{"id":9102,"date":"2011-03-03T13:37:06","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T19:37:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/?p=9102"},"modified":"2017-04-14T10:53:58","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T15:53:58","slug":"secret-firmware-lets-late-08-macbooks-use-8gb","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eshop.macsales.com\/blog\/9102-secret-firmware-lets-late-08-macbooks-use-8gb\/","title":{"rendered":"“Secret” Firmware lets Late ’08 MacBooks use 8GB."},"content":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while, a blip on the radar comes up, letting us know that there\u2019s something not quite right <\/em>in our little corner of the Mac Universe. This time around, it came in the form of Tweets directed to us, as well as in posting in popular Mac forums<\/a>.<\/p>\n

As it turns out, several other memory vendors\u2014along with some Late 08 MacBook\/MacBook Pro users\u2014have laid claim to these machines working with 8GB of RAM. This was contradictory to our testing in December 2009<\/a> which quite clearly <\/em>showed that while these models recognized a full 8GB, if an application addressed more than 6GB, the system would slow down significantly.<\/em><\/p>\n

Not being the type to just let these sorts of claims to go unchallenged, we went back to our testing lab<\/a>, grabbed the affected model machines, running 10.6.6. and dropped an 8GB upgrade kit<\/a> in them.<\/p>\n

Related:\u00a0<\/strong>See All Upgrades Compatible with Your Mac with My Upgrades Tool<\/a><\/p>\n

The results were exactly <\/em>the same as in 2009, lending credence to our conclusions, but the sheer number of claims to the contrary led us to continue searching\u2014and the trail ended at Apple.<\/p>\n

In late 2009, an EFI Firmware Update was released to address the buzzing noises coming from the optical drive. However, it seems that somewhere along the line, Apple changed this update without notating it anywhere.<\/em><\/p>\n

Whether any other elements were affected by this change is undetermined, but it did <\/em>change memory addressing; with the later version of the update installed, you could address a full 8GB in Snow Leopard<\/strong>. Unfortunately, Software Update doesn\u2019t show this version as being different from the previous one, so users wouldn’t be notified if they had already updated their firmware to the older version.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The practical upshot of all this is that if you installed the EFI Update when it first came out, like we did, you would have gotten the old code, which meant your computer would only address 6GB properly. Those who didn\u2019t upgrade until after Apple changed the updater got the newer firmware, which allowed proper addressing of 8GB.<\/p>\n

Once we manually installed the “updated” version of the EFI Firmware in our test machines, they were able to address 8GB normally, without any crashing or slowdowns.<\/p>\n

How do you ensure your Late \u201808 MacBook\/MacBook Pro can address 8GB of RAM?<\/h2>\n

First, you want to make sure you have one of the affected models:<\/p>\n