apple even acknowledges this through a page on their website about installing ram on the late 2008 macbooks
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1651#link2
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1651#link2
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'Secret' Firmware Update Unlocks Support for 8 GB RAM on 'Late 2008' Notebooks
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Wait a GD second!
In OSX, there's no way to disable the paging file (virtual memory). This is a real problem is if you have an SSD, because half the memory is allocated on the hard drive. That means your SSD will be toast in a few years. It doesn't matter how much stuff you have open (how much memory is allocated). The operating system is always writing memory to the hard drive. Does that seem counter-productive? When you open an app, the whole point is for it to be accessible in real time, right? And you don't want it destroying your SSD slowly over time!?
In Windows 7, you can disable the paging file, and all your memory can be allocated in physical memory. It's nice just to have the option. Apple, however, loves to hide these little details, so they force you too use whatever primary hard drive for virtual memory allocation, even if it's an SSD with a questionable life span, or even an HDD.
And the argument that you don't use more than 4GB of RAM, ever, is ridiculous! Maybe you're not commanding the system to by opening a bunch of apps, but the SYSTEM will be!
Yes. In Windows, if you go over the physical RAM amount and the paging file is turned off, you'll BSOD. But if you have enough RAM, you won't! Unless you run multiple VMs or several games at once, this won't be a problem.
Apple needs to allow users to decided whether they want a paging file, especially with the cost of SSDs. If one dies and it's not on warranty, it's not a good day. And I'm more than ready to blame it on virtual memory allocation.
In OSX, there's no way to disable the paging file (virtual memory). This is a real problem is if you have an SSD, because half the memory is allocated on the hard drive. That means your SSD will be toast in a few years. It doesn't matter how much stuff you have open (how much memory is allocated). The operating system is always writing memory to the hard drive. Does that seem counter-productive? When you open an app, the whole point is for it to be accessible in real time, right? And you don't want it destroying your SSD slowly over time!?
In Windows 7, you can disable the paging file, and all your memory can be allocated in physical memory. It's nice just to have the option. Apple, however, loves to hide these little details, so they force you too use whatever primary hard drive for virtual memory allocation, even if it's an SSD with a questionable life span, or even an HDD.
And the argument that you don't use more than 4GB of RAM, ever, is ridiculous! Maybe you're not commanding the system to by opening a bunch of apps, but the SYSTEM will be!
Yes. In Windows, if you go over the physical RAM amount and the paging file is turned off, you'll BSOD. But if you have enough RAM, you won't! Unless you run multiple VMs or several games at once, this won't be a problem.
Apple needs to allow users to decided whether they want a paging file, especially with the cost of SSDs. If one dies and it's not on warranty, it's not a good day. And I'm more than ready to blame it on virtual memory allocation.
Nice. I probably would have bought an 8GB kit about 5-6 months ago when I added more RAM to my machine had I known about this, but I find the 6GB in it instead to be enough for my needs. That, plus the 120GB SSD I put in it about 3 months ago and it flies. Fast enough that I'm not looking to replace it any time soon (though the 11" MBA sure looks slick).
As a developer, running our web app and my development environment, I'm maxing out 8GB of RAM fairly frequently. Were I also running our DB (which would have to be silo'd off in a VM running Windows as Oracle no longer supports OS X) 12GB RAM would be necessary, min.
My wife's machine has 4GB RAM and Flash enabled, and frequently starts showing 3.9GB+ "used" memory and things start stuttering. Hers will be getting an 8GB upgrade soon (and Click2Flash perhaps as well ...).
It is dirt cheap and you do not get much of a price benefit purchasing lower density DIMMs.
Depending on the speed 4 GB x 2 hovers around the $59-99 sweet spot. I remember buying my 4 GB back in 2007 and this was in the age of 1 GB in Apple's notebooks.
I wish I could get 8GB for my Early 2008, but it's probably the memory controller in Intel's chipset limiting it.
It should be an option, definitely.
But, if you check Activity Monitor, System Memory tab, you can see how much has actually been swapped out. On my system, which has been up almost 3 days, it says 80KB. Even though it says I have 4MB of swap file 'in use,' and have 478MB of swap-ins. The discrepancy is likely partially due to executable code, which doesn't get swapped; it just gets thrown out, and reloaded from the executable file if needed. My actual swapfile is 64MB as allocated on disk.
So, if you do have enough RAM, OS X doesn't appear to be over-eager in writing to the swapfile to an extent that an SSD would have any reduced lifetime. But there is probably plenty of other places to look, such as temporary files, needless rewriting of large sections of data, web browser caches, etc.
actually the computer you are talking about was an early 2009 upgrade. they upgraded to a 2.66 ghz on the mbp 15" and also more on the 17" mbp. i have the same computer and got confused because the computer thinks its a late 2008 when apple considers it an early 2009. however it was still one that only supported up to 4 gb until this upgrade. cant wait to add 8 gb. just waiting to find some that are on sale for like $80I have a 2.66 15" Late 2008 MacBook Pro, my firmware matches the upgraded listing to allow 8GB of RAM. Pretty cool
http://www.everymac.com/systems/app....66-aluminum-15-early-2009-unibody-specs.html
Unfortunately I cannot remember where I read this (believe it was Anandtech) but the fear of burning out any decent SSD is vastly overblown - it would take many years (10?) at 24x7 heavy use to even approach it.
Given the rate at which technology moves forward, I can't envision using any SSD bought today for more than, say, 5 years at the very most.
I maxed out my 4GB late '08 system last night with three massive pictures opened in Photoshop at the same time.
