Max Amount of RAM for "Mid 2007" MacBook?

On Sun, 2 Mar 2008, Matthew Park wrote:

> I plan to increase the amount of RAM in my stock "Mid 2007" MacBook
> (MB063LL/A). After searching Apple support and Internet, I am still
> unclear about the following two questions. [1 Max RAM; 2 paired RAM]

Google is an awesome thing.

Search "site:apple.com macbook MB063LL" and one of the hits is:

    http://support.apple.com/specs/macbook/macbook_mid_2007.html

Which reports:

    Memory
    1GB (two 512MB) of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300);
    supports up to 2GB

So there's your answer.

Moreover, with the Macbook (and the Mac mini), the memory really has to
be paired for best performance (2x512, 2x1gb, 2x2gb, etc) because the
system doesn't have separate video RAM like the other models.

With the Macbook Pro, the memory can be unmatched, and the models of
that vintage did support 3gb or 4gb, but the basic Macbook didn't allow
more than 2gb before the late 2007 version that came out after Leopard,
when 4gb became an option.


--
Chris Devers

On Mar 2, 2008, at 9:29 AM, Chris Devers wrote:

> Search "site:apple.com macbook MB063LL" and one of the hits is:
>
> http://support.apple.com/specs/macbook/macbook_mid_2007.html
>
> Which reports:
>
> Memory
> 1GB (two 512MB) of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM (PC2-5300);
> supports up to 2GB
>
> So there's your answer.


Thanks, Chris, for your feedback. Yes, I knew that "official" answer
but was wondering whether the real limit is higher than 2GB. For
instance, OWC says that I can add 2GB RAM module to my MacBook. See
the link below.

http://eshop.macsales.com/Reviews/Framework.cfm?page=/Tips/macbookcore23gb/macbookcore23gb.html

And, in real life situations, how much performance hit should I expect
from having non-paired RAM?

Matthew

The original Macbook was limited to 2gb because the 32-bit Intel Core
Duo couldn't address any more RAM than that.

The Core 2 Duo chip was 64-bit, which lifted that 2gb RAM ceiling to
3gb for some models, but it wasn't until the rest of the system
chipset got upgraded did 4gb become an option.

However, because the Macbook demands that memory be paired, and
because no one makes 1.5gb RAM modules, the practical limit remained
2gb total for that generation.

Now because the model we're talking about does have the 64-bit Core 2
Duo, it may in theory accept 3gb of RAM, but the modules can't be
matched in such a configuration, and the conventional wisdom is the
speed hit to graphics performance will more than offset the gain that
would have been expected by the expanded overall memory: it will cost
more but help less.

I can't cite benchmarks to back this up at the moment, but I do seem
to remember reading tests that agreed with this back when these models
came out, maybe on a site like Bare Feats, Macworld, Ars Technica,
Gizmodo, etc. (Sorry, it has been a while by now.)

--
Chris Devers
>>
>>
>>
>>

> And, in real life situations, how much performance hit should I expect
> from having non-paired RAM?

I run such a MacBook at 3GB. Any performance hit from the unmatched
DIMMs is more than offset for me by having enough RAM to prevent
pageouts, especially when running Paralllels and other software at the
same time.

Paul

At 11.58 -0800 2008-03-02, Chris Devers wrote:
>However, because the Macbook demands that memory be paired, and
>because no one makes 1.5gb RAM modules, the practical limit remained
>2gb total for that generation.

It doesn't need to be paired. It helps very slightly to have it paired, but it's just a very minor difference. I have 3 GB in my MacBook of that model and the benefit of that extra gig over the 2GB I used to have by far outweighs any drawback with unpaired memory modules.

If you're really worried by the pairing you can put 4 GB in it (2x2) and be able to use slightly over 3GB.

Chris Devers wrote:
> The original Macbook was limited to 2gb because the 32-bit Intel Core
> Duo couldn't address any more RAM than that.

Actually, that is a function of OS X. I forget what the maximum was for
the original Core Duo, but it was definitely more than 2GB. OS X, in a
32-bit world, splits the address space between the data bus and the IO bus.

> Now because the model we're talking about does have the 64-bit Core 2
> Duo, it may in theory accept 3gb of RAM, but the modules can't be
> matched in such a configuration, and the conventional wisdom is the
> speed hit to graphics performance will more than offset the gain that
> would have been expected by the expanded overall memory: it will cost
> more but help less.
>
> I can't cite benchmarks to back this up at the moment, but I do seem
> to remember reading tests that agreed with this back when these models
> came out, maybe on a site like Bare Feats, Macworld, Ars Technica,
> Gizmodo, etc. (Sorry, it has been a while by now.)

While I can't add any data to it, that sounds about right. Obviously for
specific applications your mileage may vary (I could see cases where
that extra gig allows you to avoid going to disk which would more than
compensate for the decreased memory performance... slow RAM is still way
faster than a fast hard disk).

- --Chris

Paul Durrant wrote:
>> And, in real life situations, how much performance hit should I expect
>> from having non-paired RAM?
>
> I run such a MacBook at 3GB. Any performance hit from the unmatched
> DIMMs is more than offset for me by having enough RAM to prevent
> pageouts, especially when running Paralllels and other software at the
> same time.

Yep. Unless you're doing video editing and want to watch it a lot the pairing issue doesn't mater much.

And a key point. Just matching the size doesn't get it. The memory much match exactly. Speed and wait states (all of them). Which is very hard to do unless you buy them at the same time.

David

Does anyone know if extra RAM will work in the Late 2006 MacBook? It's a Core 2 Duo CPU and the RAM specs are the same PC2-5300, so I was just wondering...

-Trey

On 2-Mar-2008, at 12:58, Chris Devers wrote:
> Search "site:apple.com macbook MB063LL" and one of the hits is:
> http://support.apple.com/specs/macbook/macbook_mid_2007.html
> Which reports:
> supports up to 2GB
> So there's your answer.


But the Apple information on max memory is often wrong, and
historically has been wrong more often than it's been right.

As it is in this case, the max ram for the mid 2007 MacBook is 3GB,
not 2. The same is true for the Mac mini from mid-2007, Apple says
2GB, but it's really 3GB.

On 3-Mar-2008, at 17:09, treycampbell wrote:
> Does anyone know if extra RAM will work in the Late 2006 MacBook?

Yes.

> It's a Core 2 Duo CPU and the RAM specs are the same PC2-5300, so I
> was just wondering...

<http://www.mactracker.ca/>

Really, small app, has ALL the info on EVERY Mac.


--
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOFU>