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leopard, 4gb RAM recognized on Pre-Santa Rosa Mac???
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But again, the computer will be faster with 4 gigs it will be used in some way?
4God
macrumors 68020
This clarifies things very nicely. Click the link and do the math. The pie chart shows a greater than half of 4 gigs of green area, but it only shows as 2.03 gigs free to the left.
CONFIRMED, three gb only
Yes, it's confirmed. Pre-Santa Rosa iMac with 4gb of installed RAM, running Leopard, will show 4gb of available RAM in both System Profiler and the Pie Chart, unfortunately, totoal memory available will still be 3gb. See attachment, bottom left. I've maxed out memory usage, and memory used is 3gb.
However there may be benefits to have a pair of 2gb, instead of having only 3gb of ram. Here is the To Pair or Not to Pair article for Macs with integrated memory (such as MacBook and Mac Mini) which shares the RAM with the GPU
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/MacBook/Testing/Memory_Benchmarks
Not sure whether the speed benefit will apply to the iMac though. A test for another day.
Yes, it's confirmed. Pre-Santa Rosa iMac with 4gb of installed RAM, running Leopard, will show 4gb of available RAM in both System Profiler and the Pie Chart, unfortunately, totoal memory available will still be 3gb. See attachment, bottom left. I've maxed out memory usage, and memory used is 3gb.
However there may be benefits to have a pair of 2gb, instead of having only 3gb of ram. Here is the To Pair or Not to Pair article for Macs with integrated memory (such as MacBook and Mac Mini) which shares the RAM with the GPU
http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/MacBook/Testing/Memory_Benchmarks
Not sure whether the speed benefit will apply to the iMac though. A test for another day.
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i guess (unless my math is bad and may be), if the iMac knows it is there then why does it not use it? if you add up all the columns on the left- top to bottom- it equals 4GB. color me stupid right now. i'm getting married in ONE week and my mind is mush from all the prep. but why is it not addressed?
both examples- consultants above and the link i posted, each have different processes running and if you look at each Macs processes each one is different in the amount that is being used/ not used/ wired/ inactive etc. but, when you add the columns up in each screen shot they both equal almost 4GB of RAM.
both examples- consultants above and the link i posted, each have different processes running and if you look at each Macs processes each one is different in the amount that is being used/ not used/ wired/ inactive etc. but, when you add the columns up in each screen shot they both equal almost 4GB of RAM.
I've used a command to max out ram usage. That's why ram free is so little. If you add the left column: wired 0.3 gb + active 1.8 gb + inactive 0.9 gb, it adds up to the "Used: 2.99 GB"
So I guess the answer is pre-Santa Rosa motherboards cannot handle more than 3 GB of RAM, no 64bit OS can solve it.
ahh i see i was adding up all 4 lines on the left not the 3. ok no extra 2GB stick for me then.
CanadaRAM
macrumors G5
MR Guide to Understanding Intel Mac RAM
Any Intel Mac gets a small benefit (6% to 8%) from Dual Channel Access, so if you have the extra $100 to install 4 Gb, you'll see a bit of speed up, even though you're accessing only 3 Gb
Any Intel Mac gets a small benefit (6% to 8%) from Dual Channel Access, so if you have the extra $100 to install 4 Gb, you'll see a bit of speed up, even though you're accessing only 3 Gb