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32GB is a limitation of iX Haswell, Ivy Bridge could use 64GB - Apple can't do anything about it. Let's hope Intel allows it for Broadwell-K (-Y,-U,-H variants

• wtallis 12y ago
  It's not a Haswell vs. Ivy Bridge distinction, it's a consumer vs. server distinction. Consumer CPUs only have dual-channel memory controllers and Intel's DDR3 controllers can't use 16GB UDIMMs or have more than 2 UDIMMs per channel. The server chips (a handful of which get some features cut off and sold under the i7 brand) have 4 memory controllers and also support RDIMMs and LRDIMMs.
  • yuhong 12y ago
    >Intel's DDR3 controllers can't use 16GB UDIMMs That is a software not a hardware limitation (in particular, I think it is in Intel's MRC). ASUS has firmware with modified MRC code that can support it.
• karon 12y ago
  That is in fact incorrect. Consumer desktop Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell all support 32 GB of RAM via 2 DDR3 channels. Enthusiast desktop processors (Sandy-E, Ivy-E, Haswell-E) support 64 GB, because they feature 4 channel memory controllers. Once the consumer chipsets move up to DDR4, you will have support for 64 GB of RAM on the desktop. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_%28microarchitecture%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skylake_%28microarchitecture%29