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I have a Macbook Pro, 17 inch mid-2009 with 2 ram chips configured in this manner:

BANK 0/DIMM0:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334548312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x84D68C36

BANK 1/DIMM0:

  Size: 2 GB
  Type: DDR3
  Speed:    1067 MHz
  Status:   OK
  Manufacturer: 0x80CE
  Part Number:  0x4D34373142353637334548312D4346382020
  Serial Number:    0x84D68C0D

I would like to kick this up to 8 Gb of ram. What should I do? OR, can I just add a 4Gb stick on one side and end up with 6 Gb of ram...most sites seem to indicate that the amount of ram in each slot should be the same. Thanks!

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  • to kick it up to 8GB, buy two 4GB DIMMs and replace the 2GB ones already there. – jalynn2 Oct 17 '14 at 17:46
  • For better performance and stability, it's better to go with matching sticks of RAM. That said, use the memory finder on crucial.com, it matches you up with the RAM designed for your machine. – Patrick McMahon Oct 17 '14 at 18:51
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You ideally want both banks the same, this will allow interleaving which almost doubles the memory access speed.

In computing, interleaved memory is a design made to compensate for the relatively slow speed of dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) or core memory, by spreading memory addresses evenly across memory banks. That way, contiguous memory reads and writes are using each memory bank in turn, resulting in higher memory throughputs due to reduced waiting for memory banks to become ready for desired operations.

Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interleaved_memory

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