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JLUGO35
Jul 21, 2009, 12:09 AM
Hello everyone. I was thinking about purchasing a MacBook with the money I saved up and upgrading the ram a few months later. I read that it only supports up to 4 gigs of ram. I also found that some of the older MacBooks can support up to 6 gigs of ram but have not found any info on the current model Apple sells. My question is can the new white MacBooks support over 4 gigs of ram, if not is this a hardware or software issue? If it is a software issue will it be solved by installing Snow Leopard since it can support 16 terabytes of ram? Thanks


NewMacbookPlz
Jul 21, 2009, 12:12 AM
Seems to be a firmware issue more than anything else, or possibly an artificial software limitation as the OS knows what hardware it's being installed on.

We'll find out when SL launches, unless some devs have dabbled with this issue, but I haven't heard anything of that sort yet.
megamanbnmaster
Jul 21, 2009, 02:03 AM
It is a chipset issue. If your chipset is the pre Nvidia one, then it'll only support a max of 4 gb. If the chipset is Nvidia, it will support 8 gigs. However, there is a second issue of Apple blocking additions with firmware. So it's a mix of both.
JLUGO35
Jul 21, 2009, 02:20 AM
It is a chipset issue. If your chipset is the pre Nvidia one, then it'll only support a max of 4 gb. If the chipset is Nvidia, it will support 8 gigs. However, there is a second issue of Apple blocking additions with firmware. So it's a mix of both.

I will be buying it during NC's tax free weekend so it will have the Nvidia 9400 chipset I believe.
admanimal
Jul 21, 2009, 02:21 AM
My question is can the new white MacBooks support over 4 gigs of ram, if not is this a hardware or software issue? If it is a software issue will it be solved by installing Snow Leopard since it can support 16 terabytes of ram? Thanks

Leopard (10.5) can already support 32GB of RAM. It's only individual applications that are limited to accessing 4GB of RAM, since they are 32-bit. 32-bit essentially means that the application only has the ability to address 2^32 bytes of memory, hence the 4GB limit. Snow Leopard will include support for 16TB of physical RAM, and individual 64-bit applications will effectively have support for unlimited (ok...16 billion GB) RAM.

Any current limit below 32GB is hardware or firmware based.
clyde2801
Jul 21, 2009, 06:05 AM
Mactracker lists the early 2009 2 ghz nvidia macbook as having an unofficial 6 gig limit, so I'll wager that the new ones probably have it as well.
JLUGO35
Jul 21, 2009, 04:19 PM
Six gigs of rams should be sufficent enough until I buy another laptop bout 5 or so years down the line. Was hoping for 8 somehow to take advantage of dual channeling.
Jeffrosproto
Jul 21, 2009, 04:23 PM
I'm pretty sure that the MacBooks with the NVidia Chipset support 6gb of ram.
Zillicah
Jul 21, 2009, 05:19 PM
holy crap! snow leopard can support up to 16tb of ram!?!?!?
NewMacbookPlz
Jul 21, 2009, 07:36 PM
holy crap! snow leopard can support up to 16tb of ram!?!?!?

That's the upper limit of a full 64-bit operating system. It'll be a little while till mobo's support that sort of memory volume.