Early 08 MBP and VM

[mgsnat75]

Hi,

I recently (and cheaply) acquired an early 08 MBP. It is the 17in model with 2.6ghz C2D and 4gb RAM. I also upgraded the HDD to SSD and its night and day difference in speed. Now, I want to run VM of Windows but i am not sure it will run ok with just 4gb of RAM. Would going 6gb or 8gb improve the performance? I am well aware of how old the system is and have heard that 8gb will not work. Has anyone tried it? I am just using this system for basic use. Thanks!

 

[Romanesq]

You can run 6GB of RAM in total. 8GB is not addressable in the early 2008 Penryn Macbook Pros.
You'll need to run it uneven with a 4GB and 2GB RAM chip. It will be useful however to add the 2GB RAM.

Not as big a deal as the SSD as that makes the machine faster and with the updated OS, runs better than new.

 

[grahamperrin]

You can run 6GB of RAM in total.

+1

…with the updated OS …

Mavericks or greater for the benefits of compressed memory.

 

[mgsnat75]

Thanks for the advice! Now I plan on installing windows 10 64bit. Boot camp on these machines support up to 7 64bit but I did the upgrade and ran windows 10 ok. If I wanted to run parallels, what settings should I keep it at with only 6gb of ram?

 

[duervo]

Make sure you keep an eye on the fans in that thing. That generation has one of those prone-to-fail dGPU issues with it. You won't want any fan to die, as that will all but guarantee the fateful dGPU failure.

I'd even buy a couple now if I could, so that I'd have spares on hand. At least a single of each (left and right), because if those are the original fans in it, they will die sooner rather than later.

 

[mgsnat75]

Make sure you keep an eye on the fans in that thing. That generation has one of those prone-to-fail dGPU issues with it. You won't want any fan to die, as that will all but guarantee the fateful dGPU failure.

I'd even buy a couple now if I could, so that I'd have spares on hand. At least a single of each (left and right), because if those are the original fans in it, they will die sooner rather than later.

Noted. I have a friend who can fix it if that were to happen. I also have a 2007 15in MBP with that issue and he was able to fix it at his buddies shop no problem.