Is it worth to upgrade to snow leopard with 4gb RAM?

Can anyone explain me how does the addressing modes of memory RAM work?
And if, with my 4gb RAM, Leopard OS , is my computer able to use every bit of it?
I've heard that it can only address more or less 3 Gb ram. Is that true? Do I need the 64 bit OS ?

zplayer9 said:

Can anyone explain me how does the addressing modes of memory RAM work?
And if, with my 4gb RAM, Leopard OS , is my computer able to use every bit of it?
I've heard that it can only address more or less 3 Gb ram. Is that true? Do I need the 64 bit OS ?

Click to expand...

Irregardless of your ram questions...YES...it is worth upgrading to Snow Leopard.

If you need further convincing read this:

Apple - Mac OS X Snow Leopard - Refining the user experience

Apple recommends a minimum of 1 gig of ram...so 4 gig (or 3 gig if that's what your computer recognizes)...is plenty.

- Nick

Re

I have not made myself clear.
I believe the snow leopard is better and more sophisticated than leopard.
My question is about the RAM memory matters. I'm not certain if a computer with a 32bit OS can recognize 4 gb of ram. If it can't, I may consider the upgrade to snow leopard.

zplayer9 said:

Can anyone explain me how does the addressing modes of memory RAM work?
And if, with my 4gb RAM, Leopard OS , is my computer able to use every bit of it?
I've heard that it can only address more or less 3 Gb ram. Is that true? Do I need the 64 bit OS ?

Click to expand...

32 bit OS can only recognize a maximum of 3 gigs. so yes it is true. 64 bit can recognize a maximum of 16 billion gigs.

Yes you want to upgrade.

I believe if you are running leo 10.5.or later you are using all of your 4 gigs. so no worries there. Mac OsX is already 64 bit capable, snow leopard is just more capable.

zplayer9 said:

I have not made myself clear.
I believe the snow leopard is better and more sophisticated than leopard.
My question is about the RAM memory matters. I'm not certain if a computer with a 32bit OS can recognize 4 gb of ram. If it can't, I may consider the upgrade to snow leopard.

Click to expand...

And the answer is, it depends.... On your hardware, not only the OS. Please search these forums as there have been numerous discussions regarding this very issue.

Regards.

Leopard is 64-bit?

is there a minimum requirement for Snow leopard to work fine? Like with Vista the minimum was 2GB..is it the same for this one?

leopard-user1 said:

Leopard is 64-bit?

Click to expand...

Part of it. Apple's approach to 64-bit has been to introduce it slowly through the releases. If I'm not mistaken, Apple started with Tiger (ie. part of Tiger was 64-bit). For SL, Apple has continued to extend 64-bit support but this time, that includes the kernel.

P Willie said:

is there a minimum requirement for Snow leopard to work fine? Like with Vista the minimum was 2GB..is it the same for this one?

Click to expand...

According to Apple, you need 1GB.

Windex said:

32 bit OS can only recognize a maximum of 3 gigs. so yes it is true. 64 bit can recognize a maximum of 16 billion gigs.

Yes you want to upgrade.

I believe if you are running leo 10.5.or later you are using all of your 4 gigs. so no worries there. Mac OsX is already 64 bit capable, snow leopard is just more capable.

Click to expand...

Can you please explain me how the RAM addressing works? Cause I don't quite understand why is that 2^32 numbers can address only 3 Gbytes. When , in fact, 2^32 bytes are 4 Gbytes.

zplayer9 said:

Can you please explain me how the RAM addressing works? Cause I don't quite understand why is that 2^32 numbers can address only 3 Gbytes. When , in fact, 2^32 bytes are 4 Gbytes.

Click to expand...

Honestly, i can not.

I only made those statements because i have read and heard them in so many other places (i.e. Mac Life, PC Mag, Mac World, CPU, etc.)

I trust that they are facts due to the abundance of their existance.

Unfortunately I do not have the technical answer, I assume it is due to some limitation with the math or the OS or a combination of both that prevents this.

wish i could tell you more.

zplayer9 said:

Can you please explain me how the RAM addressing works? Cause I don't quite understand why is that 2^32 numbers can address only 3 Gbytes. When , in fact, 2^32 bytes are 4 Gbytes.

Click to expand...

Here is one of the better explanations I've seen:

Why are the MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" models limited to 3 GB of memory? If I install dual 2 GB modules, why won't I be able to use 4 GB of RAM? @ EveryMac.com

The MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo presumably uses Intel's 945PM chipset, which can physically handle 4 GB of DDR2 RAM. However, a number of items must be stored in physical RAM space, and when RAM reaches 4 GB, there is some overlap.
In other words, in a 3 GB RAM configuration, there is no overlap with the memory ranges required for certain system functions. Between 3 GB and 4 GB, however, system memory attempts to occupy space that is already assigned to these functions. For instance, the PCI Express RAM allocation occurs at somewhere around 3.5 GB of RAM and requires 256 MB of RAM. Thus, the virtual space between 3.5 GB of RAM and 3.75 GB of RAM is occupied by PCI Express data. So in a system with 3 GB of RAM, nothing is being wasted because the memory space required by PCI Express is still between 3.5 and 3.75 GB, and the installed system RAM does not violate this space.
The net result is that at least 3 GB of RAM should be fully accessible, while when 4 GB of RAM installed, ~700 MB of of the RAM is overlapping critical system functions, making it non-addressable by the system.

Hope this helps,

- Nick