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To 32GB of RAM...and beyond?
- Thread starter Michael73
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Usually Apple's posted limits are due to what is available at the time of testing, however some are limited by chipsets. The Mac LCII was limited to 10MB of RAM even though you could install 12MB due to chipset, and the first MacBooks/MBPs were limited to 2GB due to the chipset, eventhough their 32-bit processors could use 4GB.
TEG
TEG
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I think that the largest stick that is ever going to be available is the 4GB. If an 8GB is made it will probably change the design of the RAM and not work in the current Mac Pro but this is just speculation on my part. Another thing to consider is the max RAM recognized by OS X. Is it 32Gb or is it more?
I think that the largest stick that is ever going to be available is the 4GB. If an 8GB is made it will probably change the design of the RAM and not work in the current Mac Pro but this is just speculation on my part. Another thing to consider is the max RAM recognized by OS X. Is it 32Gb or is it more?
After I made my original post, I found this:
http://www.memorydeal.net/8gb-of-ram-memory-module-upgrade-ddr2.php
Apparently, Samsung is making them.
Boy are they salty!!!!!!!
Anyone heard of these bad boys in the wild in a MP?
http://www.memorydeal.net/8gb-of-ram-memory-module-upgrade-ddr2.php
Apparently, Samsung is making them.
Boy are they salty!!!!!!!
Anyone heard of these bad boys in the wild in a MP?
im sure a crazy Photoshop Pro would be more than happy to use it.
also rendering farms for animation studios and research.
Yeah just wait till snow leoaprd.
"To accommodate the enormous amounts of memory being added to advanced hardware, Snow Leopard extends the 64-bit technology in Mac OS X to support breakthrough amounts of RAM up to a theoretical 16TB, or 500 times more than what is possible today. More RAM makes applications run faster, because more of their data can be kept in the very fast physical RAM instead of on the much slower hard disk."
http://www.apple.com/macosx/snowleopard/
under the 64bit column.
(from archive.org)
This is what Apple claimed:
"The dual-core PowerPC G5 joins forces with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger to enable 64-bit computation. With 42 bits of physical address space, the PowerPC G5 supports a colossal 4 terabytes (4TB) of system memory. Although its not currently feasible to purchase 4TB of RAM, the advanced architecture of the PowerPC G5 allows for plenty of growth in the future."
Hm.
This is what Apple claimed:
"The dual-core PowerPC G5 joins forces with Mac OS X v10.4 Tiger to enable 64-bit computation. With 42 bits of physical address space, the PowerPC G5 supports a colossal 4 terabytes (4TB) of system memory. Although its not currently feasible to purchase 4TB of RAM, the advanced architecture of the PowerPC G5 allows for plenty of growth in the future."
Hm.
The hardware is capable of supporting it, but the software, regular OS X 10.5, is limited at 32GB. Vista is currently limited to a more generous 128GB.
I thought it was 32GB using 8 DIMM slots and 64GB if the logic board maker installed 16 DIMM slots for these chipsets.
The 5000x was ...
• Supports up to 16 dual-ranked FB-DDR2 4GB DIMMs, that is, 64GB of physical memory in non-mirrored configuration or 32GB of physical memory in mirrored configuration.
The 5400 says ....
• Supports up to 16 dual-ranked FB-DDR2 8GB DIMMs, i.e. 128 GB of physical memory
Of course since we don't make use of all the available server options, we only use half the max memory due to the 8 DIMMs.
The new 5400 Mac Pros "may support" the 8GB dimms, don't know about the older ones.
The 5000x was ...
• Supports up to 16 dual-ranked FB-DDR2 4GB DIMMs, that is, 64GB of physical memory in non-mirrored configuration or 32GB of physical memory in mirrored configuration.
The 5400 says ....
• Supports up to 16 dual-ranked FB-DDR2 8GB DIMMs, i.e. 128 GB of physical memory
Of course since we don't make use of all the available server options, we only use half the max memory due to the 8 DIMMs.
The new 5400 Mac Pros "may support" the 8GB dimms, don't know about the older ones.
Both Mac Pros are capable of handling 8gb sticks as long as the fall down the correct fsb requirement of their chipsets. They both can physically handle 64gb of ram, but the OS will only see 32gb, and thus only 32gb can be used.
And to run it well?Is that the minimum requirement to run it?
For me, with 32GB of RAM, I would:
Play Halo, Age of Empires II at the same time
Listen to iTunes
Use Celestia (Link:http://www.shatters.net/celestia/index.html)
Buy and use Photoshop with the tasks above and below
Use iPhoto
Web-browse
All at the same time.
My work has a dell machine with 32 gigs of ram running about 10 virtual machines on it. It uses about 28 gigs of ram when they are all running. Pretty cool how it all works too.
Tradgedies said:
People were asking what you could use 1GB RAM for 10 years ago...
personally, i'd keep all of my programs loaded in that RAM...forever...for permanently 'warm' starts
as for what i'd do with the other 20GB, i'll have to find a particularly large photoshop file...
I'm rendering stuff in FCP while web browsing and listening to podcasts, maybe running a WinXP virtual machine as well via Fusion. I'm 'only' working with 720p video, I could see 32 gigs or more being an absolute must if working with 1080p or 2K video, given whatever app you're working in can make use of it.
