Study shows un-paired 3GB RAM is faster than paired 2GB RAM for the Macbook

Apple has always recommended that memory going into models with the Intel GMA950 Video Chipset be installed in pairs. They do not have dedicated Video Memoray for display and shares the 64MB from the main memory installed in the system. Despite Apple’s strongest recommendations for memory pairing, test results have shown that current Apple MacBook performs better with 3GB RAM, thus making the conventional wisdom of “More RAM faster the machine” true.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 19th, 2007 at 9:16 pm and is filed under Hardware. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.

  • Dale Musser

    I bought a Macbook Pro in January with 2GB of RAM. Although it performs well, I can tell that I should have bought another 1GB of RAM. When I am using Adobe CS3 applications or the Apple Studio Pro apps I can tell that more RAM would have been good. Sometimes when I switch between apps I hear a lot of hard drive activity and there is a pause in being able to use the app. I assume that this is caused by cached memory being loaded because there wasn’t sufficient RAM to hold it all. It is amazing as well how quickly I filled the 120GB hard drive. I should have taken the step up to the next larger hard drive as well. 

    I moved to a Macbook Pro from a G4 Powerbook with 512MB RAM and 80GB of hard drive space. I thought I would have everything I need with 2GB of RAM and 120GB hard drive. But, with Parallels running and the ability to really work with digital media now there I have very quickly hit my resource limits.

    P.S. I’d love a Joost invite if you have one. :)