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New Ram slowed down my macbook pro?

post #1 of 11
7/20/07 at 12:22pm
Thread Starter 
Ok I got my 2gb stick of ram in the other day and have installed it with the other 1gb stick; so now i have 3gb in total which I thought would be really good as I need to use Photoshop etc. and load lots of photos...
The problem is that my laptop doesn't seem any faster with 3gb rather than 1gb- infact it is sometimes slower...
What's going on- is this usual?
Should I try just using 2gb or is there no point?
Thanks for any help
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post #2 of 11
7/20/07 at 1:33pm
Were you sure to get DDR2-667 (PC5300) SO-DIMMs, or did you mistakenly get DDR2-533? If you get the 533 then the machine will downclock the existing RAM to 533, thereby slowing your system down somewhat.

There could be other issues as well, this is one of the reasons why I try to make sure that I either buy 1 stick or matched pairs of RAM.
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post #3 of 11
7/21/07 at 4:42am
there cant be much of a difference from 533 to 667

yes slightly lower clock speeds, but enough to see a difference???
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post #4 of 11
7/21/07 at 10:31am
The step between 533 and 667 is only 133MHz, but bear in mind that is a 25% increase from 533, and that ain't peanuts.

I don't know if that is the cause for the slow down, all I know is that it could cause a slow down. Increasing the FSB and not running with a divider are the two things that I remember from my OCing days that gave you more oomph. And I also remember that increasing the FSB, even 10% gave me a noticeable performance increase.
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post #5 of 11
7/21/07 at 10:38am
see this thread

http://www.notebookforums.com/thread186941.html
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post #6 of 11
7/21/07 at 1:29pm
Thread Starter 
Hi just checked- I bought the : 2GB "SINGLE" APPLE MACBOOK IMAC DDR PC2-5300 RAM MEMORY
off Macram direct
have checked them in my system profiler and the 2gb stick is identical to the original 1gb issued by apple for my macbook pro:

Size:2 GB
Type:DDR2 SDRAM
Speed:667 MHz
Status:OK

Size:1 GB
Type:DDR2 SDRAM
Speed:667 MHz
Status:OK

Not quite sure now...
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post #7 of 11
7/21/07 at 1:46pm
Well then I have no idea what is going on. Try just running the 2GB stick in there to see if that fixes the issue, or try swapping the position of the RAM sticks.
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post #8 of 11
7/21/07 at 1:48pm
Thread Starter 
klkl will try thanks guys
will post later with results lol
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post #9 of 11
7/24/07 at 6:04am
Also, you probably won't notice a speed bump during normal light internet, music, email usage. The difference comes when you are running RAM-hungry programs and multitasking heavily.

At this point, you may exceed the amount of RAM you have, and when that happens, your computer starts to use the hard disk as "virtual memory" -- WAY slower than RAM.

So in short, normally, your computer will behave like before, but when you are stressing the heck out of it RAM-wise, the extra RAM you put in will help your performance shine
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post #10 of 11
7/24/07 at 4:26pm
3 gigs of ram is more than 90% of computer uses will tap, (which is why very few comps come with more than 2 in a non-BTO system ) i doubt he is accessing very much virtual memory. i don't know if the mbp has a dual channel memory controller, but that could be it, some chipsets cant run dual channel with unmatched pairs of ram, if thats the case this could be causing a bottleneck ... just a thought ...

::EDIT:: ok i did some research, is ur macbook pro on the 945pm chipset? if so, this is the cause of your slowdown most likely, now later chipsets introduced "flex memory tech" which allows for mismatched capacities to still run in dual channel the 945P has this, however the 945PM does not.. i would sell the 2 gig stick for another 1 gig. now on the other hand if you have a santarosa macbook ( intel 965 express) then you are in the clear for this issue, and it must be something else...
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post #11 of 11
7/27/07 at 3:01pm
You lost dual channel.
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