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6gb ram in imac late 2007

I just bought the 6gb kit from OWC and installed in my santa rosa imac 7,1. Everything runs fine. But I decided to run a benchmark to see if there was any difference from my 4gb kit. I wasn't really suprised but the 4gb kit from OWC beat the 6gb kit big time. I did the same test with geekbench both 32 and 64bit 5 time with each set of RAM and the 4GB kit won. The memory bandwith was a lot higher with 4GB and the memory performance was better with 4GB. Is this due to the 4GB being dual channel and latency 4 and the 6GB being latency 5 single channel or does the imac just like 4 better than 6 meaning is it not capable of using all 6gb of RAM. I am running snow leopard and all 6GB show up in activity monitor and iFreemem app. Please give me your opinion on this.

imac 7,1, Mac OS X (10.6.2)

Posted on Feb 19, 2010 9:27 PM

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Posted on Feb 19, 2010 10:10 PM

Hi spookmag

It's really not surprising that the matched set bench's slightly faster, the only real benefit in 6GB is when your are running multiple applications that use more than 4GB.

This same effect in reverse was probably more noticeable on the earlier models that had a 3GB ram limit with 2 matching 2GB modules installed in it.
http://guides.macrumors.com/UnderstandingIntel_MacRAM

Ever wonder why OWC doesn't include the 6GB results on there Performance Test page? 😉
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/MemoryBenchmark/AppleiMac/

Dennis
16 replies

6gb ram in imac late 2007

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