I wouldn't think so. It might run, but you would get pretty terrible performance. The GPU is very weak. The CPU old, clocked low, and will thermally throttle if you try to game with it.
 
There are a couple of different MB Airs that use 1.86 GHz core2duo CPUs. The gpu would either be a gforce 9400m or 320M. I had forgotten that they used the 320M. For integrated graphics, it's actually not too bad. It's slightly better than the Intel HD 3000.
There are some reports of League being playable on the Macbook Pros with the same gpu, but those usually had much faster CPUs and more RAM.

I still would recommend finding a model with 4gb RAM. They don't usually cost much more.
 
Solution