Rasengan Posted October 17, 2008 Share Posted October 17, 2008 I have a 20" white iMac with a Core 2 Duo 2.16Ghz CPU that I bought back in October 2006. From snooping online, it says that 3GB seems to be the max. Apparantly, if you put in 4GB, it'll show up as that in About This Mac, but System Profiler will say that only 3GB can be used. Now, before you say "Oh, you've answered your own question!", I haven't. I was thinking, that the reason Apple stated that limit, could be similar to why Windows won't normally support a full 4GB of RAM, ie. the 32-bit address space limit. After all, back then, no-one really used 64-bit OS's. So, I'm wondering.... I have Vista Ultimate x64 installed, and Leopard is 64-bit, so, will my iMac actually be able to use all 4GB of RAM since the upper limit is much higher for 64-bit OS's??? Considering that 4GB of PC-5300 RAM is €60, i'd love to upgrade it to that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reveeen Posted October 18, 2008 Share Posted October 18, 2008 Though a write up for PCs, your Intel Mac is little more than a PC, so the same thing applies to your "early" Intel Mac. http://www.dansdata.com/askdan00015.htm The "later" Intel Macs have addressed this limitation by a chipset modification (within the chipset). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasengan Posted October 18, 2008 Author Share Posted October 18, 2008 Lol, thanks Reveeen, that was quite a good read. Since the 4GB RAM sticks cost bugger all anyway, I'll probably buy 4GB and keep my existing 1GB sticks spare. If my Vista x64 reads all 4GB of RAM, then my PC will love VMWare that little bit more, lol, If not, I will post back at some point to let others knows of my discoveries Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reveeen Posted October 19, 2008 Share Posted October 19, 2008 From what I understand (I do not "know" first hand) your iMac has a 5400 rpm hardrive in it (I could be wrong, I don't own one) but if this is the case you would get your "best" benefit from money spent by installing a faster hardrive. You should be able to get the hardrive model from your "about this Mac", "more info", "ATA", then go to the manufacturers website, and look it up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rasengan Posted October 19, 2008 Author Share Posted October 19, 2008 It's a 7200RPM Seagate ST3250824AS Q, so a better drive won't make much difference :S Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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