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jonnysods

macrumors G3
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
8,797
7,458
There & Back Again
I'm on the verge of buying one of these things, but I'm so scared that in 3 years I will be held back by the 8gb limitation! I'm curious to see if it can actually handle 16gb, which if it does then I'm pulling the trigger ASAP!
 
I checked in and I will keep an eye on it for sure.

I'm desperate to know! This is the one thing that is keeping me from the quad. An 8gb limit in 3 years seems pretty bad considering the price!

I just can't justify the cost of the new octo based on my needs and price. I hope it can fit 16gb!!!
 
Interestingly, it appears that they have 2 different types of 4GB memory modules. One works in both the quad and eight core, can't be mixed with any other sort of memory modules, and is $250 per piece. The other is available only for the eight core machines, has no caveat about mixing it with other memory, and is $500 per piece. I hope OWC discusses the differences in their blog soon.
 
Interestingly, it appears that they have 2 different types of 4GB memory modules. One works in both the quad and eight core, can't be mixed with any other sort of memory modules, and is $250 per piece. The other is available only for the eight core machines, has no caveat about mixing it with other memory, and is $500 per piece. I hope OWC discusses the differences in their blog soon.

Yeah me too. We are close to clearing the budget for getting 5 new Mac Pro Quads for Photoshop & InDesign work. We would be getting 6GB right off the bat but I don't want them to be almost maxed out right when we get them. Now I'm a little hopeful.
 
$250 a stick eh? I hope they work! I'll buy a full 8gb from OWC for now, then wait a while, perhaps a year or so when those sticks are a quarter of that price!

Please, please, please take 16gb!!! I want that quad!

I still might wait until Snow Leopard ships before ordering. Nothing wrong with waiting a little while I guess to see how this all plays out.
 
$250 a stick eh? I hope they work! I'll buy a full 8gb from OWC for now, then wait a while, perhaps a year or so when those sticks are a quarter of that price!

Please, please, please take 16gb!!! I want that quad!

I still might wait until Snow Leopard ships before ordering. Nothing wrong with waiting a little while I guess to see how this all plays out.

Probably waiting a while. The latest rumors are that SL will be announced in June and will ship in July/August.
 
$250 a stick eh? I hope they work! I'll buy a full 8gb from OWC for now, then wait a while, perhaps a year or so when those sticks are a quarter of that price!

Please, please, please take 16gb!!! I want that quad!

I still might wait until Snow Leopard ships before ordering. Nothing wrong with waiting a little while I guess to see how this all plays out.

Yeah with all of my groaning on here I NEED a workstation/desktop and soon. I'd rather have a quad with a higher clock speed (photoshop and other adobe apps) because benchmarks show for what I do 8cores aren't going to help, ram will.

Of course if ram is going to stay at 4GB DDR3 = $250 then it makes no sense to get the quad, you an get the Octo + 16GB for the same price as a Quad with 16GB.
 
I'll last a long time with 8gb of ram - I'll be moving from a 3.06 iMac with 4gb so the new quad will blitz that. I'm like you, I need the higher clock speeds for the single core tasks and i don't think I'll address all 8 cores ever.

If they say 16gb fits, then I'll probably won't need it for 2 years. No way they'll be the same price, they'll probably be talking about DDR5 Ram or some crazy crap like that!

Looking forward to an OWC test!
 
f they say 16gb fits, then I'll probably won't need it for 2 years. No way they'll be the same price, they'll probably be talking about DDR5 Ram or some crazy crap like that!

Looking forward to an OWC test!

Honestly that is my biggest fear! Do I gamble, buy the Quad with 8GB.. hope in a year 4GB chips drop by at least 50%, or worse, they drop DDR3 and Intel uses DDR4/5/6 whatever standard and no one sells DDR3 anymore. It doesn't happen often but sometimes standards disappear faster than they showed up.

No matter how I cut it I sadly don't have the funds right now for the OCTO just to get more ram ($2,800 for the quad + 8GB + 1TB drive) vs ($3,700 octo + 12GB + 1Tb drive) that is a lot of extra dough.

Or as some very Mac Pro lovin' workstationistas "Build me a non-comparative PC system out of crappy non-workstation/high grade parts" and save myself $1,000 but deal with Vista.
 
Honestly that is my biggest fear! Do I gamble, buy the Quad with 8GB.. hope in a year 4GB chips drop by at least 50%, or worse, they drop DDR3 and Intel uses DDR4/5/6 whatever standard and no one sells DDR3 anymore. It doesn't happen often but sometimes standards disappear faster than they showed up.

No matter how I cut it I sadly don't have the funds right now for the OCTO just to get more ram ($2,800 for the quad + 8GB + 1TB drive) vs ($3,700 octo + 12GB + 1Tb drive) that is a lot of extra dough.

Or as some very Mac Pro lovin' workstationistas "Build me a non-comparative PC system out of crappy non-workstation/high grade parts" and save myself $1,000 but deal with Vista.

Don't stress too much about the DDR3 thing - it only came out last year and it's not going away that fast. Remember that DDR2 had been out for quite a few years, and perhaps DDR4 isn't going to blow away DDR3. I think the main reason for concern is the maximum available memory.

I'm starting to think based on other threads that Apple didn't put the option of 16gb on because of how close the prices comes to the Octo when similarly configured.

Also it's tri-channel memory, meaning it works best in multiples of 3. 3 goes into 16, but not 8?

Ah, speculation!
 
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