2GB RAM sticks available for MacBook Pro? Anyone? Anyone?2GB RAM sticks ava

I've emailed Crucial to ask if they know of any customers who have used the modules in a MBP or Intel iMac but have not, as of yet, received a reply. I've also put some feelers out to a couple of tech sites that I frequent but that was just LAST NIGHT so I don't expect to hear anything back for a bit.

In any case - whether it works or not (and recall that Apple has often been conservative on the 'approved' amount of RAM that a particular machine can work with: the original 17" PowerBook, for instance, sails along with 2GB and yet the Apple 'Maximum' recommendation was set at 1GB) you would violate Crucial's warranty by installing more memory than recommended by the manufacturer (you might also void your Apple warranty - I haven't read that deep into the Apple warranty but they have some pretty 'restrictive restrictions'!)

If I find any confirmation that the modules will work - and if they get down to $500 a module) I know that the power possibilities will go to my head and I'll order. There are no Knowledge Base articles on using greater than 1GB sticks in the MBP and there's no Apple Engineer jumping in here nor would I think any Apple Engineer would, at this point, publicly acknowledge that the modules would work.

I don't mind being the second kid on the block to snowboard down 'Kill Hill' but I don't want to be the first!

Replying to myself... sheesh! Macs make you crazy!

Here's the 'important' part of the reply I received from Crucial:

"We have not sold this or any other 2GB part for use in any of the iMac or MacBook Pro systems you ask about. System data tells us 1GB is the "largest" upgrade any of the systems will see in a single memory bank.
We can not guaranty compatibility of this part with these Apple systems. That does not mean the memory will damage the computers, or that the computers will hurt the RAM. The computer will either see the first GB, or not see the memory at all. In either case, you can return the memory to us within 30 days of shipment for a refund of your purchase price (you pay shipping back to us)."

So... if this gentleman is correct, it's the OS that is putting the limitation of 1GB per slot. Still... if there's another drastic price drop, I'm going to order and see for myself... with Crucial's 30-day return policy, all I'd be out is the shipping cost. And if it worked, I'd be avoiding that slow swap the RAM-intensive app me suffers daily! I suppose my question is answered but if anyone hears anything, please jump in and let us know the results (and I'll do the same if the price drops and I jump on them).

Thanks, in particular, to corey who found the sticks in the first place!

20" 2GHz Intel Core Duo iMac 2Gb RAM 250Gb, G4 Dual 1 GHz PM & 12" 867 MHz PB, Mac OS X (10.4.5) MacBook Pro Intel Core Duo 2 Gb RAM 100Gb 7200 RPM HD

Replying to myself... sheesh! Macs make you crazy!

Here's the 'important' part of the reply I received from Crucial:

"We have not sold this or any other 2GB part for use in any of the iMac or MacBook Pro systems you ask about. System data tells us 1GB is the "largest" upgrade any of the systems will see in a single memory bank.
We can not guaranty compatibility of this part with these Apple systems. That does not mean the memory will damage the computers, or that the computers will hurt the RAM. The computer will either see the first GB, or not see the memory at all. In either case, you can return the memory to us within 30 days of shipment for a refund of your purchase price (you pay shipping back to us)."

So... if this gentleman is correct, it's the OS that is putting the limitation of 1GB per slot. Still... if there's another drastic price drop, I'm going to order and see for myself... with Crucial's 30-day return policy, all I'd be out is the shipping cost. And if it worked, I'd be avoiding that slow swap the RAM-intensive app me suffers daily! I suppose my question is answered but if anyone hears anything, please jump in and let us know the results (and I'll do the same if the price drops and I jump on them).

Thanks, in particular, to corey who found the sticks in the first place!

20" 2GHz Intel Core Duo iMac 2Gb RAM 250Gb, G4 Dual 1 GHz PM & 12" 867 MHz PB, Mac OS X (10.4.5) MacBook Pro Intel Core Duo 2 Gb RAM 100Gb 7200 RPM HD

Here's a couple of questions:

1) Do we need to be concerned about the added heat
that 2GB sticks would produce?

I wouldn't think so... the voltage draw is the same for both sticks so there shouldn't be any additional 'heat' using these sticks.

2) I'm not familiar with EFI, however, is there
possibly some code "limitation" to the amount of RAM
you can use?

