9 lords a leaping…
8 maids a milking…
7 swans a swimming…
6 gigs of RAMMMMMMM…
Yes, I know it’s only Halloween, and thus too early to begin singing Christmas carols, even melodically inaccurate ones. But the news that the Apple’s new MacBooks Pros can support up to 6GB of RAM just makes me feel like singing. Apple’s specs for the machines say that they top out at 4GB, but Ramjet discovered that if you slap in a 4GB stick instead of a 2GB stick for one of the pair, your MacBook Pro will both rock and roll. Of course, consider this at your own risk, since Apple only advertises support for up to 4GB.
6GB seems to be the sweet spot, though. Putting in two 4GB sticks apparently results in the MacBook Pro freaking the hell out like it’s on a bad trip. There’s some suggestion that the limitation is software-related and not hardware-related, so you MBP owners can keep holding out hope. Vanilla MacBook owners appear to be stuck with the 4GB ceiling, though. [I misunderstood, apparently. Seems this is true for MacBooks and MacBook Pros -DM].
[via Gizmodo]
Gizmodo is pretty clear that the 6GB applies to both Macbooks and Macbook Pros. They even show a Macbook in their picture illustrating the article.
Well, my Macbook Pro is from around July 2007, yes 2007, and its running 6GB as 2+4 just fine. It can run processes taking up to around 5GB of real memory for a single process, (perfect for small genome assemblies!). Thats using Kingston RAM.
8GB does not work: in that it runs, and appears to see the RAM, but cannot actually load processes into that extra memory space. These then somehow make the system glue up completely which looks like a failure to swap correctly.