[GSixZero]

Does anyone know if MBP is on the verge of bumping the maximum RAM? I'm not too concerned with proc speed, but I'd love to be able to go further than 4GB of RAM.

Is anyone familiar enough with upcoming architectures & the SO-DIMM market to know if we'll see higher maximum ram in the next update?

[mduell]

Cantiga, the next mobile chipset from Intel, will be released in July and supports 8GB DDR3. The 4GB SODIMMs may not be available initially, but should become available during the machine's viable lifetime. I'd expect Apple to upgrade the MBP about a month after the chipset release based on their past releases.

[GSixZero]

So August or September for the chip to be in MBP, plus another 4 or 6 months until the 4GB SODIMMs are available and not crazy expensive? Does that work out to early 2009 before 8gb will be possible for less than $500 in RAM costs?

[mduell]

Eh, probably longer than 4-6 months for 4GB SODIMMs it to drop below $60/GB; DDR3 is currently about double that price per gig and not yet available in 512MB chips. I'd guess 4-6 months before we see 4GB DDR3 SODIMMs in significant volume and another 6+ months for prices to come down to $60/GB

[tinkered]

I predict the DDR3 prices will drop precipitously once mainstream computer chipsets start supporting it, much like DDR2 prices did. I also predict that DDR2 prices to rise as manufactures retool to make DDR3 instead of DDR2, just like DDR prices are now greater than their low 2 years ago.

[P]

Of course, but the question is when. There is usually a dip in demand around early spring - say that manufacturers use that time next year to move to DDR3 in a big way (about time for Nehalem, which has an on-die memory controller for it), and we'd have decent prices about a year from now, or a little more. Matches mduell's prediction as well.