8 gb of ram with MacBookPro3,1

[jayh]

After some reading I decided to see if I could upgrade my macbook pro to 8gb of ram. I purchased an upgrade from Newegg and they supplied G-Skill F2-5300CL5D-8GBSQ DDRII4GB PC2-5300 Dimms(pair of 4gbs). After one false start where I didn't have the dimm properly seated (no boot, 3 flashes on the front light) I got it to recognise the memory in the system profile.

With the 8gb in it was running poorly, most of the apps hung coming up. I rebooted the system, being forced to hold the on/off switch since it was hung during shutdown. After it came back up it ran better but a windows 7 64 bit vm on vmware fusion 3.02 was practically useless. The vm had run fine when the system only had 4gb of ram. I eventually yanked the 8 gb and put the 4gb back in. I'm debating returning the 8gb, though I'll probably see how it works with 6gb.

So couple questions..... First, here's the specs on my macbook pro.

Model Name: MacBook Pro
Model Identifier: MacBookPro3,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP31.0070.B07
SMC Version (system): 1.18f5
Serial Number (system): W87450SHX94
Hardware UUID: 00000000-0000-1000-8000-001B63B273C6
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled


Questions
1) Can this model actually run 8gb. It recognised the ram but performed really badly.
2) If I do up the ram to 6gb how will not working in Dual Channel mode inconvenience me running multiple vm's, occasionally propellerhead reason or ableton live?
3) Can this config run Snow Leopard in 64 bit mode?

Thanks for any input.

Jay

 

[ayeying]

Read this.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573906/

 

[m85476585]

The thread linked to above will answer everything. Don't worry about dual-channel--just about all chipsets these days do asymmetric dual channel, which gives you 99% of the benefit of dual channel with unmatched modules.

 

[jayh]

Ayup, worked great.... now about that 64 bit.

I've got my 2.4 ghz macbook pro running with 6 gb and it isn't displaying any of the issues it had trying to run with 8gb. I now have a 4mb G-Skill dimm in the lower memory slot and a 2 gig Crucial dimm in the upper. It's chugging along nicely. Thanks much for the input.
Looking through google it looks like the macbookpro3,1 isn't going to run 64 bit snow leopard , no matter how long I hold the 6 4 during reboot. Is this correct? I'm not gonna bother mucking with the nvram or the config files until I've got a definitive answer.

Thanks again,
Jay

 

[gwsat]

I've got my 2.4 ghz macbook pro running with 6 gb and it isn't displaying any of the issues it had trying to run with 8gb. I now have a 4mb G-Skill dimm in the lower memory slot and a 2 gig Crucial dimm in the upper. It's chugging along nicely. Thanks much for the input.

I recently upgraded my MBP3,1, 2.4 Ghz from 2 gig to 6 gig of RAM. I bought a 4 gig and a 2 gig module from OWC but didn't consider even trying 8 gig. OWC listed my model as one that may suffer undesirable sude effects when 8 gig is used. With 6 gig I am able to run VMware Fusion 3.02 and Windows 7 in Unity mode. For the first time in the 2 years I have been running Fusion, it has been absolutely stable and is exponentially more useful to me than it was when I had to run it with only 2 gig of RAM. For obvious reasons, I didn't even consider trying Unity with only 2 gig of RAM.

 

[darrellishere]

I recently upgraded my MBP3,1, 2.4 Ghz from 2 gig to 6 gig of RAM. I bought a 4 gig and a 2 gig module from OWC but didn't consider even trying 8 gig. OWC listed my model as one that may suffer undesirable sude effects when 8 gig is used. With 6 gig I am able to run VMware Fusion 3.02 and Windows 7 in Unity mode. For the first time in the 2 years I have been running Fusion, it has been absolutely stable and is exponentially more useful to me than it was when I had to run it with only 2 gig of RAM. For obvious reasons, I didn't even consider trying Unity with only 2 gig of RAM.

Thanks for that! I just ordered a 4gb module base on your excellent experiences! Cheers Mate (No more page outs, Hopefully!)

 

[gwsat]

Thanks for that! I just ordered a 4gb module base on your excellent experiences! Cheers Mate (No more page outs, Hopefully!)

darrellishire -- If upgrading your MBP's RAM does as much for you as it has done for me, prepare to be deliriously happy. The 6 gig of RAM I bought from OWC was the best $189 I have ever spent on hardware.