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New MacBooks and MacBook Pros Support Up to 6GB

billmister said:
the typical user uses less than 1gb anyway.

I don't quite understand people when they say "the more ram the better".... If in fact they know how ram works they would know if you are not using the extra ram... it's actually sitting there without use, but your mind tells u your computer is working faster :D:D
Click to expand...

remember though that OS X is a *nix and it can use RAM intelligently, unlike windows. as many apps as my wife leaves open on a typical day she would see better performance all the way up to a terrabyte or so. :D

i keep telling her that it just isn't natural to have 40 apps and 70 windows open on a laptop. ;)
 
shen said:
remember though that OS X is a *nix and it can use RAM intelligently, unlike windows. as many apps as my wife leaves open on a typical day she would see better performance all the way up to a terrabyte or so. :D

i keep telling her that it just isn't natural to have 40 apps and 70 windows open on a laptop. ;)
Click to expand...

:eek: LOL wow. You have a point that *unix platforms use it more efficient than a Windows Os.
 
I wish apple would come straight with this. I have no doubt the engineers have tested the various possible configurations.

4Gb is rapidly becoming the norm. 8Gb is only a natural step up.
 
billmister said:
the typical user uses less than 1gb anyway.

I don't quite understand people when they say "the more ram the better".... If in fact they know how ram works they would know if you are not using the extra ram... it's actually sitting there without use, but your mind tells u your computer is working faster :D:D

That's hilarious when people want to put 4 gigs of ram and use it for MS Word, internet, email and itunes... And when questioned about the 4gigs, they reply... "yeah, yeah... well I'm going to need it because I'm going to be opening up power point presentations" LMAO. Well as long as there are people like that, the companies will have the money rolling in.


6GB ram? wow. That's nice. For someone who actually uses more than 1 gig. Pro users will def like to know it can support 6g's.
Click to expand...

Well, I am not going to speak about OSX as there is not task manager where I can look at performance like in Windows (that I know of). Let me talk about Windows. I have seen Internet Explorer totally kill performance when opening up a large file that was generated out of SQL. in fact, watching the task manager; i have seen SQL eat up 2-3 gb on a 4 gb machine, I have also seen IE eat up the same. so yes Ram does matter - and the more the merrier.

But I see your point of some people overkill the RAM installation.
 
I don't believe your perspective is valid for todays user.

billmister said:
the typical user uses less than 1gb anyway.
Click to expand...
That all depends on what you consider a typical user. Most users I know have several apps open at a time.
I don't quite understand people when they say "the more ram the better".... If in fact they know how ram works they would know if you are not using the extra ram... it's actually sitting there without use, but your mind tells u your computer is working faster :D:D
Click to expand...
It is fairly simple - MORE RAM THE BETTER - it isn't a difficult concept. Like all things in life there are trade offs but the point remains the more RAM you have the better your performance and the less you hit the disk to buffer or page out something.

It is not your mind that is telling you it is working faster it is often very quantifiable. In any event if you knew how ram worked you would realize that even if some of it is being "used" it doesn't mean the computer will ever reference it again. In any event your point, if you want to call it one, flies in the face of common experience. That is all operating systems, at least modern ones, take advantage of more RAM readily. How this impacts the user depends on his individual needs, but very few people ever complain about have to much RAM.
That's hilarious when people want to put 4 gigs of ram and use it for MS Word, internet, email and itunes... And when questioned about the 4gigs, they reply... "yeah, yeah... well I'm going to need it because I'm going to be opening up power point presentations" LMAO. Well as long as there are people like that, the companies will have the money rolling in.
Click to expand...
If it helps them get the job done and leads to a smooth presentation the little money spent on RAM will be money well spent.
6GB ram? wow. That's nice. For someone who actually uses more than 1 gig. Pro users will def like to know it can support 6g's.
Click to expand...

Let me make this clear 1GB or RAM is to little for the average computer user running any of todays GUI based OS's. It is simple as that. The big question isn't that 1GB is to little but rather where is the optimal cut off point. I'd have to say that is up to the individual user.

