Prev Gen Mini

[MistaBungle]

I know my Mini can handle 3GB of memory but is it capable of 4GB?

I was looking on CanadaRam and it says

"Two sockets, Can take 1 Gb + 2 Gb for 3Gb total. With 2 x 2 Gb, 3.0 GB is available to the OS but Dual Channel access is implemented"

I'm not that technical but does it say "if I have 4gb, the Mini will recognize only 3gb but will be capable of dual channel as if there was 4gb" ?

 

[marbles]

Not worth it, you wouldn't notice much if any difference. I'd stay as you are and save money

 

[MistaBungle]

Interesting.

So a 2Ghz Core2Duo running at 1GB ram won't notice the increase.

I shall save the money for drugs!

 

[steve2112]

Actually, with the jump from 1GB to 2GB, you will notice a difference. Outside of a few uses, however, you won't see too much improvement from 2GB to 3GB. However, there is the line of thought that says if you are going to open it up, you may as well max things out. Basically, the chipset will only see 3GB, though. The catch is that if you use 3GB instead of 2 2GB sticks, you will lose the dual channel abilities.

Here is a pretty good explination: http://forums.macnn.com/58/imac-emac-and-mac-mini/380349/a-guide-mac-mini-ram-upgrades/

 

[marbles]

Interesting.

So a 2Ghz Core2Duo running at 1GB ram won't notice the increase.

I shall save the money for drugs!

haha , I thought you meant the previous gen , the current NVidia Mini will see an increase in the graphics especially as the chip is locked to 128 at 1Gb RAM and increases to 256Mb if you stick 2Gb in it.

Am not sure how much difference the dual channel will make and if it's worth it, I guess it's down to what your using it for

 

[gwerhart0800]

I have one of the 1.83 C2D Minis with 2x2GB ram installed. Yes, it works, but because of chipset limitations, you will only see 3.3GB usable. OtherWorldComputing offers a 1x1GB/1x2GB upgrade kit that bumps things to 3GB total. The only penalty for that is a very, very, very slight reduction in performance because the uneven sizes disable some of the benefits of dual channel. I chose to upgrade to the 2x2GB because it was only $10 more at the time than the 3GB kit ... since I had a 1GB using 2x512MB, I had to replace both memory cards anyway.

I run several VMs on Fusion and the extra RAM is really important for that. Prior to that, I was using the Mini only for iPhone development and the memory usage would peak at ~1.3GB during a build ... so for that work, 2GB was fine.

 

[MistaBungle]

Thanks guys and gals!