jackt283 Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 Just installed another 2gig ram to make a total of 4GB. In "About this mac" and system profiler all DIMMs are shown properly, as they are all installed properly and working. Except in Activity Monitor it only says 3.25GB! What the hell is that? Also After Effects says only 3GB!! Is the ram being used, or can OS x not use it at all? Maybe it is something to do with my mobo, its an old INTEL 945GNT (LKR). I remember reading something posted awhile back that said something about this but I couldn't track it down cause the search is faulty (sorry guys it is, you can't search for 3 letter words....) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azurael Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 It's a limitation of the 945 chipset line, unfortunately - that's why Apple only specified the old MacBook Pros up to 3GB... OS X itself is fine with humongous amounts of RAM, being a 64-bit OS. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackt283 Posted June 15, 2007 Author Share Posted June 15, 2007 A limit with the 945 chipset and Mac OS X, of course, cause my board is specd to run 4GB. So other chipsets handle more ram? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rei Posted June 15, 2007 Share Posted June 15, 2007 32-bit oses can only use 3.2 gb, 8gb is 'reserved' same for 32-bit vista, xp. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpt. Future Posted June 16, 2007 Share Posted June 16, 2007 So other chipsets handle more ram? try i965-Boards, but better (for a Hackintosh) seems to be i975x-Boards. Take a look to the many threads in this forum and you will find your new board. But, 3,25GB Ram are normally still enough More than that makes sense, if you are a real professional in Video-Editing or 3D-Animation. Otherwise you spend too much money for like 90% not used extra RAM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jackt283 Posted June 17, 2007 Author Share Posted June 17, 2007 Yeah I am into video editing and sound design. At the mo Final Cut and After Effects at the same time with the rest of Adobe CS is usable. Though with a little extra ram it would be sweet. That's not true about the 32-bt OS and 3.2 GB Ram is it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 Wow, I never noticed that. Parts of the G4 were 64bit, the G5 was 64bit capable, so with the switch to x86-64 processors, I assumed OS X would be 64bit. About this Mac does say 4gb, but Activity Monitor says 3.2gb. So. OS X.5 offers "Full 64-bit support", and can address the full 4gb of RAM, so that's a relief. It's not like I have 4gb of RAM because the price made sense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cpt. Future Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 ok, here some informations The chipset of i945 is still 32Bit, so why the MacBook, the MacBook Pro and the iMac can´t adress more than 3GB of RAM. The CPU (Core2Duo) is still 64Bit. The new SantaRosa-Chipset (a derivate of i965) is in 64bit, also the CPU (Core2Duo). So the new released MacBook Pro (and the coming new iMac) can adress more than 4GB Ram. If more than 3,25GB Ram is necessary in a Hackintosh, so it´s better to take a i965-Board or i975x. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EtherealRemnant Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 Last thing I heard, 64-bit was not working on Hackintosh kernels. Did this change? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sziggle Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 don't know about your motherboard, but in mine (asus P5B Deluxe, P965 chipset) there is a BIOS setting that turns on PAE (physical address extension) and lets osx see the full 4gb of ram i have installed. with it off, about this mac reports 4GB but activity monitor shows 3.25. with the BIOS setting turned on, about this mac says 4GB and activity monitor shows 4GB. however... i have been having some random crashes and in trying to track it down, one of the parameters i am experimenting with is this BIOS setting and there was at least one thing i tried (ditto volume copy command) that crashed the system with the setting on and did not crash it with the setting off. i have not repeated the experiment yet so this is far from conclusive. just an FYI. EtherealRemnant: on irc.osx86.hu in the #1049 channel, the announcement is showing that the latest SSE3 intel only kernels have 64-bit fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
frizbot Posted June 17, 2007 Share Posted June 17, 2007 I am interested in hearing more about the benefits of the newer kernels of 64bit -- if that's Leopard beta kernels only, etc. Cpt. Future, you frightened me. My motherboard has the 945G chipset, so I looked it up. Unless Intel is lying through it's teeth, this chipset has "4GB memory addressability for faster system responsiveness and support for 64-bit computing." You did say i945, but it isn't listed on Intel's chipset page, unless that's notation for all 945-based chipsets. Obviously I'm quite confused, and planning on booting a 64bit system on my machine to check RAM addressability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Azurael Posted June 18, 2007 Share Posted June 18, 2007 OK... I don't think I was clear enough... OS X has a 64-bit kernel, and most hackintoshes installed using any recent 10.4.8 or 10.4.9 disks are likely to be running such a kernel these days. Try sticking lots of RAM in a system based on another chipset with an x64 CPU and you'll see it recognised no problem. The limitation is with the chipset itself; it's not that there's such a thing as a '32-bit or '64-bit' chipset, it's just b0rked memory addressing above about 3 and a quarter gig for i945s, as you've discovered. It's a chipset limitation, and no BIOS update will ever fix it. Blame Intel. By i945, I am refering to all Intel 945 series chipsets (the 945P, 945G and 945GZ to name but a few.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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