Max RAM for a Macbook

can you put 3gigs in a macbook?

 

yes, you can.

Josh

 

The Core Duo Macbook sold before the Core 2 Duo upgrade in late 2006 only supports up to 2GB or ram.

The Core 2 Duo Macbook both the first and slightly updated version that came in early 2007 support up to 3GB (1x1GB stick + 1x2GB stick of ram).

 

But what happens if you put 4 GB of RAM in?

 

I don't think it reads it? You could try if you really want to...but whether it does/doesn't blow up the fact is it won't read 4GB.

 

Someone on MacRumors got their MacBook to read 4GB. It also tried addressing it, but resulted in Kernel Panics.

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=327372&page=3&highlight=4GB

 

I heard that if it's not the same amount of ram on both sticks the Core Duo effect would be gone?? Is that true??

 

lol not the "Core Duo" effect; Core Duo is the commercial name of an Intel CPU that has two cores inside it. What you are referring to is "double channel", where by using two matched (not only in size, mind you, but also in timings - so I guess most implementations only enable this if you use two identical sticks) memory sticks you get to double the memory bandwidth.

 

not dubble the bandwidth, it is known that 3 gigs is better then 2 gigs even if 2 gigs is running dual channel and the 3 gigs is not, it is only a small difference cause ram is so fast anyways.

dual channel can almost be related to a raid 0

 

First let me correct myself, the proper name is "dual-channel", as you put it. Second, indeed you double the peak memory bandwidth. Of course this doesn't mean that 2GB will be faster in real-world use than 3GB. It depends on the application. The Macbook, with its GMA950, do benefit from the increased memory bandwidth dual-channel provides when gaming and doing real-time 3D operations in general, since the video chipset can access the shared memory faster. If OTOH your app needs more memory than 2GB, say video editing, than it is best having more memory, even if not as fast, than resorting to virtual memory in the HDD.

 

Thanks everyone. It looks like someone did some testing here.

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/MacBook/Testing/Memory_Benchmarks

I guess you can put two sticks of 2gig RAM in the macbook and retain the dual-channel advantage but loose the extra gig or RAM.

 

1GB (two 512MB SO-DIMMs) of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300); two SO-DIMM slots support up to 2GB.
You can check the website http://www.apple.com/macbook/specs.html.

Macbook can support max 2G from apple.com