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I am ready to go "all out", as you say, and buy the 128GB. I would like proof, however, that Apple will allow their 12-core Intel processor in the new Mac Pros to access that much RAM. Sometimes Apple does unexpected things with their chipset.

Please, if you hear about someone installing and utilizing 128 GB of RAM in the new Mac Pro, I would like to see evidence before I go "all out" and buy it. I am ready but waiting for evidence.

[[I am also looking, of course, for an affordable way to do this! $3076 is not too bad!]]

Yeah, I certainly haven't tried this yet. I bet OWC will, seeing as they sold 128 GB kits for the previous gen Mac Pros even before Mavericks came along bringing support for more than 96 GB under OS X. The Intel platforms Apple is using certainly support it. It really just comes down to the processor these days, since Intel moved the memory controller on die a while back.
 
Ouch! In 1994, I paid (my father) $400.00 for 16MB RAM for my Packard Bell Legend 1956 Supreme. It was a Intel 50MHz (DX/2), 400MB HDD. I needed the extra RAM to play Ultima VIII: Pagan.

Anyone else spend as much as a computer costs these days just for RAM back in the day?
I spent $1100 for a Meg on My MacII, and I was lucky to get it.
 
I'm pretty sure I paid right around $3k for 32MB :eek: of RAM for my Mac IIci 21 years ago!

I remember when the Mac IIci came out and it was a sweet, sweet machine. As an owner of an SE-30, I lusted after the IIci. But a little while later I was able to get the Quadra 840AV and didn't think I'd ever need to upgrade my computer again. Ha!
 
Yeah, I certainly haven't tried this yet. I bet OWC will, seeing as they sold 128 GB kits for the previous gen Mac Pros even before Mavericks came along bringing support for more than 96 GB under OS X. The Intel platforms Apple is using certainly support it. It really just comes down to the processor these days, since Intel moved the memory controller on die a while back.

Hi there, repoman27, if you hear about 128 GB kits for the new Mac Pro anytime, I would be glad to know about them. I'm keeping my eyes open. I saw some RAM from a few vendors that might work, but for now, I am sitting still until I see someone using 128 GB in a new Mac Pro and verifying that it can be utilized.
 
It pays to be a little behind the newest machine or even 4 years behind.

I just sold my mac pro 2008 which paid for itself many many many … times over, got a used 2009 2.93 8 core from OWC, and installed an additional 16 gigs of ram, it came with 16, only 128 bucks more to get it to 32. Also added a OWC Mercury Accelsior_E2 256 gig pcie flash drive for my boot drive which also has two esata 6g ports read and write speeds up to 600mbps total 2300.00 with no sales tax, minus the 800 for the 2008 mac pro=1500 out of pocket. Geek bench score for multi core 64 bit comes in at 18532 for my 2009 mac pro, faster than the new 4 core and a bit slower than the new 6 core. Mine has two video cards and I will most likely upgrade the 5870 to a new GPU in the near future add another 400 for a new GPU because I will sell the 5870 for 250 ish.
Work is buying me the new Mac Pro 4 core so looking forward to testing the two, I think mine will benchmark just a tad under the 2013 6 core and at a much cheaper price. Which with 32 gigs of ram comes in at 4400.00 add sales tax 4763. Yes I don't have thunderbolt nor do I have USB3, but I have esata 6g.
I will move up to the new mac pro in two years, refurbished 12 core when they come out with the 24 core model… But for now I still get to have dual internal blu ray and DVD drives, 4 internal hard drives. Plus my esata 4 drive external drive bay. The reality is the older mac pros finally have software that is up to speed with the hardware, like taking full advantage of the virtual cores, 64 bits etc.
 
so... anyone else buy memory from owc?

got my mac pro in yesterday and got it all setup. then, i popped the top and put in the new memory from owc..... unfortunately though, its not 1866mhz.... its 1600.

obviously being christmas, i dont expect to hear back from them today... but to say im pissed is an understatement. ive tested several times... it really is 1600mhz memory. testing out as 1600 in both mavericks and tech tools.
 

