MBP RAM
- Thread starter mccrum
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 10 Apr 2004
- Posts
- 13,498
OcUK sell it for like £60...
very tempted sometime soon to grab me some
very tempted sometime soon to grab me some
now, here's a question... are DDR3 slots backward compatible with DDR2? After all, you can max a present MBP out to 4GB for £60 with OCUK.... but with Calpella/Montevina etc, would the higher FSB speed be offfset by the much increased cost of upgrading the RAM to 4Gb of DDR3? I'd rather have a 4GB 'santa rosa' than a 2GB DDR3 machine..
Thanks, and I thought as much. Now the WWDC keynote's come and gone without mention of a MBP refresh, it looks likely it'll be a couple months before stock rollout. I predict many MBP's will be sold tomorrow...
It is an interesting conundrum - a 'santa rosa' MBP with 4GB DDR2 would fly perhaps even faster than a 'montevina' MBP with 2GB DDR3, especially as DDR3 is in its [expensive] infancy, and the lower power requirements are offset by the supposed increased access times of DDR3.
I'm off to peruse a 2.5GHz Penryn, and I'm probably not alone in thinking a maxed-out present MBP will be a better bet than budgeting for £300 of extra DDR3...
I'll just have to plug it into the wall a half-hour earlier..
It is an interesting conundrum - a 'santa rosa' MBP with 4GB DDR2 would fly perhaps even faster than a 'montevina' MBP with 2GB DDR3, especially as DDR3 is in its [expensive] infancy, and the lower power requirements are offset by the supposed increased access times of DDR3.
I'm off to peruse a 2.5GHz Penryn, and I'm probably not alone in thinking a maxed-out present MBP will be a better bet than budgeting for £300 of extra DDR3...
I'll just have to plug it into the wall a half-hour earlier..
To be frank the difference from DDR2 to 3 will be relatively minor. 4GB is a good move however.
The MBP recieved a bit of a face-lift and hardware boost earlier this year, so I wouldn't expect any changes until January next year.
I'd expect the Montevina upgrade to occur this year, just to keep check of the Intel roadmap. However, it seems everyone expects a massive redesign; I doubt this - Montevina is just a speed bump, and any major form factor changes would be better served when the revised/smaller Westmere/Nehalem motherboards roll out in Q1/2 '09. And I'll bet it's Q2, not Q1, to allow 6 months product cycle from the Montevina update later this year, and to allow the desktop models to get some airtime first.
I know the rumor sites have been in full swing with this, but the design is wonderful and ageless - think Porsche 911 in its evolution through TIbook through now - why major change for change sake? OK, I see the maglatch as a 'tidy-up', but the trackpad is large enough already, really - anyone doing serious graphic work has a tablet, gamers have separate mice etc.
As for Montevina, well, wi-max has little immediate future in the UK due to bandwidth and population density; very few games will completely refuse to run on the 8600M GT's GPU [commercial suicide to release a game which doesn't run on 90% of 'average' gamers' PC's], the DVI port already allows HD viewing, albeit not 1080 'trueHD'; and finally, if DDR3 is the only option, as discussed it'll work out far more expensive to 'max-it-out', and DDR3's performance gains over DDR2 are slim.
A present MBP seems a very good way to see out the next 3-4 years, by which time the technology we speculate on will be mature and less expensive. Of course, by then, something else will be on the way, and we'll all be declaring Gesher/Sandy bridge to be 'old and clunky....'
I know the rumor sites have been in full swing with this, but the design is wonderful and ageless - think Porsche 911 in its evolution through TIbook through now - why major change for change sake? OK, I see the maglatch as a 'tidy-up', but the trackpad is large enough already, really - anyone doing serious graphic work has a tablet, gamers have separate mice etc.
As for Montevina, well, wi-max has little immediate future in the UK due to bandwidth and population density; very few games will completely refuse to run on the 8600M GT's GPU [commercial suicide to release a game which doesn't run on 90% of 'average' gamers' PC's], the DVI port already allows HD viewing, albeit not 1080 'trueHD'; and finally, if DDR3 is the only option, as discussed it'll work out far more expensive to 'max-it-out', and DDR3's performance gains over DDR2 are slim.
A present MBP seems a very good way to see out the next 3-4 years, by which time the technology we speculate on will be mature and less expensive. Of course, by then, something else will be on the way, and we'll all be declaring Gesher/Sandy bridge to be 'old and clunky....'
As I see it, Montevina may not better Santa Rosa by much - and might in fact be less 'well specced' in the majority of laptops if DDR3 ram remains expensive. I wouldn't put 4GB in a DDR3 laptop if it meant an extra £350 - but £60 for DDR2 is a reasonable expense.
Most of the other gains - WiMax, HD1080, Blu-ray, integrated graphics - are either small, redundant in the UK, not applicable to the MBP, or still too expensive to enjoy at consumer level.
So, with that in mind, MBP purchased today....
Most of the other gains - WiMax, HD1080, Blu-ray, integrated graphics - are either small, redundant in the UK, not applicable to the MBP, or still too expensive to enjoy at consumer level.
So, with that in mind, MBP purchased today....
I just upgraded to 4GB bought it from OCUK last week, my MBP flies now when running parallels with windows before it was a bit sluggish
Well worth it while the prices are cheap, just got to wait for the new WD 7200rpm 320gb drive to finish it up
Well worth it while the prices are cheap, just got to wait for the new WD 7200rpm 320gb drive to finish it up
I just upgraded to 4GB bought it from OCUK last week, my MBP flies now when running parallels with windows before it was a bit sluggish
Well worth it while the prices are cheap, just got to wait for the new WD 7200rpm 320gb drive to finish it up
its a real pain to upgrde can they do it it in store
It's easy, just need a small screwdriver!
But yes, they will do it in store, will have to patient though.
That's technology for you, it will always be upgraded regularly and what is current for a few months will soon be outdated. If you don't buy now you will never buy! My MBP is a year old now, and I don't feel left behind in any way.