Comments on: Mac Pro Memory: 8GB, 16GB, or 32GB RAM?

By: mrphantuan phan

mrphantuan phan — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 07:21:05 +0000

You’re not going to put more than 8GB of ram in that motherboard, period. The memory controller in the 680i can only address that much. Further more, finding 4GB DIMMs of unregistered DDR2 is pretty much impossible anyway and that’s as big as they got. They never made 8GB unregistered DDR2 DIMMs and they didn’t make a whole lot of them in registered and FB-DIMM form. The manufacturing technologies used during DDR2/FB-DIMM runs were just too large to economically do 8GB and larger DIMMs. Even if they were common, 8GB registered DDR3 DIMMs cost about $600 a pop.

At this point, if you want more performance, you’re much better off building a new system. Get the Xeon version of the single socket Gulftown and a solid X58 motherboard. With the Xeon version, you’ll be able to use the DDR3 rDIMMs should you actually need huge amounts of memory. Counter intuitively, 4GB registered DDR3 DIMMs are substantially less expensive than 4GB unregistered DDR3 DIMMs. I really can’t see you needing more than 16GB or so for a single socket system for quite awhile. If you have memory needs beyond this, you probably have some pretty hardcore processing needs as well, which means you should probably look at a 2S system.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 23:54:18 +0000

Eric, the reason that you would want 16+ Gigs of RAM is for working on stuff like multimedia and image processing. I often work on images in Photoshop which are in excess of a Gigabyte, which can easliy translate to a Photoshop scratch disk size of 15+ Gigs, just for that one file. If you don’t have lots of memory, Photoshop needs to keep reading and writing that raw info to the hard drive as you work on the file, which drastically slows down performance. With Lots of RAM, however, Photoshop is free to store the scratch disk in memory, and thus you have super-fast access times. If you’ve ever tried working on a file that size without a lot of memory, it’s not fun…

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:28:52 +0000

Wow. Macs are poop. For the 800 that some idiot spent on just their ram, i could make a “beast” pc (i use quotation for I don’t use that term much). Honestly, to need to have more than 4 gigs of ram is just out right. And how the hell can you have even over 10 tabs, and be efficient about it? Sure, saving your place is handy, but honestly, its all just a waste of money for someone who can say “I can open 50 tabs at once”, and I’ll reply “Poop”

By: Deano

Deano — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 17:49:15 +0000

Our agency has 8 Mac Pro machines currently and each has at least 8GB installed. Depending what operations are performed the more RAM the better. Safari with 50 tabs open won’t hold a match to one fat Final Cut project… For the past 10 years we have bought nearly all of our RAM from Mac RAM Direct. They are very knowledgeable and helpful, give us lifetime tech and all of this while offering the lowest prices you could hope for.We used Crucial a couple of times but really can’t justify the costs over the zero failures to date MRD parts.

By: efewf

efewf — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 20:57:06 +0000

haha, I got 256 mb :D:D:D

By: Raptor

Raptor — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:20:39 +0000

As far as this ram issue goes, before I bought my Mac Pro last month, I did the research and discovered that it is not about the amount of ram, but using the ram effectively.
You get the best performance by filling all 8 slots with matched pairs. It doesn’t matter how much, ie I had mine configured with the minimum 2 gigs ( 2x1gig). Then bought 3 2gig matched pairs, put them in according to Apple, ( moved the original pair to the top riser, installed the next pair in the top riser, and the last two pairs in the bottom riser ) This minimum configuration allows the Mac Pro to utilize all available ram efficiently. Increasing this setup to either 10-16-32 didn’t have any affect on the performance until you start utilizing heavy duty apps. Also it was shown that the difference in cpu’s was minimum at best, ram = speed.

By: Conrad B. Senior

Conrad B. Senior — Sat, 31 May 2008 16:14:38 +0000

I have a Mac Pro 4×3.2GHz and 16 GB or Ram. I find that it is difficult to use more than 8GB or RAM. I typically have 9GB or Ram free–or more. I am not running a VM yet. My feeling is go for the (4) 4GB boards like I did, and have room for expansion as prices come down and more software is written to take advantage of the extra memory. I figure my machine, bought in April, will be good for ten years.

By: jonathan

jonathan — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 23:06:41 +0000

here is an application that would benefit from 168 GB of ram (see table on pg. 10):
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0509066
I guess we’ll have to stick to 32 GB a bit longer though.

By: matts

matts — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 06:11:20 +0000

@joe

You are insane, brother.

By: Al Mendoza

Al Mendoza — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:25:59 +0000

Chris,

I suggest going with 16 unless your urging need for bragging rights wont let you. I am pretty sure you will go for 32. ha ha.

By: TheDub

TheDub — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:36:56 +0000

I like the comment about you CANT have a MAC pro without 32GB of memory. What in the world would anyone need that much memory for!? Seriously. In a more serious opinion. Chris. How much RAM do you have in your Windows Rig? Ok put that much in the Mac Pro. If for example you have 4GB RAM and it does everything you want. Why would you need anymore in OS X? Maybe its just my opinion to only spend money on something that is needed. I also agree with another post I read saying add memory as it is needed. That is how I have lived in my computing world. For example when Windows 2000 was the latest and greatest people might have 1GB of RAM. In general you would not notice a difference with another GB, so why spend the money? 2-4GB should be plenty, save the extra money from not buying that RAM and get a accessory, or maybe a new external drive for extra space. You know what I mean? Maybe there is some cool software you have wanted, buy a game, use the money on household things. Don’t get RAM that you probably will not use, its wasteful.

By: digifad

digifad — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 03:40:40 +0000

I can barely imagine over 4Gb. Talk about bottleneck!

By: matrix

matrix — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 06:06:39 +0000

You would be much farther ahead speedwise spending the money for a SSD than excessive RAM.

By: UncleJohnCentral

UncleJohnCentral — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 22:39:20 +0000

I highly recommend you go with 16 you can always upgrade to 32, that is the NUMBER ONE reason to get a mac pro, is the fact that it is HIGHLY expandable, and will run well with just bout any configuration you start out with, and just improve with time. If you go straight to 32megs I think you will not be very impressed, go with 16, as you upgrade other components then see how the memory is holding up, if its getting strained. THEN! Jump up to 32, but not tell you know how much you REALLY need.

By: tpavra

tpavra — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 21:10:09 +0000

Go with 32GB , you can’t have a MAC Pro without 32GB RAM! Then come brag to us and make us really envious :-P