Dave
 
shen said:
remember though that OS X is a *nix and it can use RAM intelligently, unlike windows. as many apps as my wife leaves open on a typical day she would see better performance all the way up to a terrabyte or so. :D

i keep telling her that it just isn't natural to have 40 apps and 70 windows open on a laptop. ;)
Click to expand...

If your laptop is your main machine and depending on your type of work , sure it is... Some people at my work were given laptops instead of desktops (mostly because they work in an office and at home). On a typical day I have about 15 or so open. and I imagine those in our support center have more than that at times if you count the number if IM's (which usualy I have 5 or 6 going at once - so that is possible 20 windows at once for me). we also run virtual machines, so those hog also.

Since I work at home, I have 3.25 gb of ram installed and 3 19-inch monitors. What I would not do for expose some days, as 3 monitors sometimes is not enough....
 
Just FYI, there actually is one. It's called Activity Monitor and resides in your Applications folder under "Utilities". You can see CPU usage and system memory. You will have "wired" which is allocated to the OS and cannot be changed. You have "active" which is being used by OS X programs. You have "inactive" which is used in the past by the OS and is there of you open up that program again. Finally you have "Free". Free and Inactive are both good to have. You will also notice "Page Outs" which is when you don't have enough memory and you must use your hard drive, decreasing performance. Let me tell you, I've noticed a big difference going from 2 GB to 3 GB. Hardly have any page outs, Safari needs to be quit every once in a while, it sucks down RAM.

shervieux said:
Well, I am not going to speak about OSX as there is not task manager where I can look at performance like in Windows (that I know of). Let me talk about Windows. I have seen Internet Explorer totally kill performance when opening up a large file that was generated out of SQL. in fact, watching the task manager; i have seen SQL eat up 2-3 gb on a 4 gb machine, I have also seen IE eat up the same. so yes Ram does matter - and the more the merrier.

But I see your point of some people overkill the RAM installation.
Click to expand...
 
shervieux said:
Well, I am not going to speak about OSX as there is not task manager where I can look at performance like in Windows (that I know of). Let me talk about Windows. I have seen Internet Explorer totally kill performance when opening up a large file that was generated out of SQL. in fact, watching the task manager; i have seen SQL eat up 2-3 gb on a 4 gb machine, I have also seen IE eat up the same. so yes Ram does matter - and the more the merrier.

But I see your point of some people overkill the RAM installation.
Click to expand...

If you are running OSX, Check out Activity Monitor, in the Utilities folder.
 
Re: dual channel tradeoff...

I had a C2D Intel Macbook and when it was discovered that they could read 3GB, I put two 2GB sticks in. I thought I noticed a slight hit in some apps at first, but then using Adobe CS3's and FCP, the additional memory proved worth whatever I thought I was missing.

I'd guess, as others say, that the same would be true with the new machines and 6GB.

Of course, affordable 4GB chips will also help...
 
Eidorian said:
Uh everyone?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...381 1052910525 1309221136 1309139889&name=4GB

http://www.crucial.com/store/partspecs.aspx?IMODULE=CT51264AC667
Click to expand...

WRONG!

Those are DDR2 chips. The new MacBooks use DDR3. Those chips won't fit; different number of pins. Not to mention a difference of 667Mhz v. 1067Mhz.

Does anyone actually sell 4GB DDR3 chips in ONE chip (not a "kit" that is really 2x2GB)???

I haven't seen any and I looked on NewEgg and did a quick Google search.
 
MagicWok said:
I would also presume that by using 2gb+4gb you lose the dual data-architecture as you're no longer using matching pairs.

Does the extra memory negate this loss?


For those not knowing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-channel_architecture
Click to expand...

Meh, it's a toss up. Those wanting performance for 3D work etc. should probably stick too 4GB of RAM in matching pairs to get performance. But those looking purely for large amounts of RAM should go for 6GB.
 
3rd or 4th thread

This is the 3rd or 4th thread basically dealing withthe same issue. I still do not understand why someone have not loaded a NIX 64 or a Vista 64 OS to check it with 8 Gig.

I did hear about OSX becoming unstabled with 8Gig, but I have yet to see anyone say what happens with NIX 64 or Vista 64.

By know you would think that someone had figured out if the issue was in OSX, the EFF, or hardware.

