Conflicting info on Mini Memory

[godslabrat]

Hi All,

I'm looking to upgrade the RAM in my Mac Mini (one of the "refreshed" models
from this August). I'm looking to max out the RAM, but I've been getting
conflicting reports on what the max level of RAM is on this model. The
guide says it's 2GB (2x1GB):

http://guides.macrumors.com/Mac_mini_%28Intel%29

As does this thread here:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/373399/

But in this guide and thread, it is suggested that I could get 3 GB, or even
3.3:

http://guides.macrumors.com/Understanding_Intel_Mac_RAM

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/371646/

Which is correct? There's a pretty significant price difference between
1x2GB and 2x1GB, so I'd really like to know for sure which would be more
economical.

Thanks so much.

 

[peeaanuut]

I have heard 2, 3 and 3.3

It really does depend on your model of mini. I have the 1.83 c2d which is the newest revision and currently am running 2.5g of ram. 1x2gig and 1x512mb. So that blows the 2gig max out the window. I have seen a mini register 3g so I am certain it will do that but as far as the 3.3, I am wondering if that isnt some fenageling of numbers. To be safe you can stick with 3 as the max.

 

[will792]

The memory space in the current Mac Mini is 4GB (in 2GB x 2 configuration) but some of the space is reserved by controllers. The accessible area will be around 3.3GB if 4GB of physical memory is present.

For people who need to have 2+GB RAM and do not want to waste money on memory that would not be used the only options are to have 2GB + 1GB or 2GB + 512MB. The downside is that this configuration would not run in dual channel access mode that requires identical memory modules in both slots. There is an interesting article in tomshardware.com that benchmarks identical systems running in dual channel and single channel memory access mode.

Performance comparison of single and dual channel access

The conclusion is that large cache size in C2D CPU mostly eliminates advantages for dual channel access mode and the difference is negligible for almost all apps and benchmarks, except synthetic ones measuring ram access speed. It is good news for us since we can buy 2GB module and replace one of the original 512MB modules.