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That's why I got dual D700s and only 16gb of ram.
The ram is the only thing you can really mess with for now. And I need an excuse to do the full "Darth Vader without his face on" from Empire, and upgrade the ram.
Yeah I'm gonna have to give this computer a Star Wars name. Inevitable.
 
Why do Mac Pros always take the most expensive RAM? Always some special kind or fully buffered. Regular PC RAM is too common and low-class for it or something. I have 4GB of RAM from a PC I got for free sitting here that I can't use in my Mac Pro. Is the Mac Pro RAM even better?

I was going to upgrade the RAM in my 2008 Mac Pro, but sorry, I am NOT paying $220 for 8GB of outdated 800MHz DDR2.
 
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Why do Mac Pros always take the most expensive RAM? Always some special kind or fully buffered. Regular PC RAM is too common and low-class for it or something. I have 4GB of RAM from a PC I got for free sitting here that I can't use in my Mac Pro. Is the Mac Pro RAM even better?

I was going to upgrade the RAM in my 2008 Mac Pro, but sorry, I am NOT paying $220 for 8GB of outdated 800MHz DDR2.

The very first Mac Pro, through the 2008 model all took Fully Buffered DIMMs, which were significantly more expensive. (And now that FB-DIMMs have been discontinued, it obviously is way more expensive.)

The Mac Pros since (2009 and later) take bog-standard DDR3. By default, they have shipped with ECC, and in some cases Registered, but perfectly standard DDR3 will work in them.
 
I wonder what the timings are like compared to Apple's own supplied RAM.

Retina MacBook Pro has some fast timed RAM, 5-5-8-11, most people were comparing prices using 11-11-11 or 12-12-12. Apple's RAM is about 20% faster. The only RAM I could find at Apple's timings was from HP and CISCO for high performance servers and switches, and they charged 10 times more than Apple.

Where did you get those timings? Memory benchmarks aren't really any more impressive in spite of the lower CAS timings. You can find them on geekbench. When it comes to dimms, Apple just uses tested and rebranded sticks as opposed to custom specifications. There's no reason to think dimms from Apple would be any faster than dimms installed by Apple. The other comparison isn't really valid at a broader level.
 
so... anyone else buy memory from owc?

got my mac pro in yesterday and got it all setup. then, i popped the top and put in the new memory from owc..... unfortunately though, its not 1866mhz.... its 1600.

obviously being christmas, i dont expect to hear back from them today... but to say im pissed is an understatement. ive tested several times... it really is 1600mhz memory. testing out as 1600 in both mavericks and tech tools.

You are correct... OWC called me tonight and issued an RMA for the 32 GB kit I ordered because the timing was programmed incorrectly. Unfortunately the kit (and my Mac Pro) are still stuck in UPS land. But they will overnight the new memory tomorrow (I did the advance replacement RMA where they put a hold on your card for the cost until you return the original memory). I assume they will be call you as well!
 
Why do Mac Pros always take the most expensive RAM? Always some special kind or fully buffered. Regular PC RAM is too common and low-class for it or something. I have 4GB of RAM from a PC I got for free sitting here that I can't use in my Mac Pro. Is the Mac Pro RAM even better?

It is regular PC ram. It's just PC ram that works with the latest, fastest, xeon chips. If you bought a PC with these same CPUs you'd be buying the exact same ram, there hasn't been such a thing as "apple ram" for years even though many dealers have products listed that way.
 
so, i gave up. owc admitted that some modules were actually shipped out incorrectly, but they are now "out of stock" (and have been for 2 weeks). i was promised that it would be in stock monday, but am now being told that whoever told me that was incorrect, and they simply dont know when it will be in.

owc completely screwed this up. im cancelling my order entirely, and going to get crucial memory. i can get a 32gb kit for cheaper, and its using 2 x 16gb sticks, so i can expand to 64gb easily in the future.
 
I'm pretty sure I paid right around $3k for 32MB :eek: of RAM for my Mac IIci 21 years ago! Then again I also had a massive, 130MB SCSI HDD at the time as well...

