Mountain on late 2008 MacBook Pro

I have a late 2008 MBP (2.53Ghz, 15") with ML on it and it runs fine. Mine however has 8GB RAM, which is supported:

see http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/memory/Apple_MacBook_MacBook_Pro/Upgrade/DDR3

Whether 4Gb is sufficient depends entirely on the software you routinely use and the kind of tasks your normally run on your machine.

Keith Tizzard1 wrote:

Has anyone any experience of installing Mountain Lion on a late 2008 MacBook Pro with 4GB of ram (maximum possible on this model)?

The late 2008 15" MBP can support up to 8gb ram and the 17" model can support up to 6gb ram (according to Mactracker). Also, the minimum ram requirement for Mountain Lion is 2gb, not 4gb.

When it was released, that was Apple's officially statement, since 2Gb SODIMMs were the largest available. Crucial tends to follow Apple's initial lead and never changes that.

OWC actually tests its posted configurations in house and basically guarantees they work and are stable. At one time, there even was a 2x4Gb kit on Apple's own online store for the late 2008 15" (but for about 5x-6x the price of the OWC kit as I recall).

I have had my OWC 8Gb for about 6-7 months now, and my laptop is pretty much on 24/7 and it has been fine.

I have a late 2008 MB also and upgraded to 8GB of memory after reading about it online. It works fine. They say Mtn Lion will work with less, but in my experience everything runs better with more. Buy more, it's a cheap and easy upgrade.

Model Name: MacBook

Model Identifier: MacBook5,1

Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo

Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz

Number of Processors: 1

Total Number of Cores: 2

L2 Cache: 3 MB

Memory: 8 GB

Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz

Boot ROM Version: MB51.007D.B03

SMC Version (system): 1.32f8

Serial Number (system): -------------

Hardware UUID: 9E6B9CB3-0D45-504F-8414-AF69B811DB62

Sudden Motion Sensor:

State: Enabled

Memory Slots:

ECC: Disabled

BANK 0/DIMM0:

Size: 4 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x80CE

Part Number: 0x4D34373142353237334448302D4348392020

Serial Number: ----------------

BANK 0/DIMM1:

Size: 4 GB

Type: DDR3

Speed: 1333 MHz

Status: OK

Manufacturer: 0x80CE

Part Number: 0x4D34373142353237334448302D4348392020

Serial Number: -----------------

What advantages did mountian lion give you on your late 2008 macbook pro with 8 gigs of ram? I have an almost identical computer, (late 2008 macbook with new firmware alowing also 8 gigabytes of ram and a nvidia 9400m integrated graphics like yours) please let me know how it has been speeding things up maybe or gives you new features?

Paul

Curious if any of you with your late 2008 macbook have experienced any battery issues after upgrading to mountain lion???

Any one succesfully running ML with only 4 gb of ram?

cheers

/jacob

Yes, battery over charged expanded and bam popped itself open wide blew the botton cover off all in my twelve year olds lap, apple generously said this was normal and offered to fix for 150 bucks.

<Edited By Host>

My Late '08 machine also has OWC's 8GB RAM upgrade.

It also has a Crucial 128GB SSD in place of the original drive and a WD in place of the optical drive for the user folder. It is very stable and not slow - running Lion 10.7.4.

But it will not accept Mountain Lion. Not even 10.7.5. Including clean installs. Or even a clean install on an external drive. Or a clone from another machine. It just will not complete the boot process on any (3) drives I have tried - up to about where the User Logins would appear. It just restarts and gets there again and continues this activity in a loop.

Apple's secondary level phone suppport gave no indication that this is a pattern amongst Late '08 machines and was unable to offer any solution.

So it is as if this 5,1 machine thinks it is an early 2007 or older!

(Btw, the battery expanded and effected the trackpad durinag late Snow Leopard. It was replaced under AppleCare.)

I have the exact same config as you have. I had the problem you described when i installed lion. I exchanged my memory with the old ones and tried the installation again. This time without any problems. After the installation i replaced the memory again for the 8gb. Everything worked fine.

Hi guys.

I am also running ML on MBP late '08 with 4GB of RAM.

Ever sine I upgraded to ML I've been noticing a beach ball mouse cursor a lot - especially when using Safari and Mail. And that happens almost immediately after restart, so no big RAM-hoggers running or anything...

Regarding this discussion - I checked and I get the beach ball issue while still having even 2GB of RAM free (in Activity Monitor). It doesn't look like RAM issue to me - what do you think, guys?

Pielgrzym,

upgrade your Ram to 8GB.

I have replace my hard drive to Momentus XT hybrid drive and running 8GB ram.

It's like a whole new notebook. running on ML 10.8.2 and it's been a dream.