4GB or 6GB RAM

[biliousfrog]

Unless you're running a 64bit operating system you will only be able to use 4gb anyway, actually closer to 3gb.

[thesmartestkid]

Thanks for the reply biliousfrog,

I now use Mac OS X Leopard 10.5.8
For what I've read on the net, It's not completely 64 bit, but I also read that Snow Leopard is. Which means that, if I upgrade to Snow Leopard, I should be able to take advantage of the 6GB ram, right?

Thanks,
T

[beaker]

Which macbookpro do you have? Macbook pros didn't add the ability to add more then 4 gig of ram till a year or two ago(motherboard/chipset limitation). I have a 2007 MBP and it can only use 4 gig.

As for osx, 10.4 was partially 64 bit and could run 64 bit commandline applications, Leopard added the ability to create 64 bit gui applications. Snow Leopard just added the 64 bit Kernel option and rewrote the Finder in 64 bit. IE, you could use more then 4 gig per ram in applications back at 10.4, 5 years ago.

[InfernalDarkness]

On top of what everyone else said, it's never a good idea to run mismatched RAM. One 2GB stick and one 4GB stick would equal a whole mess of problems for the system. Instability and confusion for the processor as well. You should always run RAM as sets of equal size.

That is, 2x2GB sticks, or 2x4GB sticks. So if you can use over 4GB of RAM, just go with two 4GB and push yourself up to 8GB. 6GB would work, but only if you had four slots and three 2GB DIMMs. Which I actually have at home, and it works very well. I've never seen a laptop with four slots though; but I'm sure they're out there somewhere.

[beaker]

On top of what everyone else said, it's never a good idea to run mismatched RAM. One 2GB stick and one 4GB stick would equal a whole mess of problems for the system. Instability and confusion for the processor as well. You should always run RAM as sets of equal size.No, the chipset on late 2008 Macbook pros support 6 gig of ram just fine. All you loose with unmatched pairs is you don't get interleaving. Barefeets did a test and there was only a half a percentage slowdown by using 6 instead of 4.

http://www.barefeats.com/mbpp11.html

That is, 2x2GB sticks, or 2x4GB sticks. So if you can use over 4GB of RAM, just go with two 4GB and push yourself up to 8GB. 6GB would work, but only if you had four slots and three 2GB DIMMs. Which I actually have at home, and it works very well. I've never seen a laptop with four slots though; but I'm sure they're out there somewhere.Only the ones that came out this year actually support 8 gb of ram. Macbooks and Macbook pros only have 2 slots.

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