Saving On MBP With Mac Mini RAM?

[rohopish]

Hello Everyone,

About 6 or more months ago, I purchased a Mac Mini (1.42 GHz PowerPC G4) which came with 512 MB of RAM. I upgraded the memory from 512 MB to 1 GB and was given the 512 MB with the sale of my new (and first, may I mention) Macintosh computer. Now, after half a year of use, I have grown to love Macs and OS X; however, I have a lot of tough courses coming this fall in school and need a notebook as such. But I also want a laptop that will last me for 3 or 4 years.

I want to buy a MacBook Pro, but being the penny-pincher I am, I was wondering if I could use the 512 MB of RAM from my Mac Mini and put it into the other memory-slot of the MBP; which, as I can establish from Apple.ca, comes with two slots, and if you either get the 512 MB or 1 GB configuration there should be one slot remaining. What I need to know is: 1) Could this work? and 2) Is my 512 MB stick compatible with the MBP or even the MacBook (if I decide to go down that root). This is what reads EXACTLY on a sticker on the stick of RAM:

M1U51264DS8HC3G-5T
512MB DDR-400 MHz-CL3
PC3200U-30330

Thank you all so very much for you help in the matter. I eagerly await your replies.

-Bobby

 

[faintember]

No. Two different types of RAM. The MBP and MB use PC2-5300 DDR2 667MHz RAM.

 

[rohopish]

Oh Darn...

Thank you for the reply.

I see. I trust you know this for sure so I won't question your information. That is kind of bad as I have no other use for this RAM at the moment. How much do you think I could fetch for the RAM and could I sell it at any used PC place?

 

[faintember]

Np, sry that it wont work for you. a 512MB stick of RAM for you mini is going for under $50 on Datamem, so maybe you can get $30-40 for it? The other reason the RAM wont work is that the PPC mini RAM is 184-pin compared to the Mac Intel RAM that is all 200-pin (at least the MB and MBP are).

BTW, for under $100 you can get a 1GB stick for the MB or MBP, or get 2x1GB for either the MB or MBP for $185.

 

[Sun Baked]

Look it up for yourself...

Hardware developer notes

Mac Mini Computer (January 2005)

The Mac mini has one RAM expansion slot that accepts standard DDR333 PC2700, 184-pin DIMMs (dual inline memory modules) for use with SDRAM devices. The Mac mini supports DIMM sizes 256 MB, 512 MB, or 1 GB of memory for a total system maximum of up to 1 GB.

15-inch MacBook Pro Computer (January 2006)

The 15-inch MacBook Pro computer introduced in January 2006, based on the Intel Core Duo microprocessor, provides two RAM slots that accommodate 200-pin DDR2 SDRAM SO-DIMMs up to 1.25” in height. The SO-DIMMs must be DDR2-667 (PC2-5300) compliant and must be unbuffered, unregistered, 8-byte, nonparity, and non-ECC.

 

[rohopish]

Oh, I'm Sorry

I didn't know there was information like that on Apple.ca, thank you for the link! Ah yes, I guess I'll have to sell it then... One more question, just to make good use of this thread; do you think that I really need the bump from 64 MB shared GPU (MacBook) to 128 MB dedicated (MBP)? I usually use my computer for these few things: iTunes, Safari, Acqlite, MSN, iMovie (occaisionally), watching HD trailers, watching DVD's, and playing some games (WoW, The Sims 2, etc.). Will I need the MBP's dedicated GPU?

 

[faintember]

For the normal tasks (word processing, itunes, idvd, etc.) the 64mb video RAM is fine...For games it is a bit different. WoW supposedly plays well on the MB at low settings, especially with 2GB of RAM. I havent heard about the Sims 2, but if that is the 3D perspective one i bet it would suffer a bit, or would play on low setting. Search on the forums for Macbook game threads, like this, or this, this and this.