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6GB in MacBook (Pro); Yes it works. - 8GB... well...

nephilim7 said:
my mac pro handles piggy. something is awry, either with hardware or some aspect of OS X reacting differently based on the machine it thinks it's on.
Click to expand...

OK, I think I may have inadvertently let you astray... I shut down my MPB last night after copying all those music files (during which piggy was running 5x). I just rebooted my MBP and ran 5 instances again. This time there were notable differences:

1. The cpu bar graph did not pass about 1/4 their height. Last night they were pegged at the top.
2. I saw the "waiting for enter" prompt on the first 4 instances after about 30 seconds, and the 5th one showed up after about 2 min from start. Last night I never saw this "waiting for enter" prompt.
3. The fans on my MBP did not come on, as they did last night almost as soon as I started piggy.

I have attached a revised screen shot of the results from now (the cpu bar heights in the graph occurred when I pressed the cmd-shift-3 for the screen shot and was apparently captured by it).

If appropriate, I will edit my previous post with the screen shot to send future viewers to this post.

Sorry if I caused you trouble on your evaluation. :eek:
 

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Cave Man said:
OK, I think I may have inadvertently let you astray... I shut down my MPB last night after copying all those music files (during which piggy was running 5x). I just rebooted my MBP and ran 5 instances again. This time there were notable differences:

1. The cpu bar graph did not pass about 1/4 their height. Last night they were pegged at the top.
2. I saw the "waiting for enter" prompt on the first 4 instances after about 30 seconds, and the 5th one showed up after about 2 min from start. Last night I never saw this "waiting for enter" prompt.
3. The fans on my MBP did not come on, as they did last night almost as soon as I started piggy.

I have attached a revised screen shot of the results from now (the cpu bar heights in the graph occurred when I pressed the cmd-shift-3 for the screen shot and was apparently captured by it).

If appropriate, I will edit my previous post with the screen shot to send future viewers to this post.

Sorry if I caused you trouble on your evaluation. :eek:
Click to expand...


that a marked difference. this looks successful.

can you open 4 of them, leave them open and 'go about your daily business' and let me know how it goes?

I'm a bit wary about the 2 min thing... if you get a chance could you open one at a time waiting until one finishes and tell the results?

an apology may be in order, however the screenshot from OP shows swap when it shouldn't
 
OK, four instances of piggy, each started after the previous instance completes (and holding):

1. First took about 10 seconds to complete.
2. Second took about 25 seconds to complete.
3. Third one took about 3 minutes to complete.
4. Fourth took about 6 minutes to complete.

Observations with all four complete and holding:

1. Any app that was open prior to running the piggies behaved typically.
2. Any app opened after running the piggies was slow to launch (often with red font "not responding" in Activity Monitor, but eventually responded), and was sluggish, and frequent kernel panics.
3. Even after ending the piggy apps and the memory is released, the entire system is sluggish. Activity Monitor, pmTool both go to 30% cpu use, and a relaunch of Photoshop (90% use) takes several minutes to complete with a root app called 'spindump' appearing in activity monitor that fluctuates between 5% and 35% use (and PS is reporting as null).

Not good, I'd say. I'm going to restart the system to see how long PS should take to launch.
 
Cave Man said:
OK, after reboot, Photoshop CS3 takes 12 seconds to launch, versus several minutes after running piggy 4x, then terminating them before launching PS again. Ugly. Friggin' ugly...
Click to expand...

okay it looks like the memory is available to the OS but it allocates at a stupid slow rate.

and because it works in 10.6, and because 10.5 has zero problems with craploads of memory in the macpro it has to be OS X saying, this is a mbp, you're cut off at 4G.

this can probably be 'fixed'.
 
Cave Man said:
OK, after reboot, Photoshop CS3 takes 12 seconds to launch, versus several minutes after running piggy 4x, then terminating them before launching PS again. Ugly. Friggin' ugly...
Click to expand...

