Late 2008 Macbook RAM question?

[RyanR5]

Hi, my name is Ryan and I'm new to the iMore forums. I have a late 2008 aluminum unibody Macbook that I ordered new the day they were released. I ordered it with the 128 GB SSD Drive and 4 GB of RAM. It has been a great laptop but it is starting to show it's age. I've read different articles that these MacBooks can now except 8 GB of RAM instead of just the original max amount of 4 GB. I was just wondering if anyone on these forums has done this upgrade and if they've found a noticeable difference in performance. Thanks in advance.

 

[Just_Me_D]

Hopefully, someone who has the same model that you have will reply soon.

 

[anon(9602380)]

Welcome to iMore!

I have a 2010 MBP that I upgraded a few years back. I went to an SSD and later upgraded the RAM. The biggest performance boost came from the SSD. The RAM did very little in comparison the the SSD. My MBP, as is yours, is getting quite a bit old. At this point in time I would not suggest investing anything into your MacBook. It will not do enough for the money spent. I am in the same boat. I am currently looking at the new MBP that was introduced yesterday.

 

[RyanR5]

Thanks for the reply's. I was wondering myself if the cost would be worth it seeing as how my Macbook is already 8 years old. My computer still does everything I need it to do quite well ( I'm in no way a Pro user lol). I'm just trying to get the most amount of use out of it as I can. I like how I'm able to open it up to replace the battery or hard drive and easily access the RAM. I was mainly just wondering if anyone had upgraded to 8 GB of RAM on the late 2008 Macbook because originally it wouldn't work but later they released a new firmware that "secretly" allowed these Macbook's to recognize up to 8 GB of RAM.

 

[racerhomie]

If you are above Snow Leopard ,you can get 8GB of Ram
But in 32Bit Windows(last supported) only shows 4.
Besides that it runs Quite well on my Unibody MacBook.
I also have a 128GB SATA 3 OCZ Agility 3.

 

[racerhomie]

Btw my one is quite fast.Boots in 10 seconds flat ,shuts down in 5-10secs. Etc.Only 1080P iMovie export takes time.
Try these out first,Go to Disk Utility>First Aid on your primary disk
Second reset your SMC , when Booting press Command+Option+P+R together until you hear second Chime.This will resrt old settings,fans.