Do you have a link, I didn't see that price on Newegg. Only 2x2GB for about $140.
The ram is the same timing as the original Apple ram and there is no noticeable hit from being non-paired. Supposedly the hit is so small and vs pageouts to harddrive, it is a major plus to have the extra ram instead.
Surprisingly, the difference in not having non-paired sticks is such a minor hit that the fear of a massive slowdown has been over exaggerated.
The biggest performance 'hit' of going from dual-channel to single-channel RAM would be to the integrated graphics. Other than that, you'd need to run benchmarks to see the difference. It's not something that would be noticeable in actual use.
please clarify. I get the impression from the article that my 2007 MacBook Pro which used to have a limit of 3GB max can now at least go to 4GB with the kit? Just wondered cause want to max out my ram and would like to keep it even (4GB) instead of making it odd (3GB).
So I currently have 2x2GB in my MBP, do I need to just buy a 4GB chip and replace one of my current ones or do I have to buy 6 of the very same kind? You think they'll have deals for black friday?
Those prices are insane. I've gotten all my RAM upgrades through OWC because they have good prices and good memory. But they want people to pay $500 for a single 4 GB stick? Gimme a break.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rudebwoy
So I currently have 2x2GB in my MBP, do I need to just buy a 4GB chip and replace one of my current ones or do I have to buy 6 of the very same kind? You think they'll have deals for black friday?
You would just need to replace one of the 2GB sticks with a 4GB stick.
Those prices are insane. I've gotten all my RAM upgrades through OWC because they have good prices and good memory. But they want people to pay $500 for a single 4 GB stick? Gimme a break.
You would just need to replace one of the 2GB sticks with a 4GB stick.
please clarify. I get the impression from the article that my 2007 MacBook Pro which used to have a limit of 3GB max can now at least go to 4GB with the kit? Just wondered cause want to max out my ram and would like to keep it even (4GB) instead of making it odd (3GB).
If your MBP can only utilize 3 or 4GB, that will not change with that higher density RAM. That issue is with memory address space with pre-Santa Rosa chipsets.
However, you may be mistaken on which MBP you have since the Santa Rosa MBPs that can handle 4GB RAM (and now 6GB) were first introduced in June 2007). Use MacTracker to verify which MBP you have.
Not really, 4gb of ram really wasn't the bottle neck holding laptops back in the first place. Read the barefeats article. But for all you ram junkies out there with money burning a hole in your pocket, knock yourself out.
Somewhat related... I have a Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM. When running VMWare (1 CPU and 1 GB allocated) and compiling a large XCode project, I find it hits a point where it just chokes and starts swapping madly to disk (whole machine is pretty much locked). Whereas if VMWare isn't running, the compilation runs very smoothly.
I'm pretty sure the loss of one of the CPUs to VMWare isn't the bottleneck in that equation. So having an extra GB or two can make a difference in some situations.
I would obviously like to see additional benchmarks, but if the rest of the benchmarks look like this I really don't see the point in the cost. Honestly, the benchmarks don't surprise me, but I wonder who is going to buy this? People with more money than brains?
Maybe a revised version of the Adobe Creative Suite written as a 64-bit app might see some difference or some other future applications that are written as 64-bit apps, but when a lot of applications are either 32-bit or too small for a 64-bit version to make a noticeable difference I wonder why people seem so fascinated by buying more than 4Gib of RAM when the benefits are so minute in most cases?
Keep in mind that each app can use 2GB, and those benchmarks really only test one app at a time. If you use two or more big apps, or use a lot of smaller ones, then it can be helpful to keep those apps in memory so programs aren't paged in and out so much. I don't know if there are any benchmarks that test swap time when switching between apps, and I don't think there are any benchmarks that test anything like using another app while a render or other intensive task is running, but those are the kind of things that more memory (and more cores) would help, but it's kind of a ghost in the machine the way computers are tested right now.
I use a processor-intensive app -- Nikon Scan, for film scanning. Would upgrading my Santa Rosa Macbook from its current 4GB to 6GB RAM therefore **not** shorten the time it takes to scan images, do you think?
