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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

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...

tomorrow, I'll try to get you a screenshot of activity monitor with my Pro maxing out 32 gigs, though you only get a second before it locks it up :eek:
 
I'd really like to know if the 6 GB restriction also applies to a bootcamped Vista 64 on the new MBP!? Is anyone able to test this?
 
Apple's logic...

From reading the extensive posts on this I am guessing that Apple realised that dual channel was not going to be achievable using 6GB so they just said 4GB as the maximum. That would explain why they don't suggest you can have 6GB.

Now as to why 8GB won't work - I guessing the EFI is not smart enough at the moment to block off the bit that is being used by graphics or what ever.

Come on Apple - can we have an official statement on this i.e. an upgrade is in the works or you will have to wait or better still just release a patch!

Unfortunately some of us still have to use Windows thereby 8GB of RAM in a machine running potentially 2 OS's simultaneously is a good thing to have.

Also keep up with the Jones's or DELL in this instance. :)

Oh and Memory asside isn't it about time we had the option of 9 cell batteries for the Macbook Pro!

Ian
 
billmister said:
the typical user uses less than 1gb anyway.
Click to expand...

Well I guess I would count as a typical user as I use my MacBook for only school work and a movie once in a while, yet I'm constantly using around 2.5 GB RAM and all I run is Safari, iTunes, VLC, Mail, iCal, Pages and once in a while KeyNote..
 
akoblentz said:
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.
Click to expand...

yep .. that's called inactive memory in macspeak .. the idea is that if you've recently used an application, then you're more likely to reuse the application (or the application is more likely to put the same information in memory) again sometime soon .. so the memory pages are not deallocated immediately. This is why you may not see anything on the free list (free memory) until you try starting more applications and larger chunks of memory are deallocated.

The big problem i have with the mac though, coming from Solaris and Linux, is that the performance of the VM in darwin is pretty suckish .. a better page scanner, some better collection algorithms, and a swap filesystem would be a nice improvement .. for example - when it comes to swap space you'll see that OS X will continue to add swapfiles under /private/var/vm in varying sizes and seems pretty slow to reclaim or release this space .. looking now - I've got about 954MB in free memory with 6 swap files taking up 1.536GB on my hard drive - i don't quite see the point of this as reading pages from a swapfile on disk vs reading them directly from the application on the same disk should get me similar performance provided that the filesystem isn't too badly fragmented (which is a whole other point of contention)
 
Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but in the earlier threads on this it was mentioned that the Santa Rosa MBP's worked fine with 8GB RAM when running development seeds of Snow Leopard. Whereas with Leopard, the system would see all 8GB but would be susceptible to slowdowns and instability. This is exactly the behavior seen with the late 2008 MB's and MBP's as well.

So I am hoping that this is just a software limitation of Leopard, and that the MB's and MBP's would support 8GB with Snow Leopard (or maybe even 16GB once 8GB SODIMM's become available :D). I hope somebody with access to a late 2008 MB or MBP and 8GB of RAM can test with Vista x64, Linux 64 and with Snow Leopard (once the next seed of Snow Leopard that supports the late 2008 MB's and MBP's becomes available).
 
So who is willing to risk the bones to try it? Whatever you do, don't fry your MPB, its a very expensive computational machine.
 
bakedalaska said:
Now as to why 8GB won't work - I guessing the EFI is not smart enough at the moment to block off the bit that is being used by graphics or what ever.
Click to expand...

I've suggested that the problem may be the vRAM confusing leopard. With 8 gb RAM and the vRAM, it would total 8.256 mb, which is beyond the 8 gb limit of the Santa Rosa memory controller (and perhaps the new NVidia controller). If I could get my hands on a SR MacBook, I'd test this hypothesis.

John Jacob said:
Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but in the earlier threads on this it was mentioned that the Santa Rosa MBP's worked fine with 8GB RAM when running development seeds of Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

Where did you see this? I'd like to get SL dev, but unfortunately I'm not special enough...

The Tall One said:
So who is willing to risk the bones to try it? Whatever you do, don't fry your MPB, its a very expensive computational machine.
Click to expand...

Installing RAM won't do any damage to your computer.
 
VRam shouldn't be a problem as long as it's simply mapped to within the 8 GB limit (like at 7.75 - 8.00 GB for 256 mb VRAM). The chipset should do work that way if ESI/BIOS/OS can handle it.
 
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...

I find it interesting when Other World Computing advertises that more memory equals a faster Mac. Then they produce benchmarks that really do not prove their point.
 

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John Jacob said:
Nobody seems to have mentioned this yet, but in the earlier threads on this it was mentioned that the Santa Rosa MBP's worked fine with 8GB RAM when running development seeds of Snow Leopard.
Click to expand...

Allow me to be the second person to chime in and ask where you read this, because I've seen nothing saying that. I would already own one of the new MacBook Pros if I had.
 
I think that Ramjet deserves some kudos for this discovery.

I have always purchased my memory sticks from Ramjet, and their quality of service is excellent. They are (in my opinion) a high quality business.

Just my two cents.......
 
Cave Man said:
Where did you see this? I'd like to get SL dev, but unfortunately I'm not special enough...
Click to expand...

gmcalpin said:
Allow me to be the second person to chime in and ask where you read this, because I've seen nothing saying that. I would already own one of the new MacBook Pros if I had.
Click to expand...

It was the impression I gained from reading this thread. See post 127.

However, on re-reading it, the person who tested on Snow Leopard used only 6GB in his test (see post 92). So it maybe be that only 6GB works in Snow Leopard as well. :(
 
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