Brands for upgrading MBP Ram?

I know the G.Skill is supposed to be 100% compatible, but does anyone know of any other options?

My friend is looking to add more RAM to her MBP (being a Design student she uses Adobe products almost exclusively and is looking for any way to boost performance under Rosetta)

PS: Being a fairly dedicated windows user (I've never really considered getting a Mac laptop (now a Mac Mini is an entire different question...)) and so I'm just not as upto apple quirkiness as I am with other manufacturers.

 

First of all the Edit button is your friend. That way the thread does not get cluttered with several posts by one user in a row.

To answer your question, I have 2x1GB of Mushkin in my MBP and have not had a problem. A good idea is to look at Newegg first and see what the comments say. If it works well in a MacBook or MacBook Pro, someone will likely have commented so.

 

Thanks for the reply (sorry, I somehow didn't notice the 'edit' button)!

The G.Skill seems to be cheaper and more widely reviews at Newegg.

Is there any rhyme or reason as to which modules are fully compatible? Does it have to do with latencies or timings as opposed to simply being DDR2 667 PC5300 RAM?

 

I honestly couldn't tell you why some work and some seem to have more problems. Like I said before stick to something that a lot of people have tried and validated. Let them be the guinea pigs! The reason I went Mushkin was because I got a great deal, but I know a lot of people on this forum are very happy with G. Skill.

 

I just don't want to give someone tech advice, then have them spend a couple hundred bucks and not have it work; even if Newegg is awesome about returns/refunds.

 

Then the other option is buying it from Apple. That will save you hassle but cost quite a few more quid.

 

True, and that was discussed. However an Apple 1GB stick cost like $300 USD (at least that's the price from the Univ. computer store) whereas one can purchase 2x1GB of G.Skill and only pay $200.

My friend figures the 3x cost savings is worth the possibility of having to return something.

She'll probably order a pair of the G.Skill soon. I'll post when they've arrived and been installed.

 

when ur buying RAM, ur not only buying for the name. there are different quality RAM out there, the top quality one has more speed, lower latency, and most importantly higher reliability. what i mean by higher reliability is; it has lower error rate, and better longetivity, which lead to less crashes; check some product like corsair or something.

 

This issue is not 'reliability' per se, but getting RAM that is fully compatible with Apple machines.

Apple (in some ways like Lenovo/IBM) is picky about internal hardware; IBM's will complain depending on exactly which internal HDD's you upgrade them with. Not all brands of RAM are fully compatible (IE runs at full speed) with the latest Apple machines.

If it were for any other laptop I'd recommend Crucial, Corsair, Patriot or some other brand of RAM.

 

Seeing how Apple uses Micron memory in their notebooks, that would be an option for you as well, its a shame that the G.Skill ram price for that particular model skyrocketed, however the reason why is because of its popularity of it working great in the Apple notebook line.

Supply and demand, is what we see.

If you want to find something of quality, many manufacturer sites will offer a compatibility list, I'd personally recommend G.Skill because it IS high quality ram, its widely used in the overclocking community because it can really be pushed to its limit, and such a thing is only possible with high quality ram built on great silicon.

So either G.Skill, Mushkin, or Micron is what I recommend.