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

fireloss said:
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/26/road_to_mac_os_x_10_6_snow_leopard_64_bits.html&page=3

"Currently, Mac OS X Leopard hosts both 32-bit and 64-bit apps on top of a 32-bit kernel (below). Using PAE, the 32-bit kernel can address 32GB of RAM in the Mac Pro and Xserve; Apple's consumer machines only support 4GB RAM, but unlike 32-bit operating systems they can use the entire 4GB (with appropriate hardware support). Leopard's 32-bit kernel enabled Apple to ship 64-bit development tools to give coders the ability to build applications that can work with huge data sets in a 64-bit virtual memory space (and port over existing 64-bit code), without also requiring an immediate upgrade to all of Mac OS X's drivers and other kernel-level extensions. That transition will happen with Snow Leopard."

:)
Click to expand...

XP was 32-bit as well (I know there's a 64-bit version, but that's not what I'm talking about) and it used PAE until MS disabled it with one of the service packs. Mac OS X is using PAE on Mac Pro. Means: PAE is likely disabled on MBP. It could be because each computer ships with its own version of the system (i.e. impossible to install on other models), but retail version should work with all of them. Theoretically all of them could be able to do it. So perhaps looking at how to enable PAE in Unix-based systems might give us a clue... I'm not enough into OS to figure it out, but maybe someone who understands it more can say whether it could be possible?

Edit: I don't question whether Penryn supports PAE, because it seems all of current Intel CPUs do... correct me if I'm wrong on it, it'd change the picture completely.
 
aleksandra. said:
XP was 32-bit as well (I know there's a 64-bit version, but that's not what I'm talking about) and it used PAE until MS disabled it with one of the service packs. Mac OS X is using PAE on Mac Pro. Means: PAE is likely disabled on MBP. It could be because each computer ships with its own version of the system (i.e. impossible to install on other models), but retail version should work with all of them. Theoretically all of them could be able to do it. So perhaps looking at how to enable PAE in Unix-based systems might give us a clue... I'm not enough into OS to figure it out, but maybe someone who understands it more can say whether it could be possible?
Click to expand...

I had plans on mucking around a bit with it, but I had fears that 10.6 would be out by the time I made any progress.

what would be funny is if one of the hackintosh builds accomplished this.

XD

ps by 'funny' I mean 'sad'
 
aleksandra. said:
It could be because each computer ships with its own version of the system (i.e. impossible to install on other models), but retail version should work with all of them.
Click to expand...

Are you saying that if I install from the retail Leopard DVD I could take full advantage of 8 gb? If so, I'll try this since I already have the retail Installer DVD (for my hackintosh).
 
nephilim7 said:
my app is most assuredly 64 bit, and even if were compiled as 32 bit it falls well within the common 2g address space limit that are present in some 64 bit OSes.
Click to expand...
Hi.

In order to compile 64 bit you need to supply 64 bit flag for g++, something like -arch x86_64.

Not that it really matters in your examples, since you are not addressing >= 4gb in your piggy app, but since people were using usual g++, apps were compiled as 32 bit.

I don't think it's a hardware limitation of MB/MBP (SR or the new ones). What we are seeing here is probably a driver issue (educated guess).

And nice thread btw, I hope you people find out what's wrong - I certainly would like to have 8 gb in my mbp (right now stuck with 4gb in mb, waiting for new mbp to arrive). Because even with 4gb running linux in vm and running another vm (linux with ibm cell tool chain) in it is pretty... not impressive.
 
Yet another 6 GB success story. I ordered the same DIMM as everyone else, and I installed it yesterday successfully. Interestingly, the first install was done with the new 4 GB DIMM deep and the 2 GB DIMM superficially, and I got a kernel panic on bootup. I didn't try reseating and rebooting but just switched the DIMMs and held my breath, and it worked.

This is not conclusive for my machine that the order matters, since I didn't test it further, but it is at least in part contrary to other reports that the order did not matter.

Performance notes:
Compared to my MP (2.0 GHz/6 GB), I am noticing that this still has more page outs for my usage (mostly MATLAB simulations and data analysis), but compared to the MBP with 4 GB, I am considerably lower (8,000 page outs v. 200,000), which is great. My swap space is currently at 64 MB allocated, as opposed to 2 GB previously. All good news for performance.

Here's hoping that SL will allow us to to 8 GB on these machines!
 
Cave Man said:
Are you saying that if I install from the retail Leopard DVD I could take full advantage of 8 gb? If so, I'll try this since I already have the retail Installer DVD (for my hackintosh).
Click to expand...

I don't think it would be this simple. I mentioned retail version that is the same for all Macs as an argument that it should be possible to use PAE in all of them, but since Apple doesn't support >4GB on Santa Rosa, we don't even know if it's compatible (i.e. if drivers for OS X support PAE's use), and we don't know how to enable it. So unless you feel like doing a clean reinstall anyway, I don't think it's worth it ;).
 
radx said:
Hi.

