[jeffryscott]

Who has tried this, and what is your opinion vs. 2 gigs of RAM?

(2 ghz Core 2 Duo white MacBook)

[mduell]

Better all around performance, but poorer graphics performance.

[xsphat]

According to everything I've read, the MacBook will only recognize up to 2 GB of Ram. 2 gigs runs nice, though.

[Simon]

Nope. A C2D MB will recognize up to 3GB RAM. Apple just doesn't advertise or sell it that way, but it works.

[cagljevic]

I just picked up a blacbook today that shipped with 2gb and just minutes ago swapped out one of the 1gb sodimm and put in a 2gb. the total in about this mac and system profiler, etc all show 3gb total. If anyone can provide me with some benchmarking tools i would gladly put up some numbers for the curious members around here.


mark

[cagljevic]

I ran xbench and noticed that my graphics tests were poorer than other systems with 2gb of ram installed, so the members that commented that graphics will suffer slightly are correct. for me it isn't a big issue since i dont do any graphic intense work, no gaming etc. i do run parallels with windows xp and have many apps open at one time so this trade off seems sensible to me.


mark

[ramcosca]

I have a few questions.

• What counts as "graphics performance"? I know games count in there, and perhaps a fullscreen Flash file (à la fullscreen YouTube, which I've noticed makes my MB twirl it's fans at top speed)... what else?
• Graphics performance suffers. Would I feel this using 3 GB "worse" than what I feel in a 1 GB configuration? I don't know if I made myself clear on this one. Hope I did.
• Important question for me: does Aperture count as a graphics intensive program? (Haha, sounds obvious, but I'm just not reaaally sure!)
• If 3 was done... can 4 be done?

Thanks.

[ginoledesma]

Originally Posted by ramcosca 

I have a few questions.
What counts as "graphics performance"? I know games count in there, and perhaps a fullscreen Flash file (à la fullscreen YouTube, which I've noticed makes my MB twirl it's fans at top speed)... what else?

My only real benchmark for that would be games. Anything high-end (e.g. Motion, Aperture) is already going to tax the video card itself, and the boost offered by RAM configuration will hardly help.

Graphics performance suffers. Would I feel this using 3 GB "worse" than what I feel in a 1 GB configuration? I don't know if I made myself clear on this one. Hope I did.

I believe it has to do more with pairing (same-sized DIMMs in each bank) more than the capacity itself. So anything that's a matched pair (2x512MB, 2x1GB) will give the system a boost.

But I doubt in day-to-day activity you'll even notice this degraded performance.

Important question for me: does Aperture count as a graphics intensive program? (Haha, sounds obvious, but I'm just not reaaally sure!)

Aperture is more demanding of the graphics card itself, so the MacBook's built-in video card will barely deliver regardless. It'll work, but Apple doesn't support it (probably because they're steering customers to the higher-end models).

If 3 was done... can 4 be done?

Unfortunately no. It's a limitation of the hardware (further enforced by firmware).