4GB RAM on MacBook Pro 15 ?

Question

I can put 4GB Ram on MacBook Pro 15 even if Activity Monitor and other similar applications will reveal that only 3 GB of SDRAM has been addressed for use by the computer ? you see apple doc : http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=304662
I would want put 4GB Ram on my new MBP.
TY, Max Vigilante

Answer 1

actually it's true. it's not the motherboard, it's the intel chipset. there was an interview with a tech spokesperson from apple about this on anandtech I believe.
while you can physically put 4GB into the slots, the intel chipset will only be able to address slightly more than 3GB of it. apple made the decision to be reasonable about this and state that the max RAM for these machines is 3GB so that customers are not wasting their money on buying 4GB. other manufacturers are either not being so honest about it, or they haven't even bothered to pay any attention to the intel spec on the core 2 duo chipset. if your dell is reporting that it actually has the full 4GB (and it is indeed a core 2 duo machine) then it's just giving you a reading of what chips are installed, nothing more. any system profiling app that can really look into what amount of RAM is actually addressable will show that the full real amount is less than 3.7GB (or less than that I can't remember). the information is all there at intel if you want to go get it from the horse's mouth.
there is absolutely nothing about OSX that limits it to less than 4GB. it makes no sense to assume that.. the OSX installed on MBPs is identical to the OSX on other machines like mac pros, which can support well and truly more than 4GB RAM as there is no chipset limitation in the xeons.
anyway as I said, this info is all out there in the public domain, you can even email support at intel and ask them to explain exactly why the core 2 duo chipset (in any machine, mac or PC or otherwise) has this RAM limitation.