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thugpoet22

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 26, 2005
130
0
New York
I noticed that the macbook maxs out at 2 gigs but the macbook pro can go up to 4 gigs. I wonder what preventing the macbook from supporting 4 gigs? Do you think its something that built into the motherboard or just something that a firmware update might cure or even some clever hacking might help. But i wont give it a shot because i spent too much money on this system to sending it crashing. The reason i've been thinking about this topic is because i plan to have my mac for a very long time, and while i dont really care about upgrading the processor, the memory seems like an easier and more meaningful upgrade. So i was wondering, if there is some type of solution or if anybody here has ever thought about this as well.
 
I'm almost certain the MBP won't take 4 gigs of ram either. I know apple doesn't offer a 4gb option on their website.

2 gig so-dimms are relatively new and still incredibly expensive. It would probably be cheaper to buy a new macbook in two years then to buy 4 gigs of laptop memory now.

I think a few people have tried putting 4 gigs in both a MB and MBP and from what I remember all they would do was grey screen.
 
Im sorry about that, i dont know why i thought the macbook pro could take 4 gigs of ram, In time the price of the memory will go down. As they advance the memory technology the memory that the current macbooks take will decrease in price. It would be nice though... wouldn't?
 
4gig is a waste of time.

I have 2gig in my MBP, and NEVER EVER max it out, even when I'm really hammering the machine hard...

Infact I dont think I've seen it ever use over more than say 1.2 or 1.5 Gig...

2gig = PLENTY
 
Cybix said:
4gig is a waste of time.

I have 2gig in my MBP, and NEVER EVER max it out, even when I'm really hammering the machine hard...

Infact I dont think I've seen it ever use over more than say 1.2 or 1.5 Gig...

2gig = PLENTY

Yeah, I used to think that, but now that I run parallels (half a gig) and several apps which run under Rosetta (a RAM hog), it would be nice to have an extra half a gig or so (I have 2 right now). Macbook owners who also use RAM for graphics might like this too.

Of course, if porting to Universal Binaries was completed, this would be less of an issue (at least for me).
 
Cybix said:
4gig is a waste of time.

I have 2gig in my MBP, and NEVER EVER max it out, even when I'm really hammering the machine hard...

Infact I dont think I've seen it ever use over more than say 1.2 or 1.5 Gig...

2gig = PLENTY

2 gig is crap when I am editing intense music projects on my macbook and macbook pro. You might not be a pro user, so you obviously would not have the need for anything more than 1 gb of ram.

I do wish they had space for 4 gb of ram, I would gladly install that in a second.
 
If ram wasn't an issue, why would so many people wantthe macpro which can upgrade to like 16 gigs if im not mistaken. Im not saying that i would upgrade it right now to the max but 3 years from now i might want that option. Who knows what my need will be in 3 years. And like some stated, if i actually wanted to game more on my macbook, having more ram might make up for the lack of a video card.
 
thugpoet22 said:
If ram wasn't an issue, why would so many people wantthe macpro which can upgrade to like 16 gigs if im not mistaken. Im not saying that i would upgrade it right now to the max but 3 years from now i might want that option. Who knows what my need will be in 3 years. And like some stated, if i actually wanted to game more on my macbook, having more ram might make up for the lack of a video card.

Who told you that? Provided your ram is large enough to cache all the texture files and such once everything is loaded it is all dependent on how good your GPU is. The more ram you have the more ram will be allocated by your kernel to the cache, so it is good for your system's overall performance.
 
Here is the link, the macpro can be upgraded to 16 gigs of main memory. http://www.apple.com/macpro/specs.html

Even if it isn't business smart to have the macbook and the macbook pro take the same amount of memory, it would be nice if the macbook pro could take 4 gigs. I mean whats preventing it from being upgraded to 4 gigs is it something thats built into the hardware or could a firware upgrade cure it lol
 
I barely use the 1GB of RAM on my iMac (admittedly PPC). As much as I recognise the benefits of lots of RAM (and I'm not a power user), I think some people go overboard when it comes to adding the stuff. Extra RAM will give no benefits if the current amount isn't being used to its fullest extent.
 
thugpoet22 said:
If ram wasn't an issue, why would so many people wantthe macpro which can upgrade to like 16 gigs if im not mistaken. Im not saying that i would upgrade it right now to the max but 3 years from now i might want that option. Who knows what my need will be in 3 years. And like some stated, if i actually wanted to game more on my macbook, having more ram might make up for the lack of a video card.

Although I have no proof, I'd say that a good portion of Mac Pro buyers aren't buying for the RAM upgradeability. Just look at half the posts in the Buying Advice forum- I feel like more often than not people posting are looking for a machine that will run games as fast as possible.

That's not to say that RAM isn't a factor, though.
 
apachie2k said:
it would be stupid cuz ure computer woudn't recognize it... and yea your gonna have to wait till 64 Bit
32bit goes up to 4GB... some core duo computers can accept 2GB modules and go up to 4GB.
 
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