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8G RAM in a Macbook Pro?
- Thread starter RedneckBob
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How can I best tell?
I do a About This Mac and it says MacBookPro 5,1, Intel Core 2 Duo, 2.4Ghz. Don't see model number listed.
Thanks!
-RB
Ah, then no. I was just looking for your processor info. Your limit will be 6GB. There are a few cases of getting 8 to work on my model (same guts as yours), but it's hit or miss, so it is recommended not to try that.
Ahhh, okay. Thanks for the information, you've been very helpful (this is what makes the Mac community so great!).
I'd love to jam 8G in this sucker because I'm having to run two big VMs on top of OS X (a fat RedHat install plus a Win2003) and it chews up a lot of memory.
The extra 2G, which gets me to 6G total, will be a big help though.
-RB
PS - no special tricks that I can do to get 8G?
Not that I know of. It's a chipset limitation I believe, and I think people have sometimes gotten certain brands to work, but it's not guaranteed. You may want to google it and look at some of the threads that people have done that.
Although we all believed that it wasn't possible, a user was able to get 8GB of RAM in his Late-2008 2.4GHz MacBook Pro.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573906/
It's only two users so can't say for sure that it works but I'm pretty sure more people will start looking into it.
(If you didn't ask, you probably wouldn't have got this response...)
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573906/
It's only two users so can't say for sure that it works but I'm pretty sure more people will start looking into it.
(If you didn't ask, you probably wouldn't have got this response...)
Yeah, I think the 2.4 15" uni is the only one that won't work right with 8GB (as well as the original uni MacBooks)
Veeeery interesting! I'm going to drop him a note and ask how he got 8G working. I really, Really, REALLY could use the full 8G.
I'm pretty fired up knowing that I can, at a minimum, bump up to 6G. I was seriously considering selling my current MBP and upgrading to the newer i5 just so I could get more memory as I'm dying here with just 4G.
If I learn any new details, I'll be sure to post 'em...
The 2007 models will take only up to 6GB or RAM but later models (2008 and later) can take up to 8GB, I believe. The Santa Rosa models can only address 6GB of RAM (one 2GB chip and one 4GB chip)
I'm happy to report that I have 8G installed and running on a UniBody 2.4G (MB470LL) MacBookPro5,1 (http://support.apple.com/kb/SP499).
Woot!
Woot!
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Note: Just because the OS reads that there are 2x 4GB RAM chips in the machine doesn't mean the processor will be able to use all 8. If you don't get any kernel panics, then feel free to leave 'em in. But if you start getting kernel panics, I'd revert back to 6.
Now use more than 6GB and see what happens? That should be pretty easy to if you want a couple VMs.
Fired up Activity Monitor and launched....
Virtual machine for Win7 with 2G allocated (Word/Excel/HTML checker/IE/Outlook), virtual machine for Ubuntu with 2G allocated (FireFox/Chrome/Evolution/Music Player/Shotwell/OpenOffice Writer), Photoshop with 30 pictures, Illustrator with a heavy 4 page design, Dreamweaver, Excel with a decent sized spreadsheet, Google Earth, Word with a big 50 page image laden document, iPhtoto, Quicktime with a 9G movie, VLC with a 640M movie, iTunes, StarOffice with same big 50 page image laden document, Chrome, FireFox, Safari, and a bunch of other programs.
...watched Activity Monitor as memory filled up, started swapping, and now 1.26G of swap has been consumed.
I need to do a little reading on free vs. wired vs. active vs. inactive vs used, but I can feel the system slow down a tad once I started swapping. Probably need a more official way to test, but this is as "real world" as it gets.