I can easily max 4GB with just Safari, EW's Multisim and some Pages working. Trust me, I need the 8GB and my Collector's Edition MacBook will be happy to get this update.
I have 12gb RAM in my iMac and looking at iStat, after 17 days since last reboot I've had 83,053 pageouts!!
It's heartbreaking to know my Mac is having to do all those page outs
I think I'm going to call OWC and upgrade to 16GB and see if that helps...
ANY reading, writing or even running a conventional spindle based HD will slowly destroy it over time.
I have long runtimes on most of my systems and I average very few pageins/outs however it is very nice to have when the systems needs it.
Running a unix system out of memory will cause bad things to happen. I think most people would much rather take a small performance hit and have the system write out to swap rather then just fall over.
With things like hardware based wear leveling and TRIM this problem is greatly reduced. Also, in this day and age most people replace hard drives every few years anyways because of space needs alone.
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I have 232MB free of 4GB. Photoshop and FCE don't like eachother!
Good to know I can upgrade, but I will most likely buy a new computer by the time I need it.
Good to know I can upgrade, but I will most likely buy a new computer by the time I need it.
I have 4GB in my 15" MBP and I consistently max out. Anyone using a Mac in a professional setting (business or video/film/graphics) will always be able to use 4GB very quickly. Even when my primary machine was my Mac mini with 8GB, I regularly used over 6GB.
Trust me, when it maxes out you'll know it. Your smooth Mac becomes very unresponsive and sluggish...
What RAM did you use? I tried to swap my memory (same specs) from my Mac mini (8GB) into my MBP and I just got the three beeps of death when I tried to turn it on. Does it have to be a specific brand and/or spec?
well you have to remember the OS is going to see more ram free and be more willing to use it. It likes to keep so much free for the OS and become pickier the closer to gets to maxing it out. I would say the same thing but I have 6 gigs in my current computer and have crossed 4 gigs all the time. I can watch how quickly it will climb until it starts getting close to crossing 4 gigs then it wants to start to be a little picker and slows down its rate of climb.
I have 12gb RAM in my iMac and looking at iStat, after 17 days since last reboot I've had 83,053 pageouts!!
It's heartbreaking to know my Mac is having to do all those page outs
And a page is like 4 kByte? So you had 320 MByte written do disk - over 17 days? I would not think this is much.
Activity Monitor shows a nice summary of your hard disk activity. I think most people vastly overestimate the amount of data that gets written to disk...
I have 12gb RAM in my iMac and looking at iStat, after 17 days since last reboot I've had 83,053 pageouts!!
It's heartbreaking to know my Mac is having to do all those page outs
Boohoo.
How many page ins? Close to or over a million? If the # of page outs is < half # of page ins, there is absolutely no reason at all to upgrade memory. It won't make your system any faster or better responsive. If it is more than half, your system could use a memory upgrade and the closer the two numbers are together, the higher your need for memory.
Number of page outs are completely irrelevant and don't mean diddle squat, unless viewed in relation to the number of page ins.
Great deal!
Coincidentally, Newegg just launched a shell shocker for a 8GB (2 x 4GB) kit of Corsair RAM for $69.99 free shipping. Corsair is one of the major brands along with Kingston, Crucial, etc. There seem to be a few negative reviews for dead sticks on this particular product, however the RAM comes with plenty of warranties (30-day Newegg and Lifetime Corsair), so it should be fine to take the deal and just run Memtest for a while once you install it to make sure you didn't get any defective sticks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233081
This deal will only last for a few more hours, then it's up (10am PST).
Coincidentally, Newegg just launched a shell shocker for a 8GB (2 x 4GB) kit of Corsair RAM for $69.99 free shipping. Corsair is one of the major brands along with Kingston, Crucial, etc. There seem to be a few negative reviews for dead sticks on this particular product, however the RAM comes with plenty of warranties (30-day Newegg and Lifetime Corsair), so it should be fine to take the deal and just run Memtest for a while once you install it to make sure you didn't get any defective sticks.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820233081
This deal will only last for a few more hours, then it's up (10am PST).
You CAN disable paging. I have disabled on my macbook. I have 0 page outs. Now I don't know what happens if I fill the 8gb
I have also changed sleep to stop writing to the ssd, and changed the mount options to noatime.
I think (and I'm not at all qualified in GAP to say for sure one way or the other on this) that the reason Apple doesn't need to charge for this is that even though they advertised it as being able to take up to 4GB of RAM, it's not really a feature, it's a bug. The customer already has to purchase RAM on their own. It's the firmware on the device that isn't working properly with the RAM they purchased. So, Apple can slip in the fix that allows the machine to properly recognize 8GB of RAM and not have any problems with accounting procedures.
Also, Apple products are notorious for accepting more RAM than Apple advertised -- my previous MacBook2,1 had 4GB installed, which left about 3.5GB usable. Apple advertised that it's max was 2GB, but it worked just fine with 4GB in it. I know there are others as well that I had with more RAM in them than the max advertised.
Also, Apple products are notorious for accepting more RAM than Apple advertised -- my previous MacBook2,1 had 4GB installed, which left about 3.5GB usable. Apple advertised that it's max was 2GB, but it worked just fine with 4GB in it. I know there are others as well that I had with more RAM in them than the max advertised.
GAA is a mutherfu....bberinksy! I wonder if Apple says the previous 6GB cap was imposed due to a defect in design/manufacturing. The firmware update address the "memory defect" and other problems. This way with the firmware update they would be addressing the defect instead of adding a feature. Consumers keep their soda/candy money. Those 3 class action lawyers would have a field day with Apple's "covering up the defect." Just some ramblings.
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