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1 stick or 2 stick?

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xelL

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 23, 2006
5
0
Okay so I'm planning on upgrading my RAM on the MacBook real soon, but I'm not sure which would probably be a safer buy. I want to get up to a gig of RAM, but I want to be able to have the ability to upgrade in the future to perhaps 2 gigs. I heard that it's best for the MacBook to have matching pair RAM sticks, but I didn't hear anything about having just 1 stick of RAM. Would having just 1 stick of RAM (1GB) decrease performance in anyway? Or should I just go with perhaps 2x512MB sticks?

Thanks in advance.
 
xelL said:
Okay so I'm planning on upgrading my RAM on the MacBook real soon, but I'm not sure which would probably be a safer buy. I want to get up to a gig of RAM, but I want to be able to have the ability to upgrade in the future to perhaps 2 gigs. I heard that it's best for the MacBook to have matching pair RAM sticks, but I didn't hear anything about having just 1 stick of RAM. Would having just 1 stick of RAM (1GB) decrease performance in anyway? Or should I just go with perhaps 2x512MB sticks?

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
having a single 1 GB stick would hurt performance if you normally run many apps at the same time, but help if you usually only have one CPU intensive app open.
 
yeah theirs a huge difference in graphics stuff

just buy 2GB, i got it from some ebay guy from hong kong, works great arrived in three days.
 
If you can only afford one, put the 1GB in one socket and keep one of the stock 256 MB sticks in the other one. 1.25 GB will outdo any performance upgrade you would see from having a matched 512MB pair, even with the integrated graphics.
 
i would definitely spend the extra money now and upgrade to 2 gigs. the macbook uses DDR2 ram, meaning that the 2 dimms work together to produce enhanced performance. when half of the puzzle is missing, then you can expect significant losses in system performance than the same amount with 2 chips (i.e. two 256 as compared to one 512). with the already integrated graphics, this is not a good thing.
 
Conthemon said:
wtf, the 1 stick of RAM hurts performance? how is any different than two sticks?
Click to expand...
when using shared graphics and DDR2, there's a big difference. also, windows should (IMHO) have dual channel to run smoothly. if xelL is using bootcamp, he/she needs dual channel preferably in matched pairrs.
 
i just installed 1gb stick from corsair for a total of 1.25gb of RAM. I dont notice any particular slowdown compared to a 1gb matched pair setup. I usually like to have many apps open as well and multitasking is fast and smooth.

i went with this setup because i knew in the end i wanted to have 2gb of total RAM, so if your planning to do the same...go for it! you wont regret it.
 
chris y. said:
i just installed 1gb stick from corsair for a total of 1.25gb of RAM. I dont notice any particular slowdown compared to a 1gb matched pair setup. I usually like to have many apps open as well and multitasking is fast and smooth.

i went with this setup because i knew in the end i wanted to have 2gb of total RAM, so if your planning to do the same...go for it! you wont regret it.
Click to expand...
I'm not saying you need a matched pair (unless you have a PM G5, that is), I'm just saying you should have two seperate RAM sticks.
 
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