MacBookPro
Like many of you i also can't wait for the coming 17" MBP(hopefully in spring!)
There is one thing i would like to ask about the currently MBP 15"model,why is the RAM memory extension only up to 2G?? should a pro notebook get at list to 4G like IBM or ACER?
Any possibility that the 17"MBP will have bigger extendibility?
Thanks to all
Ettore
There is one thing i would like to ask about the currently MBP 15"model,why is the RAM memory extension only up to 2G?? should a pro notebook get at list to 4G like IBM or ACER?
Any possibility that the 17"MBP will have bigger extendibility?
Thanks to all
Ettore
Comments
The second one that will be a problem going into the future, when 2 GB SO-DIMM modules are available, is that most laptops are 32 bit memory systems that can only use a theoretical maximum of 4 GB of main memory. In reality, they can only physically use about 2.5 GB of main memory.
If you want a laptop capable of expanding to 4 GB, an AMD Turion64 system is pretty much it (unless you want a SPARC laptop), pending the availability of 2 GB SO-DIMMs. By that time, Apple and virtually all other vendors will likely be shipping laptops with 64 bit memory systems capable of using over 4 GB though.
One other thing is that a 2 GB memory module in the future may in fact not use the existing SO-DIMM form factor and therefore is incompatible with all old systems. So, we may not even have an option.
Originally posted by THT
The second one that will be a problem going into the future, when 2 GB SO-DIMM modules are available, is that most laptops are 32 bit memory systems that can only use a theoretical maximum of 4 GB of main memory. In reality, they can only physically use about 2.5 GB of main memory.
Intel (and AMD) have the PAE (Physical Address Extensions) which extend the addressable memory beyond 32-bit. For the Pentium line, it was 36-bit IIRC (which would give ~68GB of space). I have NO idea if any of that was included in the Core chipset or even if Apple has written the kernel to handle it. I don't think it was widely used outside of linux kernels enabled for PAE.
So the 4GB from Acer and Lenovo can't be considered as lies but they don't tell you the whole truth as you cannot buy a 4GB model from them and WinXP can't address the whole 4GB when the 2GB SO-DIMMS finally become available.
THT, I seem to remember the barrier at 3.5GB? 2.5GB sounds very ugly!
Sossaman can address 16GB in PAE mode using the E7520 chipset.