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Can my aluminum macbook handle 8gb of ram?
- Thread starter DetroitG35
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No. Can only handle 4 gigs offically, and 6 gigs unoffically. Putting 8 in will cause it to crash.
They pretty much are the same machines. One has a firewire port, and thats about as far as differences go.
Well it really dosent have anything to do with it. But for w/e reason apple decided that the limit would be 4GB for the macbook. Whereas the pro's can take 8, except for the first gen unibody 2.4ghz 15", which is also limited to 4GB. Apple may release an update to allow it 8GB of ram, but until than 4 is pretty much the max you can get.
They would be able to handle 8 gigs if Apple would only update the firmware for it, which is very unlikely.
Edit: As noted below, a likely firmware issue....
Because your MBP has the Santa Rosa chipset and the current MBP has the 9400m chipset.
Because your MBP has the Santa Rosa chipset and the current MBP has the 9400m chipset.
so let me get this straight...
if my MBP is running on the 9400m chipset and got it like august this year...
it can support up to 8GB??
if my MBP is running on the 9400m chipset and got it like august this year...
it can support up to 8GB??
Keep in mind that if you do the 6 GB unsupported route you are actually going to see a speed decrease in many situations due to have unmatched RAM.
Not correct.
The aluminum unibody MacBooks use the same nVidia chipset as the 13" MacBook Pros. There are some differences in the firmware/EFI, however, since Apple permits the 13" MBP to run Snow Leopard in 64-bit kernel mode but not the nearly-identical 13" unibody aluminum MacBook.
But, nonetheless, Apple has chosen to allow 6GB in the alum. MacBook and 8GB in the MacBook Pro.
And while there will be a slight memory-access speed decrease (~5%-10%) by using unmatched RAM modules (2GB + 4GB), you'll still see an overall significant speed increase IF you're dipping in to virtual memory with 4GB installed. If you don't need the extra RAM, then there's no benefit to adding it.
Simply going to 6GB (or 8GB in a MBP) wont make your computer any faster unless you're really making use of the extra 2-4GB of RAM. But if you're paging out to disk frequently at 4GB, then adding RAM - even though the RAM itself will be slightly slower - will still result in a net speed increase.
Well, there you go. I missed the "aluminum" part in the OP, thus thought it was the first 2 ghz model of the MacBook (post Calistoga era).