I experienced 0 lag with 4 piggy windows opened. Only after teh 5th, the system ram out of ram to work with (I only have 6GB vs your 8GB)
 
ayeying said:
I experienced 0 lag with 4 piggy windows opened. Only after teh 5th, the system ram out of ram to work with (I only have 6GB vs your 8GB)
Click to expand...

lag can be defined by interacting with the programs you already have loaded.

run 4 of them, and use your machine as normal, it should operate as a mac with 2gs of memory
 
alphaod said:
Great... should I accept the package tomorrow or not. :eek:
Click to expand...

from what I've seen having 8 gigs doesn't work properly in 10.5. I don't know if it's a softlimit or not as one of the testers has a clear bias and I don't have 8G to test with myself.

I'd say the results of that blogger stand right now.

the behavior he noted, and Caveman has verified is that the memory is used but anything above 4G suffers from a massive slowdown.

I'm debating buying 8G myself and having a real go at figuring out if it's possible to work around.
 
I'll buy at the end of this week or early next week and try what was posted here.
 
Okay, I just ran the c program myself. I'll have to confirm Cave Man's findings. Massive slowdowns after 4GB; even the screenshot app takes about a minute or so to take the pic and save it to desktop. Also 99%+ CPU used whenever a program needs the processor. Right now, typing and such, I have no issues, but loading a webpage is also slow. I checked my Internet on another computer and it's fine.

Here is a screenshot with 6 instances running:
3d2053c3.png


EDIT:

Don't buy it, unless you plan to do a lot of testing and playing around.
 
Before you RMA, can you test with 6GB instead of 8GB? I don't see any of these slow downs even with piggy using up 4GB ram in the background.
 
ayeying said:
My outside slot is 4GB, the inside slot is 2GB
Click to expand...

Ok, I just did the test with the chips in that order, and you are correct. It is smooth-sailing with 6 gb. The four instances of piggy took no more than 4 seconds each, and photoshop opens almost as fast (16 seconds) without them running. No lagging, no dragging. All is well.

Why would 6 gb work just fine, but 8 gb fail? This is getting stranger and stranger...
 
Cave Man said:
Ok, I just did the test with the chips in that order, and you are correct. It is smooth-sailing with 6 gb. The four instances of piggy took no more than 4 seconds each, and photoshop opens almost as fast (16 seconds) without them running. No lagging, no dragging. All is well.

Why would 6 gb work just fine, but 8 gb fail? This is getting stranger and stranger...
Click to expand...

What if the chip order is reversed?
 
Cave Man said:
Ok, I just did the test with the chips in that order, and you are correct. It is smooth-sailing with 6 gb. The four instances of piggy took no more than 4 seconds each, and photoshop opens almost as fast (16 seconds) without them running. No lagging, no dragging. All is well.

Why would 6 gb work just fine, but 8 gb fail? This is getting stranger and stranger...
Click to expand...

It seems that OSX Leopard has issues with 8GB. I don't have 8GB so I can't test in snow leopard... not to mention, I ran snow leopard off a 2.5" External Hard Drive so it was extremely slow regardless of anything.

fireloss said:
What if the chip order is reversed?
Click to expand...

It made no difference. I switched the rams to the inside slot with 4GB and outside with 2GB today and it was the same.
 
ayeying said:
It seems that OSX Leopard has issues with 8GB. I don't have 8GB so I can't test in snow leopard... not to mention, I ran snow leopard off a 2.5" External Hard Drive so it was extremely slow regardless of anything.



It made no difference. I switched the rams to the inside slot with 4GB and outside with 2GB today and it was the same.
Click to expand...

Then... why does 8GB not work on Leopard?

Are they also going to put on that limit in the future releases of Snow Leopard? (assuming that the limit is OS-based)
 
fireloss said:
Then... why does 8GB not work on Leopard?

Are they also going to put on that limit in the future releases of Snow Leopard? (assuming that the limit is OS-based)
Click to expand...

There are Mac Pros running Leopard with 16+ GB RAM. With this reasoning, I think it's a hardware limitation that the MBP is meant to handle only 4GB.
 
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