Memory Question

[PP133]

Hey guys, I'm thinking of ordering a Mac Pro but I'm still crunching all the numbers and getting all of the specifics.

I was thinking of ordering it with 2GB of memory and then buying 8GB (4x2GB sticks) from MacSales. If I get four 2GB sticks, can I also use the two 1GB sticks that came with the MP, for a total of 10GB?

TIA

 

[CaptainChunk]

Technically, yes you can. I have a Mac Pro at the office configured that way.

However, it's not entirely optimal because FB-DIMMs perform better when every slot is populated with an identical module. But I didn't want the stock 2GB of RAM to go to waste, so...

 

[PP133]

Yo, thx for the reply.

So does it run slower or is the memory less reliable if you're using different sticks?

 

[MaddMacs]

Not noticably slower. There was an aritcle from barefeats here on the forum on this subject. Only in bench tests was it apparent that it could run a bit slower. I have the configuration that you are looking to get and it screams.

 

[TheStrudel]

Same here. Now, if only more apps would be 64-bit...it'd be nice to store small Final Cut projects and large prints entirely in memory... Though Snow Leopard's neat looking OpenCL and Grand Central should speed things up, hard drives will still be the bottleneck for the foreseeable future - be nice to hit them as infrequently as possible when working...

 

[nanofrog]

...hard drives will still be the bottleneck for the foreseeable future - be nice to hit them as infrequently as possible when working...

I agree.

RAID can make a drastic improvement, but it can be daunting if someone hasn't any experience with it, and expensive. The additional drives at a minimum, but particularly for a RAID card solution.