8GB vs 4GB on new Haswells?

OP, I would say look at your usage and try to predict future usage. If your habits remain the same, RAM really won't matter. Second, consider the speed of page outs/page ins on the SSD versus what you would experience today with a standard SSD setup or even a HDD. The PCI-e speed increase may alleviate most of what someone would notice in terms of lag on a page-out anyhow. I haven't experienced the difference and it would be interesting to see someone force a system to page-out and compare a 2012 to a 2013 MBA.

I believe the difference would be significant but I really have no way to confirm. If cost/value were your driving factor for 4GB or 8GB, I'd go for 4GB and trust the specs I've seen and experience posts of users measuring speed on the new SSD setup. If the $100 isn't as much of an issue, go with 8GB just so you can feel confident you can resell years later for a decent value. But, all Macs hold significant resale value so it's still a judgement call in the end. Personally, 4GB would be fine for me because my uses are similar to yours and I've seen users post their results of SSD speed on new 2013 machines so slight hesitations would be meaningless for my purposes, and that same speed will be seen on the Windows side under Parallels anyhow. Only gaming, based on your uses, could push the system to page-out I think, and since you said "light gaming" I think even that's a stretch.

Edit: I look at it from a business standpoint. Get what you need and what you predict you will still need 2-4 years from now. Buy only what you need, not what may look good on resale because that extra investment is wasted until the resale date if you never/rarely need more than 4GB.

ggamecrazy said:

27.4 GB !? DAT Page outs! IF i remember correctly from my Computer Architecture class, this is by far the biggest slowdown your computer can have. Page outs to disk are extremely expensive! If you were getting this, You definitely needed more RAM, however your Page in/ out ratio wasn't bad.

I say 8GB to make it future proof, and even if you sell it after a year, that $100 invested in Ram will retain at least $90 IMO.

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Erm, no because in real-world terms the drop in performance wasn't noticeable. And even with 8gb, I'd still have had pageouts because MATLAB can eat-up memory, so it's a void point - the machine was still functioning fine.

Go with the 8G, after taking a look at peoples computer when they claim it has become slow, the most common reason is they are lacking RAM. That being said most of them only have 2G.

I would really never recommend less than 8G of ram and really find it a little insulting that Apple still supplies 4G machines.

I'm a very heavy user and I've found that 8G often doesn't meet my requirements. But I can't imagine recommending 4G to anyone, even more so since it can't be upgraded.

If you also intend to run windows, there's no question about it... 8G

I'm with you

Oivalf said:

Does anyone have the new MBA i5 with 8 gb of RAM and 256GB? Is battery life the same, 12 hours and more? Thanks.

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I'm going to order one for my daughter who will be starting college this fall, but I've been holding out on the Back to School promo that they usually have at this time of year. I had planned on getting the MBA i7, 8 gb and 256GB, but now I've had second thoughts now after reading all the posts here. I think the i5 will do the job for her, and hope that this one will last 4-years.

Yixian said:

The general consensus is that there is no benefit to anything more than 4gb of RAM, and that's coming from the hardcore PC gaming community who stress over every frame per second, so I decided not to bother.

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And that is true if you are playing a game and only have that game loaded. But in terms of multi-tasking and having several programs open at once it is and has always been true that there is no such thing as too much RAM.

Also keep in mind that games are much more GPU intensive than RAM intensive and the integrated Intel graphics on the MBAs only "borrow" a finite amount of RAM. You could install 8GB but the GPU is still only going to use a max of 1GB. But, of course, there are other uses for RAM than just games.

Foolish to spend this much on a laptop and not fork out a little more for 8GB RAM.

I would say yes, get 8gb. I was on the fence and hoping I could get away with a stock model. I went to the apple store yesterday and played with one of the store models. I tried to open up a bunch of programs and a lot of windows in word and PowerPoint. Without too much trouble I was able to feel lag especially in safari. It wasn't horrible but I could definitely tell when the paging out started before the OS was able to free up more inactive memory. Now remember that apple doesn't have anything too intense installed on their display models. These are just normal programs (office, browser, iTunes, calender, address book, mail etc) and I didn't feel I had the same smoothness as my 8gb 2012 MBA. Of course not everyone works like this but sometimes for work I actually do need to work with that much stuff running so 8gb is a must for me.

Wow Marioman. I didn't realize there was a 5TB HDD?

Wow Marioman. I didn't realize there was a 5TB HDD?

Guys i am from india and here they dont sell the 8 gb model at all

And i have to buy the 4 gig one for Rs 64000 ..

And the retina mac with 8 gb and awesome display is available for Rs 88000

Get 8 GB.
The gpu uses 1 GB all by itself which alone is enough reason to get 8 GB.
But I average 6 gb in normal use because the OS and apps take what they can get.
8 GB is also more future proof and will result in better resale value.
Apple should make 8 GB the minimum as they do on the retina Macs or at least make 8 GB more available in stores.

Just something else to consider...

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-ram-endurance,3475.html

SSD longevity goes up with more system memory.

I had my air for a week now and i want to give my thoughts on this question. Originally i wanted 8GB of ram for my air, but after some regular use i don't find it necessary. Sure if you want to run VMs or use it as your main computer, get the 8GB. But since this is my third computer i don't really need it. 4GB is fine for surfing, watching movies, even doing some light photo work.