Anyone upgrade there 13 inch aluminum macbook to 6 or even 8 gb? I have 4 now but use fusion and would like to allocate more ram to it. Looking for any speed improvements and such. Tnks
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6GB in 13 inch aluminum macbook
- Thread starter bearcatrp
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xraydoc
Contributor
Won't do 8GB AFAIK, but it'll take 6GB. And while there may be a 5%-10% hit in memory access speed (not processor speed), if you really require 6GB you'll gain a lot more speed by not having to swap to virtual memory than you'd lose by not running the RAM in dual-channel mode.
Good point. Thanks. Was thinking of adding a 4gb stick now to max at 6gb, then when price lowers later, add another 4gb stick to get a match set even though it will only recognize 6. Price on a 4gb stick is pricey but running windows 7 or xp with 1.5gb allocated to keep the vm down sucks. thanks again.
alphaod
macrumors Core
Don't do that; if you add another 4GB stick later it will recognize 8GB, but your computer will stop working once you use more than 4GB of RAM; only a restart will fix it.
The max is 6GB.
sosaysiburke
macrumors member
pellets007
macrumors 6502a
They do not make 3GB DIMMs. It is 2GB+4GB, sacrificing the benefits of dual-channel for more RAM. Should he exceed 4GB, the extra 2GB might benefit him.
No Speed Hit
With 6GB it won't take a speed hit compared to 4GB.
The lower 4GB run at dual channel speeds. and the last 2GB runs at single channel speed (which is much much faster than your hard drive's virtual memory)
ALL of the chipsets Apple has used in their Intel-based macs offer dual channel interleaved mode with mismatched pairs.
The branding of this feature is Intel FlexMemory can't remember what Nvidia calls it.
"The matching amount of memory per channel will be run in Dual channel interleaved mode and the remaining unmatched memory will run in Asymmetric mode."
With 6GB it won't take a speed hit compared to 4GB.
The lower 4GB run at dual channel speeds. and the last 2GB runs at single channel speed (which is much much faster than your hard drive's virtual memory)
ALL of the chipsets Apple has used in their Intel-based macs offer dual channel interleaved mode with mismatched pairs.
The branding of this feature is Intel FlexMemory can't remember what Nvidia calls it.
"The matching amount of memory per channel will be run in Dual channel interleaved mode and the remaining unmatched memory will run in Asymmetric mode."