I ask because the price of the 4GB sticks has now (June 2010) fallen to $130.....
I also find that I get program crashes using Nikon Scan, when I have too many images in the process queue. MIght extra memory help with that problem, or make no difference? What do you think?
Comments
Do you have a link, I didn't see that price on Newegg. Only 2x2GB for about $140.
The ram is the same timing as the original Apple ram and there is no noticeable hit from being non-paired. Supposedly the hit is so small and vs pageouts to harddrive, it is a major plus to have the extra ram instead.
Surprisingly, the difference in not having non-paired sticks is such a minor hit that the fear of a massive slowdown has been over exaggerated.
The biggest performance 'hit' of going from dual-channel to single-channel RAM would be to the integrated graphics. Other than that, you'd need to run benchmarks to see the difference. It's not something that would be noticeable in actual use.
So I currently have 2x2GB in my MBP, do I need to just buy a 4GB chip and replace one of my current ones or do I have to buy 6 of the very same kind? You think they'll have deals for black friday?
You would just need to replace one of the 2GB sticks with a 4GB stick.
Those prices are insane. I've gotten all my RAM upgrades through OWC because they have good prices and good memory. But they want people to pay $500 for a single 4 GB stick? Gimme a break.
You would just need to replace one of the 2GB sticks with a 4GB stick.
Awesome, thanks!
please clarify. I get the impression from the article that my 2007 MacBook Pro which used to have a limit of 3GB max can now at least go to 4GB with the kit? Just wondered cause want to max out my ram and would like to keep it even (4GB) instead of making it odd (3GB).
If your MBP can only utilize 3 or 4GB, that will not change with that higher density RAM. That issue is with memory address space with pre-Santa Rosa chipsets.
However, you may be mistaken on which MBP you have since the Santa Rosa MBPs that can handle 4GB RAM (and now 6GB) were first introduced in June 2007). Use MacTracker to verify which MBP you have.
Not really, 4gb of ram really wasn't the bottle neck holding laptops back in the first place. Read the barefeats article. But for all you ram junkies out there with money burning a hole in your pocket, knock yourself out.
Somewhat related... I have a Mac Pro with 4GB of RAM. When running VMWare (1 CPU and 1 GB allocated) and compiling a large XCode project, I find it hits a point where it just chokes and starts swapping madly to disk (whole machine is pretty much locked). Whereas if VMWare isn't running, the compilation runs very smoothly.
I'm pretty sure the loss of one of the CPUs to VMWare isn't the bottleneck in that equation. So having an extra GB or two can make a difference in some situations.
I would obviously like to see additional benchmarks, but if the rest of the benchmarks look like this I really don't see the point in the cost. Honestly, the benchmarks don't surprise me, but I wonder who is going to buy this? People with more money than brains?
Maybe a revised version of the Adobe Creative Suite written as a 64-bit app might see some difference or some other future applications that are written as 64-bit apps, but when a lot of applications are either 32-bit or too small for a 64-bit version to make a noticeable difference I wonder why people seem so fascinated by buying more than 4Gib of RAM when the benefits are so minute in most cases?
Keep in mind that each app can use 2GB, and those benchmarks really only test one app at a time. If you use two or more big apps, or use a lot of smaller ones, then it can be helpful to keep those apps in memory so programs aren't paged in and out so much. I don't know if there are any benchmarks that test swap time when switching between apps, and I don't think there are any benchmarks that test anything like using another app while a render or other intensive task is running, but those are the kind of things that more memory (and more cores) would help, but it's kind of a ghost in the machine the way computers are tested right now.
Keep in mind that each app can use 2GB, ...
...meaning each app can use **only** 2GB?
I use a processor-intensive app -- Nikon Scan, for film scanning. Would upgrading my Santa Rosa Macbook from its current 4GB to 6GB RAM therefore **not** shorten the time it takes to scan images, do you think?
I ask because the price of the 4GB sticks has now (June 2010) fallen to $130.....
I also find that I get program crashes using Nikon Scan, when I have too many images in the process queue. MIght extra memory help with that problem, or make no difference? What do you think?