namelesstavern.net

so. i am at the Apple store, talking with someone about their laptops. we are discussing the difference in Ram btwn macs and pc's, of course i am quite clear that amount of ram doesn't necessarily matter when considering the whole of the machine you put together.

but the Apple guy can't help and begin a rant about pc's, and he mentions something that i found odd... he said that with an odd numbered amount of ram (3g or 5g when your machine can hold 4 or 8g) it causes a "bottleneck" effect and the RAM will end up being less efficient/runing slower

so what's the deal?

He's basically an idiot.

I mean, Genius. In the Apple world.

Hell, the last version of the Macbook (rev.B) shipped with 3Gb of memory...

To expand on my idiot comment...

Earlier versions of the macbook supported asynchronous dual channel mode, like almost every modern PC. This allowed the macbooks to run mixed sizes (2Gb & 1Gb, for example) and still run in dual channel. The performance difference between synchronous and asynchronous dual channel is almost nil, but dropping out of dual channel altogether is a 'big' hit. Most modern notebook chipsets allow you to mix and match ram sizes so you can 'stay' in Dual Channel. Same size = synchronous dual channel. Mixed sizes = asynchronous dual channel. Theoretically, asynchronous is a slight performance hit, but even ridiculously robust CPU/Memory stress utilities hardly notice the difference.

Basically... Apple removed the ability to be flexible, which shouldn't surprise you. If you mix memory sizes, you drop into single channel mode - which IS a giant performance hit. But in a PC, this isn't the case. You can swap between synchronous and asynchronous mode all you want. Apple, you get 1 choice.

Those 'geniuses' are taught Apple propaganda, but not much else.

danka sir. sounded a bit odd.