MacBook Firmware Released, RAM Flaw Still Present

News
By Marcus Yam
published

{{As attractive as the new MacBooks may be, they aren’t without their share of problems. One such early concern is that of systems running 4GB RAM, which exhibit stability issues not present on the same systems running 3GB or less.}}

Users looking to go big on RAM are finding that, instead of a smoother, snappier system, they are met with instabilities. According to [jkOnTheRun->http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/12/macbook-fussy-m.html#B#], the issue seems to affect the new unibody MacBooks with 4 GB RAM. Those with 2 GB or even 3 GB appear to be fine.

This problem has already been acknowledged by Apple and that a software fix is on its way. Interestingly enough, Apple quietly just rolled out a batch of new firmware updates for the new MacBooks, which apparently [do not fix the memory issue->http://www.jkontherun.com/2008/12/mac-firmware-up.html#B#]. Sorry, big memory Mac fans, hopefully the real fix is en route.

Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam
Marcus Yam served as Tom's Hardware News Director during 2008-2014. He entered tech media in the late 90s and fondly remembers the days when an overclocked Celeron 300A and Voodoo2 SLI comprised a gaming rig with the ultimate street cred.
14 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Shadow703793
    Oh the irony. My Hackintosh rus perfectly on 5GB. :lol:
    Reply
  • I just returned my macbook. I utterly hated it.
    Reply
  • blackwidow_rsa
    it uses nvidia chipsets what did they expect
    Reply
  • tipoo
    they should support 8 gigs already, at least on the Pro.
    Reply
  • why did you hate it? what is wrong with nvidia? i switched to a mac book pro 2 years ago and it is still the best pc i have ever owned. i ran linux for 6 years as my desktop os at home and forced to run windows at work all the time. mac os x and apple hardware are top notch.
    Reply
  • agreed they should support 8gb hp's laptops do... maybe they will figure it out. but still those machone are top notch
    Reply
  • deredita
    anonymousanonymousagreed they should support 8gb hp's laptops do... maybe they will figure it out. but still those machone are top notch
    Which is the part of the reason why I am moving back to PCs. I been a Mac user for over 2 years now, I loved the stability of OSX 10.4. My feelings went sour when I upgraded my Macbook to 10.5. Tt was problem city - kernel panics, stability issues, lagging performance, etc. I reinstalled Leopard again on my 2.16 GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook, and it stopped getting kernel panics, but was still much slower. So, I got 4GB of ram. Again, I started getting kernel panics. I was really pissed off by this point.
    Lucky for me, I had the original disks that came with the Macbook. I removed the 4GB and switched back to the 2GB. I wiped it clean and reloaded OSX 10.4 back on it. Once it was loaded back up - I immediately realized that my iLife suite was back - thought I had lost it completely because it was not included on the Leopard install disk. Also, performance was much snappier again.

    So why won't I get another Mac - because they only come with Leopard. I hate Leopard with a passion. I PREFER dealing with Vista far more than Leopard. So, I bought myself a second laptop (netbook) for traveling - it has a 160 GB hard drive, and now 2GB of ram with XP. Good enough. I have the Macbook with Tiger (10.4) for my day to day tasks.

    Next month will build a Vista 64 beast for video editing, Photoshop CS4, etc... will have either 12 GB (if I get a Core i7) or 16GB (if I get an AMD Phenom II) of ram, quad-core, 2GB 4870x2 video card, 2TB+ hard drive space.

    At work, I have a Mac and a pretty nice Dell (Core 2 Duo, 8GB ram, 1.25TB storage space, 256MB dedicate video). I use both equally, as I need them both for various things.

    I loved my Macbook, but despise the direction Apple moved in with Leopard. Maybe 10.6 (Snow Leopard) will fix Leopard, like Windows 7 will fix Vista. In my opinion, I feel as if Leopard is like what was like in the early days on the PC. They both had really bad teething issues, but think Microsoft ironed out their issues far better than Apple did with theirs. The only think Apple has going for it is their very negative propaganda smear campaign again Vista, which has been very successful for them. People really buy into the Apple lies.
    Reply
  • Darkness Flame
    Hey, deredita, if you're going with a PC for video editing and CS4, you might want to use nVidia GPUs. CS4 can take advantage of them to render things a lot faster. If you're waiting a month already, might as well see what nVidia brings shows at CES 2009, as it will hopefully be better priced. Just a thought.

    Ohh, and "LeopardRules", besides the fact that you sound like you're either a troll, or just an idiot, when even Apple stated that "they figured the majority of America was intellegent enough to know that their commercials and advertisements aren't completely true, and overstate a lot," kinda proves in itself that they play on America's stupidity for some sales. Now, I'm not saying that you'd have to be an idiot to buy their products or anything; I'm just saying that the recent surge of sales for them is from people taking their commercials and ads too seriously, like they "weren't supposed to".
    Reply
  • deredita
    Darkness FlameHey, deredita, if you're going with a PC for video editing and CS4, you might want to use nVidia GPUs. CS4 can take advantage of them to render things a lot faster. If you're waiting a month already, might as well see what nVidia brings shows at CES 2009, as it will hopefully be better priced.
    Thanks for the heads up. As you could tell, the machine will be a beast. Unfortunately, even with all that hardware, I wonder if the CPU will be the bottle next. I occasionally bring my machine with an E6600 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo to it's knees at work.

    Has anyone seen the insane prices for the 6-core Xeon processors? They're ~ $2500!!!!! Good lord.

    Reply
  • kschoche
    dereditaThanks for the heads up. As you could tell, the machine will be a beast. Unfortunately, even with all that hardware, I wonder if the CPU will be the bottle next. I occasionally bring my machine with an E6600 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo to it's knees at work. Has anyone seen the insane prices for the 6-core Xeon processors? They're ~ $2500!!!!! Good lord.
    Xeons will be faster than your 2-core machine at work of course!
    Get a quad core xeon running and you'll notice a difference, or even a q6600 since it'd just be a chip swap.

    Reply