>4GB in MacBook Pro (early 2008)

[likeatiger]

So I've got the early 2008 17" MBP. The main complaint I have about this system is that it maxes out at 4GB RAM officially.

 

Unofficially, a pair of 4GB sticks will work a treat in it except OSX doesn't seem to like it over 6GB and things slow down bigtime. Linux and Windows x64 support 8GB without any problems. I'm not going to point the finger at dual-channel since the P965 will do dual-channel for the first 4GB of the system... unless it's dual-channel addressability above 4GB that's the issue.

 

The quesiton is - what is OSX doing internally to break the 8GB support? The new MBPs also have issues >4GB but the OS will simply not even access any RAM over 4GB. Since this all works fine on Mac Pros and hackintoshed systems, there surely must be a reason why 8GB RAM doesn't work properly on the portables - and I suspect this is a software limitation or something Apple need to resolve.

 

Or maybe this very knowledgable and talented community can help! I figure that if it's possible to natively boot OSX on completely foreign hardware and get all sorts of things working, surely it's possible to get this simple limitation removed? I'd also be interested if Snow Leopard has the same problems.

 

It's also possible, I read, to get the 10.5.5 OSX control panel and kexts for the mouse and input and use them to give full 4-finger multitouch support on the older MBPs.

[aprodigy]

It's also possible, I read, to get the 10.5.5 OSX control panel and kexts for the mouse and input and use them to give full 4-finger multitouch support on the older MBPs.

 

cannot say anything about the >4gb issue but regarding multitouch, yes, it works at least on macbooks >= 2008.

 

post #28: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php...2801&page=2

 

[edit] see http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=573906 and http://blogs.technet.com/keithcombs/archiv...acbook-pro.aspx for more info on the >=8gb issue.