Allright guys. I've got a MB MA700LL. Max ram per Apple is 2gb. Reports are three. I ordered 2-2gb sticks, tossed them in and tadaa! The "About this Mac" window says I've got 4gb installed. System profiler says 4gb installed. However, the iStat widget totals 3gb. Any ideas why there's a discrepancy?
Registered: 06/07/04
Posts: 1266
Loc: Stoughton, WI USA
I have a MB C2D Late 2006 (2nd ver. MB), though it was the black version. I remember that when it came out there was a lot of talk about the fact this. SO...
Long story short, the way the board & proc are designed they can't actually use that extra 1GB of RAM.
Antonio
NArF!
Registered: 06/01/05
Posts: 401
Loc: San Francisco, CA
The best way to know for sure if it's using the RAM (especially considering System Profiler recognizes it) is to open up the Activity Monitor, open up enough apps to use up that much memory (Firefox and Photoshop are great for this) and keep an eye on the system memory at the bottom to see if it's actually being allocated.
Attached is the Activity Monitor ram readout. Does inactive ram count as allocated? I had EVERYTHING running. Office, iWork, Photoshop, Reader, DVD stuff, audio stuff and so on. This is maxed out.
Antonio
NArF!
Registered: 06/01/05
Posts: 401
Loc: San Francisco, CA
Yes. Inactive simply indicates that it is reserved, in case it needs to be used, but is not actively being used. According to the little pie chart at the right, your MacBook is indeed recognizing and using all 4 gigabytes of RAM.
No matter what I open, I can't get Used ram over 2.99gb. Everything past that gets dumped into virtual memory. I think that's the answer. Yes, the OS sees it. No, it can't use it.
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