Was it a MacBottom hard drive or a Jasmine hard drive? I used to work at PCPC (makers of HFS Backup and the MacBottom hard drive) and I remember the full page ads that Jasmine used to run in the Macworld magazine. 80MB for only $800. By Grapthar's hammer, what a savings.
 
Was it a MacBottom hard drive or a Jasmine hard drive? I used to work at PCPC (makers of HFS Backup and the MacBottom hard drive) and I remember the full page ads that Jasmine used to run in the Macworld magazine. 80MB for only $800. By Grapthar's hammer, what a savings.

Jasmine DirectDrive 130... so amazing! Looked sharp when stacked with my Bernoulli 90 Pro, too.
 
Hi there, repoman27, if you hear about 128 GB kits for the new Mac Pro anytime, I would be glad to know about them. I'm keeping my eyes open. I saw some RAM from a few vendors that might work, but for now, I am sitting still until I see someone using 128 GB in a new Mac Pro and verifying that it can be utilized.

So as I was reading the datasheet for these new E5 v2 Xeons the other day, I noticed that the E5-1600 series processors do NOT support LRDIMMS, just select members of the E5-2600 series do. So that would mean that only the 12-core Mac Pro (Late 2013) could take 32 GB LRDIMMS. Also, Intel does not list any 32 GB quad-ranked RDIMMs in their validation results which could possibly be used with the other models. However, according to Intel, the E5-2600 platform has been validated with up to 64 GB LRDIMMs, whenever they become widely available.

so, i gave up. owc admitted that some modules were actually shipped out incorrectly, but they are now "out of stock" (and have been for 2 weeks). i was promised that it would be in stock monday, but am now being told that whoever told me that was incorrect, and they simply dont know when it will be in.

owc completely screwed this up. im cancelling my order entirely, and going to get crucial memory. i can get a 32gb kit for cheaper, and its using 2 x 16gb sticks, so i can expand to 64gb easily in the future.
I realize this post is several weeks old at this point, but just so you know, these new Mac Pros have quad-channel memory controllers. If you only populate 2 channels, you're halving your bandwidth (in theory), which is probably worse than running a single strap lower in frequency. You should really do 4 DIMMs at a time. In fact, I'm surprised Apple even offers configurations with only 3 slots filled. Although you found out in a less than stellar way, at least you've now confirmed that these machines will take lower clocked RAM just fine. I'd also like to see if they take regular non-ECC DIMMs as well, which they should as long as there are no goofy heat spreaders on them.
 
So as I was reading the datasheet for these new E5 v2 Xeons the other day, I noticed that the E5-1600 series processors do NOT support LRDIMMS, just select members of the E5-2600 series do. So that would mean that only the 12-core Mac Pro (Late 2013) could take 32 GB LRDIMMS. Also, Intel does not list any 32 GB quad-ranked RDIMMs in their validation results which could possibly be used with the other models. However, according to Intel, the E5-2600 platform has been validated with up to 64 GB LRDIMMs, whenever they become widely available.



Hi there, repoman27! I heard something similar from a manufacturer the other day. Since I saw your post, I just thought I'd jump in and ask if you've seen (yet) anyone providing 32 GB RAM sticks that have been certified to work in the late 2013 Mac Pro. I'm especially interested in anyone who has tested 4 such sticks, for a total of 128 GB of RAM. I'm interested in buying the 12-core model, but I am waiting until I can find such a configuration of RAM that has been tested. I have a separate thread about this here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1698707/
 
Bump its almost August 2014 - and more RAM on the Market ?

Bump to thread ..., its almost August 2014 ..., anyone else have good deals for Ram upgrades for the mac Pro ?
 
Bump to thread ..., its almost August 2014 ..., anyone else have good deals for Ram upgrades for the mac Pro ?

I haven't posted any more about this... because even though I am still using a Mac desktop, I ended up buying a rack-mounted server instead of the new Mac Pro. I was able to afford tons and tons more RAM with such a solution, as well as 24 cores and lots more disk space. It made perfect sense to me, in the end.
 
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