1.5 memory upgrade

iandrew12 · Oct 25, 2007

so i bought just one gb of memory for my macbook.
i already had 1 gb in there (2 x 512mb)
i heard it wasnt good to do this....rumour or fact?

nZa · Oct 25, 2007

there's a small bit of truth, but you'll never notice. you'll get a performance increase and it surely won't hurt anything. do it.

lyansaine · Oct 25, 2007

true, but when you get some cash buy another 1 gig stick - identical to the one you have - and you'll notice an even bigger improvement (not only will you have another 512 megs of RAM, they'll both work more efficiently)

Geeky1 · Oct 25, 2007

It's not "good" in the sense that it'll leave you running in single channel mode, which will reduce memory bandwidth.

This is in no way harmful to the computer, and it has very little effect on real-world performance. It's possible to measure the difference in benchmarks, but in the real world, you'll see a much larger benefit from running 1.5GB in single channel mode than you would by running 1GB in dual channel mode.

Zoolook · Oct 25, 2007

Geeky1 said:
It's not "good" in the sense that it'll leave you running in single channel mode, which will reduce memory bandwidth.

This is in no way harmful to the computer, and it has very little effect on real-world performance. It's possible to measure the difference in benchmarks, but in the real world, you'll see a much larger benefit from running 1.5GB in single channel mode than you would by running 1GB in dual channel mode.

I second this.

You will possibly notice a difference if using anything graphically intensive, as the GMA950 GPU shares system RAM. The MacBook is probably slightly more sensitive to lacking dual channel mode, than the MacBook Pro for this reason.

Having said that, the RAM increase will by far offset any loss in dual channel capability.

1.5 memory upgrade

iandrew12

nZa

lyansaine

Geeky1

Zoolook

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