True 64bit Memory under Snow!

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Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
The new Nvidia Chipsets used in the current crop of Macbooks can Use up to 8Gb Of Ram however apple clame to only support 4GB... people have put 8Gb into the new macbook Pro only to find the OS is unstable and unable to address the full 8Gb ... 6Gb however works ok .....



Im guessing the limitation is the OS.. support for 32bit apps and parts of the OS that are there for older hardware...



Can any of you wiz kids shed some light on 10.6 for me will it support the full 8Gb of ram ?

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  • Reply 1 of 8
    !!!!!!!!
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  • Reply 2 of 8
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DJMarkyMarc View Post


    The new Nvidia Chipsets used in the current crop of Macbooks can Use up to 8Gb Of Ram however apple clame to only support 4GB... people have put 8Gb into the new macbook Pro only to find the OS is unstable and unable to address the full 8Gb ... 6Gb however works ok .....



    Im guessing the limitation is the OS.. support for 32bit apps and parts of the OS that are there for older hardware...



    Can any of you wiz kids shed some light on 10.6 for me will it support the full 8Gb of ram ?



    I don't know about this. I would say based on my years of Mac OS behind me, that there is not a snowballs chance you will get to address more ram. I get surprised by the fact that apple says 2GBs for the limit and you get 3GBs or Apple says 16GBs and some have gotten 32GBs. My point is if Apple says 4GBs and some guys have gotten 6GBs, Apple has never came out with an OS that has boosted the RAM capacity of their machine after it's advertised specs. Meaning if people have tinkered and gotten the max? then that's it. Even back in the 24Bit to 32Bit Mac Ram Addressing days they never boosted. I would be shocked....



    Laters...
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  • Reply 3 of 8
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,559moderator
    The whole 64-bit move is going to cause problems. Sidefx shipped a new version of Houdini:



    http://www.sidefx.com/index.php?opti...1215&Itemid=66



    First time it's been on a mac system and is a very powerful 3D package but 64-bit only means that although the original Core Duo machines can run Snow Leopard, they can't run 64-bit software.



    I don't suppose too many packages will be compiled as 64-bit only given that there's only a handful that would need to address over 4GB Ram but still a nuisance.



    i would certainly expect 10.6 being full 64-bit to be able to address as much Ram as you can put in a system - I'm sure Apple will advertise it as such.
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  • Reply 4 of 8
    I'm not sure that 10.6 has anything to do with it since the software they are offering is for 10.5. Apple did a semi-nice job of allowing for 64-bit applications to run on a 32-bit OS on top of a 64-bit CPU (which jumps between the two modes). So it is even possible that the "64-bit" application will run on a 32 bit CPU (but not get the advantage of the larger memory space).
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  • Reply 5 of 8
    akacakac Posts: 512member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by DJMarkyMarc View Post


    The new Nvidia Chipsets used in the current crop of Macbooks can Use up to 8Gb Of Ram however apple clame to only support 4GB... people have put 8Gb into the new macbook Pro only to find the OS is unstable and unable to address the full 8Gb ... 6Gb however works ok .....



    Im guessing the limitation is the OS.. support for 32bit apps and parts of the OS that are there for older hardware...



    Can any of you wiz kids shed some light on 10.6 for me will it support the full 8Gb of ram ?



    It has nothing to do with the OS because otherwise a Mac Pro with 10-32GB of RAM wouldn't work. I have a Mac Pro with 10GB of RAM. Works great. Runs 24x7 for months.



    The only reason it doesn't work well on the MacBook Pro is because of either the chipset itself OR the software drivers that run the chipset. My bet is on the latter. But the OS itself is fine.
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  • Reply 6 of 8
    s.metcalfs.metcalf Posts: 1,014member
    Isn't Snow Leopard supposed to be Intel-only, not 64-bit only... I'd still expect it to fully support 32kb Core Duo systems. Not sure if this relates to your question but I see a lot of discussion implying Snow Leopard and 64-bit (only) as being one in the same. Correct me if I'm wrong.
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  • Reply 7 of 8
    Marvinmarvin Posts: 15,559moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by s.metcalf View Post


    Isn't Snow Leopard supposed to be Intel-only, not 64-bit only... I'd still expect it to fully support 32kb Core Duo systems. Not sure if this relates to your question but I see a lot of discussion implying Snow Leopard and 64-bit (only) as being one in the same. Correct me if I'm wrong.



    Snow Leopard will run on 32-bit machines but in 32-bit mode. I don't think that 64-bit apps will run as I mentioned above. 32-bit apps will run on the 64-bit version though.



    So say you get a 64-bit app like Houdini, it won't run on 10.5 or 10.6 on a Core Duo machine. Karl mentioned the possibility of some compatibility but I don't think it can be done.



    On anything higher than a Core Duo, 64-bit and 32-bit apps will run and they will run through the 64-bit kernel when used with 10.6 unlike 10.5's 32-bit kernel. 64-bit app + 64-bit kernel + 64-bit CPU = full memory addressing.



    People with Core Duo machine may be wise not to upgrade to 10.6 if developers make a large number of apps 64-bit. We'll have to wait and see what Apple do with the system though. Not many apps need to be 64-bit and I'm sure major developers will make two versions like Adobe.
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  • Reply 8 of 8
    ksecksec Posts: 1,569member
    Because your machine only support 4GB?

    Honestly, in Apple 's world. Customer aren't suppose to know the tech wiz bit, if 4Gb is what they say they will support, 4GB it is then.



    Inreality it is not only OS problem. You need BIOS as well as proper OS settings.

    X86 32Bit supporting more then 4GB of memory will require PAE ( Physical Address Extension ).
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