apple even acknowledges this through a page on their website about installing ram on the late 2008 macbooks
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1651#link2
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1651#link2
who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
It is dirt cheap and you do not get much of a price benefit purchasing lower density DIMMs.who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
In OSX, there's no way to disable the paging file (virtual memory). This is a real problem is if you have an SSD, because half the memory is allocated on the hard drive.
actually the computer you are talking about was an early 2009 upgrade. they upgraded to a 2.66 ghz on the mbp 15" and also more on the 17" mbp. i have the same computer and got confused because the computer thinks its a late 2008 when apple considers it an early 2009. however it was still one that only supported up to 4 gb until this upgrade. cant wait to add 8 gb. just waiting to find some that are on sale for like $80I have a 2.66 15" Late 2008 MacBook Pro, my firmware matches the upgraded listing to allow 8GB of RAM. Pretty cool
It should be an option, definitely.
But, if you check Activity Monitor, System Memory tab, you can see how much has actually been swapped out. On my system, which has been up almost 3 days, it says 80KB. Even though it says I have 4MB of swap file 'in use,' and have 478MB of swap-ins. The discrepancy is likely partially due to executable code, which doesn't get swapped; it just gets thrown out, and reloaded from the executable file if needed. My actual swapfile is 64MB as allocated on disk.
So, if you do have enough RAM, OS X doesn't appear to be over-eager in writing to the swapfile to an extent that an SSD would have any reduced lifetime. But there is probably plenty of other places to look, such as temporary files, needless rewriting of large sections of data, web browser caches, etc.
who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
I maxed out my 4GB late '08 system last night with three massive pictures opened in Photoshop at the same time.
who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
In OSX, there's no way to disable the paging file (virtual memory). This is a real problem is if you have an SSD, because half the memory is allocated on the hard drive. That means your SSD will be toast in a few years. It doesn't matter how much stuff you have open (how much memory is allocated). The operating system is always writing memory to the hard drive. Does that seem counter-productive? When you open an app, the whole point is for it to be accessible in real time, right? And you don't want it destroying your SSD slowly over time!?
who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
What about the mid 2009 white MacBooks?
That was the last non-LED white MacBook. Is there a firmware update for that to unlock support for 8 GB RAM?
I saw this on 9to5mac and it does work, ordered the ram on saturday from amazon and it works.
who needs 8gb, sheesh. i barely use 2gb of my 4gb of ram as it is. even using photoshop, I have never seen it max out.
I have 12gb RAM in my iMac and looking at iStat, after 17 days since last reboot I've had 83,053 pageouts!!
It's heartbreaking to know my Mac is having to do all those page outs I think I'm going to call OWC and upgrade to 16GB and see if that helps...
I have 12gb RAM in my iMac and looking at iStat, after 17 days since last reboot I've had 83,053 pageouts!!
It's heartbreaking to know my Mac is having to do all those page outs I think I'm going to call OWC and upgrade to 16GB and see if that helps...
In OSX, there's no way to disable the paging file (virtual memory). This is a real problem is if you have an SSD, because half the memory is allocated on the hard drive. That means your SSD will be toast in a few years. It doesn't matter how much stuff you have open (how much memory is allocated). The operating system is always writing memory to the hard drive. Does that seem counter-productive? When you open an app, the whole point is for it to be accessible in real time, right? And you don't want it destroying your SSD slowly over time!?
In Windows 7, you can disable the paging file, and all your memory can be allocated in physical memory. It's nice just to have the option. Apple, however, loves to hide these little details, so they force you too use whatever primary hard drive for virtual memory allocation, even if it's an SSD with a questionable life span, or even an HDD.
And the argument that you don't use more than 4GB of RAM, ever, is ridiculous! Maybe you're not commanding the system to by opening a bunch of apps, but the SYSTEM will be!
Yes. In Windows, if you go over the physical RAM amount and the paging file is turned off, you'll BSOD. But if you have enough RAM, you won't! Unless you run multiple VMs or several games at once, this won't be a problem.
Apple needs to allow users to decided whether they want a paging file, especially with the cost of SSDs. If one dies and it's not on warranty, it's not a good day. And I'm more than ready to blame it on virtual memory allocation.
That would be such absolute BS but it wouldn't surprise me at all. "Oh, you want to be able to use more RAM in your Mac? Well that wasn't advertised when we sold it to you, so in order to be able to do that you'll need to hand over $1".
That would be such absolute BS but it wouldn't surprise me at all. "Oh, you want to be able to use more RAM in your Mac? Well that wasn't advertised when we sold it to you, so in order to be able to do that you'll need to hand over $1".