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2008 Aluminum MacBook Mountain Lion

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MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
Hello, My Girlfriend has the 2008 Unibody Aluminum Macbook. 2GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB of Ram and a 250GB 5400rpm Drive. The machine runs Lion pretty good, Should Mountian Lion be better or worse as far as smoothness and performance? She mostly uses iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Safari and Chrome and some occasional gaming.

Thanks
 
east85

east85

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2010
1,343
495
MacSquirrel said:
Hello, My Girlfriend has the 2008 Unibody Aluminum Macbook. 2GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB of Ram and a 250GB 5400rpm Drive. The machine runs Lion pretty good, Should Mountian Lion be better or worse as far as smoothness and performance? She mostly uses iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Safari and Chrome and some occasional gaming.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have the same Macbook (barring the 2.0ghz processor) and it runs with Mountain Lion GM much better than it did with Lion. I think Mountain Lion manages memory much more efficiently and is basically a more polished version of Lion. I would recommend upgrading to it when it comes out.
 
Drew017

Drew017

macrumors 65816
May 29, 2011
1,254
11
East coast, USA
MacSquirrel said:
Hello, My Girlfriend has the 2008 Unibody Aluminum Macbook. 2GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB of Ram and a 250GB 5400rpm Drive. The machine runs Lion pretty good, Should Mountian Lion be better or worse as far as smoothness and performance? She mostly uses iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Safari and Chrome and some occasional gaming.

Thanks
Click to expand...

ML should be better in both smoothness and performance. It runs quite well on my MacBook (2009), and I'd definitely recommend it ;)
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
Wow thanks for such quick responses! Its good to hear that there is going to be a performance boost with ML, I can't wait!!! She adores that computer and im thinking about putting 8GB of ram in there. I have a 2.4 MacBook Pro 13" with 8GB of ram and a 500GB seagate momentus XT should be pretty speedy. Only a couple days left!!!
 
krspkbl

krspkbl

macrumors 68020
Jul 20, 2012
2,097
5,135
Thanks for posting this!

I have the late 2008 aluminium Macbook. 2.4Ghz, 8GB RAM, 250GB HD (256GB SSD soon when ML comes out!).

Glad to hear that it will run smoothly :D Will be much better with the SSD installed!!
 
M

MarkDK2

macrumors newbie
Jul 22, 2012
7
0
Running it on a aluminum late 2008 macbook with 8gb of ram and 120gb OCZ vertex 3 SSD and ML runs very smoothly and with great enhancements. I would recommend it.
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
My Girlfriend does not have an SSD yet but i am considering getting one for her before her upcoming semester in college. Should turn it into a rocket once installed :) Getting really excited for Mountain Lion now. Still can't believe its only 20$
 
B

BelgianThunder

macrumors newbie
Aug 10, 2012
4
0
Belgium
Sorry for reopening this page

I've got a MacBook Alumium 2008 and I'm running Mountain Lion on it. It runs perfect!
Only problem I have, NOT concerning the OS X, is that I'm a Master student so I need a strong laptop (PS: I don't like Microsoft based pc's, due to bad experiences) so I'd like to upgrade my 2GB (2x1GB) RAM memory up to it's max. I'd hope for a 8GB RAM (2x4GB) but after contacting some Apple Premium Resellers who've told me that I can only go up to 4GB (2x2GB) for €100 (I live in Belgium). After spotting this forum, I've noticed some of you have the same MacBook as I do, with 8GB RAM memory, so it seems possible. My question is, IS IT? Because €200 is a lot of money for a non-working upgrade. :confused::confused:

Thank you for reading, hope to get replies soon.

BelgianThunder

PS: What's the great advantage of a SSD? (coming back to earlier posts)
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
I have seen multiple people with 8GBs in their machines because their was a firmware update a while back that enabled 8GB or 2x4GB sticks to be read by the logic board. It would boost your graphics performance because the graphics memory is shared with system ram. When i put 4GB in my girlfriends she instantly saw the speed difference. 8GB would probably be even better.

SSDs or Solid State Drives Provide multiple advantages.
1. No Moving Parts, Therefore movement of the MacBook would not put your data in risk and it would consume less power.
2.Much higher read & write speeds, Providing an instant boot, Apps launch instantly,transferring data is much quicker.

The really only disadvantage is the cost per gigabyte.

----------

About the 8GBs i have not done that upgrade yet so i can not confirm it, But i have seen multiple people with 8GB installed and it is seen by OS X as the full 8GBs.
 
smithrh

smithrh

macrumors 68030
Feb 28, 2009
2,722
1,730
I've been running 8GB RAM in my 2008 Aluminum ever since the firmware came out. Do it - it's cheap as dirt now.

Perhaps more importantly, SL *does* manage memory much much much better than Lion or Snow Leopard. Apple changed something in memory management with Snow Leopard and for the last few years, some of us (me included) have been having swapping issues even with high amounts of RAM.

Well, I can happily say now that I've been running ML for 2 straight weeks now without a single page out. In SL and Lion, I probably would have had to reboot several times now...

Oh yeah, overall ML runs great on it as well. Graphics are a notch or two better than Lion - something went backwards between SL and Lion on the graphics side and that's been rectified as well.
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
Good to hear. I have yet to install ML on her machine. i have it on my iMac and MacBook Pro and it runs rather well. Some benchmarks are a little lower than SL but thats to be expected with the first release. I plan to get 8GB for my girlfriends machine soon, i have 8GB in my MacBook Pro as well and its awesome.
 
