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First mac owner, have several questions

nick1516

nick1516

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 21, 2008
564
0
I just bought an early 2009 white macbook 2ghz with the 9400m chipset in it, will I be able to hook it up with a mini-dvi to vga cable to my 37" 1080i tv and have it run well?

It only has 2gb of ram what is the max ram for it, and where can i get the fastest ram available?

What's the best HD upgrade, i don't need a lot because I will be buying a new laptop when i go to college in 2 years, but a 120gb HD doesn't seem like enough.

What's the cheapest place to buy windows as I would like to run some games through bootcamp (COD4, etc.)

Thanks for all help :eek:
 
Yes you can hook it up to a TV thru either VGA or DVI, 4GB is most ram possible and i recommend Crucial Ram memory, like $45 for 4GB. HD wise, just get a 5400RPm like 250 or 320GB HD from newegg, as cheap as $80. Cheapest place for windows that i have ever seen is walmart believe it or not.
 
Boostin said:
Yes you can hook it up to a TV thru either VGA or DVI, 4GB is most ram possible and i recommend Crucial Ram memory, like $45 for 4GB. HD wise, just get a 5400RPm like 250 or 320GB HD from newegg, as cheap as $80. Cheapest place for windows that i have ever seen is walmart believe it or not.
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but will using my tv as a monitor not work as well i heard you need the 9600gt to run it smoothly through that
 
nick1516 said:
but will using my tv as a monitor not work as well i heard you need the 9600gt to run it smoothly through that
Click to expand...

Completely false.

I send both 480p/720p .avi files as well as 720p streaming media from my computer to 40" 1080p TV without a single issue.
 
NewMacbookPlz said:
Completely false.

I send both 480p/720p .avi files as well as 720p streaming media from my computer to 40" 1080p TV without a single issue.
Click to expand...

I did 1080p to a 52'' Sony Bravia once. Looked awesome.

nick1516 said:
Would this HD be compatible http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152111

And will these work and which one is the better option
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148201
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148159
Click to expand...

HDD will work, but I'd recommend a 3 GB/s interface. IIRC, RAM needs to be 240-pin.
 
blackhand1001 said:
Yeah but then you don't get dual channel which the penalty would be not worth it.
Click to expand...

If you NEED the extra memory, it's more beneficial to have the extra GB of RAM rather than keep the dual-channel setup. It'll be faster to not have dual-channel, but keep the info in RAM as opposed to caching/paging out to the Hard Drive when you run out of available RAM. Your HD is so much slower than RAM it doesn't even compare to the difference between dual-channel and single-channel.

If you're not utilizing all the RAM, and have upgraded just because, then you'll benefit more from the dual-channel setup.
 
NewMacbookPlz said:
If you NEED the extra memory, it's more beneficial to have the extra GB of RAM rather than keep the dual-channel setup. It'll be faster to not have dual-channel, but keep the info in RAM as opposed to caching/paging out to the Hard Drive when you run out of available RAM.

If you're not utilizing all the RAM, and have upgraded just because, then you'll benefit more from the dual-channel setup.
Click to expand...
So if i'm gaming on windows 7 through bootcamp what will be better, 4gb dual channel or 6gb ram.
 
nick1516 said:
So if i'm gaming on windows 7 through bootcamp what will be better, 4gb dual channel or 6gb ram.
Click to expand...

4GB should be plenty. BootCamp is virtually the same as running native Windows.

And beyond that, I believe the 64-bit versions of Windows aren't fully supported via BootCamp 3.0 on the MacBooks under Snow Leopard, so that'd have you running the 32-bit version. The 32-bit version of Windows cannot address more than ~3-4GB of RAM anyways.

If you have Leopard installed still, you can get around the 64-bit limitation and run it by manually installing the driver setup.

Edit: 64bit support applies to pre-2008 models, Unibody revision timepoint maybe?...https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/774733/
 
NewMacbookPlz said:
4GB should be plenty. BootCamp is virtually the same as running native Windows.

And beyond that, I believe the 64-bit versions of Windows aren't fully supported via BootCamp 3.0 on the MacBooks under Snow Leopard, so that'd have you running the 32-bit version. The 32-bit version of Windows cannot address more than ~3-4GB of RAM anyways.

If you have Leopard installed still, you can get around the 64-bit limitation and run it by manually installing the driver setup.
Click to expand...
So wait, if I'm running snow leopard, I need to buy 32-bit windows instead of 64-bit?
 
OP, in the linked thread, somebody found a workaround using admin privileges in the Windows side btw...:)
 
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