Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
4GB RAM limit?
- Thread starter mickliq
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
The SB architecture technically supports up to 8GB of DDR3... I guess we won't know for sure whether or not it's upgradeable until someone opens one up. I know I will when my maxed-out 11-incher comes in next week.
It's indeed impossible to upgrade your RAM afterwards as it is still soldered to the motherboard.
A 8GB option would have been good for power users but I guess that's what the MacBook Pro is for.
At least if you're lacking free RAM to run a virtual machine or heavy editing applications the virtual memory will be much faster since it would use your SSD instead of a slow hard drive. Of course SSD is still not as fast as RAM but I still feel 8GB RAM is less needed in a MBA because of the quick paging out with SSD.
A 8GB option would have been good for power users but I guess that's what the MacBook Pro is for.
At least if you're lacking free RAM to run a virtual machine or heavy editing applications the virtual memory will be much faster since it would use your SSD instead of a slow hard drive. Of course SSD is still not as fast as RAM but I still feel 8GB RAM is less needed in a MBA because of the quick paging out with SSD.
You'll find that the SB architecture technically supports a lot more than 8 GB of RAM.
Anyway, I cannot figure out why there is no BTO to upgrade the RAM. I would even happily pay the Apple tax on it. I suppose they want to differentiate it from the Macbook Pro line?
I think this is the most likely (and most unfortunate) reason there is no more than 4gb in the Air. Ah well.. I'll still appreciate it. I imagine the SSD helps more than the HDD.
Once you saturate your RAM usage completely (whether it be 2GB or 4GB), the virtual memory kicks in and utilizes space on your SSD as RAM. Since it is SSD and not spinning platter HD, it is very fast and you probably wouldn't notice much lag when VM kicks in and uses a small part of your SSD as RAM. That is why the 2GB Air is still highly usable when running multiple apps, while a 2GB MacBook with a platter disk would lag if you are running three web browsers, XCode, Photoshop, and iTunes at the same time, for instance.