Could be - if so, I would wonder if the additional RAM wouldn't be seen in OSX, boot into XP and it would be! That would be disappointing!

3) Are there power considerations for RAM - meaning,
will 2GB sticks use more juice and upset the balance
of power within the warring groups under the hood
(sounds like a war in there!)?

Not as I understand it. See my message below quoting Crucial It's pretty difficult for RAM to sap electrical current - and these sticks have the same voltage rating.

4) I am running really well with my 1GB sticks (2GB
total) and I am running some friggin hogs (Rosetta /
CS2, for example). HOWEVER, all seems to be fine and
the response time is very good. So, is the extra RAM
really going to improve performance by that much?

Thanks!

Bob

It all depends on what you're doing - my RAM max's out daily using PS, GarageBand, etc.: the same problem I have with my G4s. Use Activity Monitor to see if you're regularly overloading you physical RAM - if not, no need for more: if on a regular basis, more RAM would be a welcome addition.

It also appears that the MBP is using the same Intel 945PM chipset used in the Dell Precision M90 (& M65)... which support 4 GB of RAM using 2GB sticks.

So if there's a reason that 4GB would not be recognized by the MPB it's either something in ROM or the OS. I'll keep checking prices and order from Crucial when the price is right ($1100-12000. Someone with deeper pockets may beat me to it and if so I hope to read it here!

Replying to myself again...

I did not intend to type "$1100-12000" but rather "$1100-1200" - had I followed correct usage, I would have written $1,000-1,200" and noticed my mistake.

But then my investment in my Mac II in 1987, with RAM, has a 2006 constant dollar cost of around $26,000, with around $11,000 of that being 8 megabytes in RAM - at wholesale prices!!!

Cipherin' that out makes me think $1,300 for 2 gigabytes of RAM is a steal...If the price of per megabyte had stayed constant, 2GB (2048 megabytes) of RAM today would be $1,572,864 in 1987 dollars and, in constant dollars, around $2,344,254 today!

I remember one trip to Cupertino where I got to log on to Apple's Cray (did they have two at the time? I don't recall...) and fiddle around for about a minute - and got a t-shirt that said, "My other computer is a Cray". I doubt that machine had 2 gigabytes of RAM.

Wow - down, then up (but not up as much as down)! This is certainly price-volatile RAM... I'm just going to have to keep an eye on it! I thought the price drop may have been due to the release of the new Dell Precision's which use the same stick - M90 and M65? - and that may have been the case: but maybe it's SO popular that that drove the price up due to high demand.

I almost get a sense that there exists - somewhere - a RAM trading enterprise not unlike the NYSE with scenes straight out of the floor trading scenes with Eddie Murphy and Danny Aykroyd in "Trading Places"...

Darn it - you're right... notice that the same restriction doesn't seem to be in place for the G5 iMac, only for the Intel iMac and the MBP.

Interesting thing, though, is that the Crucial modules meet the requirements as listed in Table 3 AND the Dell M90 uses the same chipset as the MBP... so the limitation is either somehow hardware induced by some sort of memory address system or part of the Intel OS. Previously it seems that Apple has just sort of arbitrarily placed these limitations based upon the availability of chips... yet never backed away from the 'max' when the modules became available... my particular case in point is my 867Mhz 12" PB which Apple says maxes out at 640Kb but which has worked quite nicely for me for 2 1/2 years at 1.12Mb... go figure... A I'm using my Intel iMac more and more, I was looking forward to putting 4Gb in it... seems I'll have to wait for the "Mac Pro" (or whatever they'll call it) using Conroe, since I don't think the Quad Core chips are due out until next year. And yet I see the current MPB line as having some life in them... Merom chips are said to have a 20% increase in speed, but I don't know if folks will look to upgrade from 2.16 to 2.6 chips (if, indeed, the speed increase is to be measured in GHz? I've heard speculation that the speed increase isn't really going to be measured by clock speed... but that's just a rumor).

Ah, well, if 2Gb it is, then so be it... and if it's OS related, perhaps we can hope for a change (I've a feeling that 10.5 is going to be radical, for some reason... we mere mortals have to wait until August to get a glimpse... Apple keeps those NDA's so much closer these days!).