Late 2008 unibody 15" -- Upgrading ideas, bought an SSD and RAM.

[Advil]

Hey guys, I have a 15 inch unibody pro from late 2008 (5,1). It's a Core 2 Duo and when I got it I upgraded it to 4 gigs of RAM. Yesterday I ordered a Samsung 830 SSD and plan on replacing my current 5400 rpm HDD and installing a fresh copy of OSX on there.

From what I can tell in my system profiler, this computer only supports 3gb SATA, will this still be a big upgrade in speed?

Here is the system profiler info.

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

  Vendor:	NVidia
  Product:	MCP79 AHCI
  Link Speed:	3 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed:	1.5 Gigabit
  Description:	AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Also, I think I remember reading that 4gb of RAM is the max this computer can support, but I also read that I could get 6 gigs. Which is true? If I can get 6, whats a good set to buy?


I'm trying to speed this computer up until there's a new rMBP next year.

 

[reery]

Hi,

the Samsung 830 SSD is capable of almost 500 MB/s in write speed. Your older SATA2 connection will limit it to about 200-250 MB/s, still at least 2-3 times faster than your previous HDD and definitely a good investment. You can use the SSD then later on in another laptop as well.

I don't know how much RAM you can put in your MacBook. You can try to buy one 4 GB module and see if it works with the other one together. What brands? Nobody can tell, they all can do the job but small compatibility problems will always be an issue here.

 

[jaqueh]

Hey guys, I have a 15 inch unibody pro from late 2008 (5,1). It's a Core 2 Duo and when I got it I upgraded it to 4 gigs of RAM. Yesterday I ordered a Samsung 830 SSD and plan on replacing my current 5400 rpm HDD and installing a fresh copy of OSX on there.

From what I can tell in my system profiler, this computer only supports 3gb SATA, will this still be a big upgrade in speed?

Here is the system profiler info.

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

  Vendor:	NVidia
  Product:	MCP79 AHCI
  Link Speed:	3 Gigabit
  Negotiated Link Speed:	1.5 Gigabit
  Description:	AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

Also, I think I remember reading that 4gb of RAM is the max this computer can support, but I also read that I could get 6 gigs. Which is true? If I can get 6, whats a good set to buy?


I'm trying to speed this computer up until there's a new rMBP next year.

I had this computer before the ram slot started to spontaneously spit out my ram so I had to go from 2x2gb RAM to 1x4gb RAM so it can support 8gb. be careful though, my logic board spontaneously stopped working and my computer won't even respond to pressing the power button anymore. so because of all my frustrations with this computer, I'm going to get the 15 rMBP, and definitely get AppleCare this time around.

 

[iLog.Genius]

You can get up to 8GB of RAM (even if Apple says 6GB officially). As for SSD, you're going to notice speed difference, period. A 8GB kit should be fairly inexpensive now and if you have money for a SSD, those are really the only two ways you can do to speed up your Mac until you get another one.

 

[T5BRICK]

You may need to update to the most recent bootrom. It looks like your SSD is only operating at SATA I speed.