In order to compile 64 bit you need to supply 64 bit flag for g++, something like -arch x86_64.

Not that it really matters in your examples, since you are not addressing >= 4gb in your piggy app, but since people were using usual g++, apps were compiled as 32 bit.

I don't think it's a hardware limitation of MB/MBP (SR or the new ones). What we are seeing here is probably a driver issue (educated guess).

And nice thread btw, I hope you people find out what's wrong - I certainly would like to have 8 gb in my mbp (right now stuck with 4gb in mb, waiting for new mbp to arrive). Because even with 4gb running linux in vm and running another vm (linux with ibm cell tool chain) in it is pretty... not impressive.
Click to expand...


bah why does it not surprise me that the default march in os x is 32 bit.

I always compile my toolchain as --with-march..
 
Cave Man said:
Are you saying that if I install from the retail Leopard DVD I could take full advantage of 8 gb? If so, I'll try this since I already have the retail Installer DVD (for my hackintosh).
Click to expand...

what I was getting at is that any decision made by the kernel or any part of the OS as far as 'this is this type of machine' is wacked over the head by the various hackintosh kernel mods... or they used to I haven't ran a hackintosh in a while.
 
I am really surprised to see that official 4gb limitation in these new mbps. Was really not expecting to see that at all.
 
radx said:
I am really surprised to see that official 4gb limitation in these new mbps. Was really not expecting to see that at all.
Click to expand...

if someone with a new machine would be kind enough to subject their machines to these tests we'd know =D
 
dhy8386 said:
I will have my 6gb delivered tomorrow so I will let you all know in my new MB 2.4
Click to expand...

I would be interested to hear the results of that.

And to everyone who is working with 6GB, are you still limited to 4GB for a single process, or can you have a single process access more than 4GB?
 
Although -

Beyond getting it to post, I made need some help as to how to test it. This is not my forte so please let me know some of the tests i should run...
 
Outta curiosity.
Which MacBookPro are you folks referring to here?
Are you talking about the Santa Rosa based Merom and Penryn
(Yes, those Penryn have the same Santa Rosa chipset as the Merom systems) or the nVidia chipset??
 
UltraNEO* said:
Outta curiosity.
Which MacBookPro are you folks referring to here?
Are you talking about the Santa Rosa based Merom and Penryn
(Yes, those Penryn have the same Santa Rosa chipset as the Merom systems) or the nVidia chipset??
Click to expand...
Ah! The million dollar question. But, seeing that some people were suggesting the 8GB RAM trouble might be caused by the system thinking that 8GB RAM + 256MB VRAM was simply too much, I'd say people are testing it on both the previous generation MBP and the new models.
 
Bengt77 said:
Ah! The million dollar question. But, seeing that some people were suggesting the 8GB RAM trouble might be caused by the system thinking that 8GB RAM + 256MB VRAM was simply too much, I'd say people are testing it on both the previous generation MBP and the new models.
Click to expand...
I'm still waiting for a 8 GB MacBook (Santa Rosa) test.
 
UltraNEO* said:
Outta curiosity.
Which MacBookPro are you folks referring to here?
Are you talking about the Santa Rosa based Merom and Penryn
(Yes, those Penryn have the same Santa Rosa chipset as the Merom systems) or the nVidia chipset??
Click to expand...

Im running off the Penryn chip. I'm not sure about anyone else who have tested this
 
ayeying said:
Im running off the Penryn chip. I'm not sure about anyone else who have tested this
Click to expand...

I tested 6gb in merom SR macbook and it worked just fine.
Didn't boot with 8gb, but I have a feeling one of the 4gb sticks was bad (because it wouldn't boot with that stick + 2gb stick either).
 
According to nVidia [via gizmodo], the new MBP supports 8gigs of RAM, on the fly GPU switching, and it can work together with the 9600M.

The only reason it doesn't is due to a lack of software support on Apple's end.
 
yes 2x2>4x1 you wouldn't have dual channel mode but the performance hit probably wouldn't be noticeable.
 
ayeying said:
FAQ:

Will my MacBook Pro support up to 8GB?
- Only the Santa Rosa and Penryn (MacBook Pro 3,1 and 4,1) can support this much memory. The MacBook Pro 2,1 only supports upto 3.25GB ram accessible so adding in 8GB wouldn't matter since you can only access >4GB.
Click to expand...

Except with 2x2Gb will enable dual channel memory operation leading to a small ( 5-10% ) speedup on some operations. At the current cost of memory $40-$60 at newegg for 2x2GB it seems like a decent idea even if you can't use 100% of it.

There are also two MacBookPro2,x 1 and 2: 1 is the Core Duo and 2 is the Core 2 Duo model.
 
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