I

imageWIS

macrumors 65816
Mar 17, 2009
1,281
822
NYC
MacSquirrel said:
Hello, My Girlfriend has the 2008 Unibody Aluminum Macbook. 2GHZ Core 2 Duo, 4GB of Ram and a 250GB 5400rpm Drive. The machine runs Lion pretty good, Should Mountian Lion be better or worse as far as smoothness and performance? She mostly uses iTunes, iPhoto, iCal, Mail, Safari and Chrome and some occasional gaming.

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have the same comp, but with a WD 7200 RPM 500GB 'Black' HD and it runs ML perfectly. It seems to manage RAM better than Lion on my Mac mini.
 
east85

east85

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2010
1,343
495
MacSquirrel said:
Good to hear. I have yet to install ML on her machine. i have it on my iMac and MacBook Pro and it runs rather well. Some benchmarks are a little lower than SL but thats to be expected with the first release. I plan to get 8GB for my girlfriends machine soon, i have 8GB in my MacBook Pro as well and its awesome.
Click to expand...

Definitely go 8GB, it will futureproof the machine for a while. Cheap upgrade too.
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
imageWIS said:
I have the same comp, but with a WD 7200 RPM 500GB 'Black' HD and it runs ML perfectly. It seems to manage RAM better than Lion on my Mac mini.
Click to expand...

I have the WD Black too, I had it in my WhiteBook and my MacBook Pro it was and still is a good drive. I have the Momentus XT Hybrid Drive in my MBP now. Great Speed for the money!
 
S

sometimesasleep

macrumors newbie
Sep 14, 2012
1
0
8 GB Ram on Mountain Lion

Hey

I have the unibody Macbook 2,4 GHz from 2008 and I would also like to upgrade to 8 GB Ram.

http://blog.macsales.com/9102-secret-firmware-lets-late-08-macbooks-use-8gb

According to this site I have to update my Boot ROM Version, but since i'm running ML i can't make this update. The installer just says i don't need this update and quits.
So my Question is: Do i need do downgrade on snow leopard to change my Boot ROM Version or will it run with the Boot-ROM-Version: MB51.007D.B03?
Or are there any other tricks?

Thanks for responding
 
M

MacSquirrel

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 16, 2011
37
0
Still haven't done the upgrade yet so i'm not 100% sure what you have to do if you have to do anything besides throwing the sticks in.
 
K

Krauser

macrumors regular
Jan 19, 2009
185
0
I hate to bump such an old thread but I've been looking all over for how well ML will run on an 08 unibody. I have the 2.0Ghz model and just want to know what it's like (battery life, lag if there is any, and overall performance) because I'm on SL right now and it's excellent. I don't want to compromise my machine reliability and current performance if its going to be worse. Thanks!
 
brop52

brop52

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2007
1,620
3
Michigan
Krauser said:
I hate to bump such an old thread but I've been looking all over for how well ML will run on an 08 unibody. I have the 2.0Ghz model and just want to know what it's like (battery life, lag if there is any, and overall performance) because I'm on SL right now and it's excellent. I don't want to compromise my machine reliability and current performance if its going to be worse. Thanks!
Click to expand...

At least 4GB of RAM and at least a 7200 RPM HDD help tremendously. Since those upgrades there isn't much lag. As for battery life, it's hard to gauge as my battery capacity is about 69%.
 
K

Krauser

macrumors regular
Jan 19, 2009
185
0
brop52 said:
At least 4GB of RAM and at least a 7200 RPM HDD help tremendously. Since those upgrades there isn't much lag. As for battery life, it's hard to gauge as my battery capacity is about 69%.
Click to expand...
I do have 4GB of RAM in my machine (contemplating picking up 8GB) and my hard drive is a 5400RPM 500GB WD Blue. I just picked up a new battery for mine because my capacity was right around where yours was and I was getting about an hour and a half to 2 hours with it at around 69% health. If you're getting about 2 hours of average use out of yours under ML, that should be almost the same.
 
brop52

brop52

macrumors 68000
Feb 26, 2007
1,620
3
Michigan
Krauser said:
I do have 4GB of RAM in my machine (contemplating picking up 8GB) and my hard drive is a 5400RPM 500GB WD Blue. I just picked up a new battery for mine because my capacity was right around where yours was and I was getting about an hour and a half to 2 hours with it at around 69% health. If you're getting about 2 hours of average use out of yours under ML, that should be almost the same.
Click to expand...

If you want to pick up a good deal join Newegg's email list and wait for a good deal on a HDD or SSD and the 8GB. I paid $29 for my RAM with the discount. The Seagate Momentus XT was heavily discounted as well when I purchased it.
 
L

Lawsarus

macrumors newbie
Jan 30, 2013
2
0
I have just upgrade my on Macbook Unibody 2008 (A1278) with SSD and to 8 GB RAM with EFI firmware updated to MB51:007D.003.

Currently its running on Snow Leopard and im planning to update to Mountain Lion. Which firmware should i run with the spec above? Should i maintain? Am i even running the correct firmware? Please advise.

Thanks all.
 
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