Several Mags have done extensive tests on other MacBooks but for some reason they have not done so with this new revision of MacBook and MacBook PRO.

I rather run 4 or 8 and not a hack.

Another possibility .... Maybe OSX maps some of the special addresses above the 6 Gig address space, as such adding memory above the 6 Gig threshold causes memory corruption because the OS is storing values there that should not be changed by running applications. Just a shot in the dark.
 
Eidorian said:
Yet it works on the Mac Pro under Leopard today.
Click to expand...

The Mac OS X definitely tries to detect what kind of Mac you are installing it on. It does NOT matter what Mac Pro is able to use. That has nothing to do with the MacBook Pro.
 
Dual Channel Performance

The loss of dual-channel support when going to 6 GB is not likely to cause a noticeable decrease in performance. Anandtech did some tests of 15 real-world applications on a Mac Pro testing Dual-channel vs. Quad-channel performance. Of those 15 applications only 2 saw a performance increase over 5% (Pages - 19% and iDVD - 13%). The average performance increase was only 3.2% and if we exclude those two apps the average drops to only 1.2%. You'll likely never notice any drop in performance and the increase in RAM capacity is likely to have a much larger effect on overall performance.

Now these tests were on the Mac Pro, not the new MacBooks so behavior may be different. Stay tuned to Bare Feats as they plan on doing memory performance tests on the new MacBook Pro to see if there is any significant performance loss when not running dual-channel. As for me, I'd much rather have the extra 2 GB than the imperceptible performance advantage of dual-channel memory.
 
hmm, very interesting... Now that I know about the activity manager, i started watching my macbook... I see that my dock is using 13mb when I start my machine up (not a big deal), but everytime I open an app and it puts an icon in the dock, or I launch something that is in my dock - I notice my memory usage for my dock goes up. what gets me, is when I close the app out, the memory usage does not go back down until I restart my machine.

Makes me think that OSX or the dock has a memory leak. it worries me that as I fly in and out of apps, etc I am draining my memory until I reboot my machine.

Also, inactive memory. why would OSX reserve memory incase I start that program up again. Should it not just release it, so that it can be used?

I think it is time to break out that "special edition using Mac OS X Leopard" book I just bought and look into this. Also, think it is time to watch my system more closely, although I notice less of a drain than if running Windows and windows apps, seems like Unix handles memory usage better.

I seen many a SQL 2000 server just eating up ram when nothing is running (hold every query run in memory until SQL services is restarted), reboot the server and memory is back great again. Kinda worries me as I am getting ready to run a development version of SQL server 2008 through parallels (just to learn and to develop add on reports for our software that runs through ASP reporting services).

I would think of upgrading my 2gb to 4gb to see if that helps my occassional beachball, but I am not convinced it is memory yet as other apps continue to work fine. i know in the windows world once memory starts going low, the entire system starts to die out.

The other thing hold me back is money - Apple ram is expensive. I know with 2bg, I probably have 2x1gb sticks. so to go to 4, I need 2x2gb sticks. I just do not see why, with todays computers (except netbooks) 4gb is not standard. Netbooks need about 2gb standard (I say that because people treat netbooks like cheap laptops, expecting them to do more than what they were designed to do - like if I ever do get that Gigabyte M912X, unless Apple comes out with a similar at Macworld). I would not treat it like a development machine, but I would really run it and get my money's out of it.
 
shervieux said:
hmm, very interesting... Now that I know about the activity manager, i started watching my macbook... I see that my dock is using 13mb when I start my machine up (not a big deal), but everytime I open an app and it puts an icon in the dock, or I launch something that is in my dock - I notice my memory usage for my dock goes up. what gets me, is when I close the app out, the memory usage does not go back down until I restart my machine.

Makes me think that OSX or the dock has a memory leak. it worries me that as I fly in and out of apps, etc I am draining my memory until I reboot my machine.

Also, inactive memory. why would OSX reserve memory incase I start that program up again. Should it not just release it, so that it can be used?
Click to expand...

Of course it should keep the ram as cache for at least a little while... garbage collection in ram isn't instant. If you open an app, close it, and watch activity monitor and watch as the ram is let go later... if the system needs that ram before you reopen that app, it'll take it. don't worry.
 
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