Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

14/16" 16GB of RAM, show us your memory pressure with YOUR workflow!

MrGunnyPT

MrGunnyPT

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Mar 23, 2017
1,313
804
As the title suggests as more and more people are getting their configs with 16GB of RAM I'm curious to see each person's workflow and how much memory it consumes! Feel free to share your Memory pressure, history and more!

I'll share mine tomorrow after I get it, please share with us guys!

EDIT : Here's mine with my 14" Hooked up to dual Displays 4K 60hz

1635341861132.png
 
Last edited:
Hopefully my M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14” arrives today. Can show off once I get everything loaded.
 
Smoovejayy said:
Hopefully my M1 Pro MacBook Pro 14” arrives today. Can show off once I get everything loaded.
Click to expand...
Yeah I have been rocking this MBA base model for quite some time now but the 8GB just can't handle everything anymore especially since I got it hooked it up to a Huawei Mateview.

Was torn between 16GB and 32GB but went ahead with the 16GB and if it doesn't work I'll grab a 32GB.
 
  • Like
Reactions: dead flag blues
MrGunnyPT said:
Damm sounds like 32GB is actually a must, how may tabs you got open?
Click to expand...
25+.
Some are heavy (trading) and I am also using a higher than usual screen resolution, and the system is still indexing files, but still...
My 32Gb one will arrive in November. Let's see if memory improves after the system is done indexing.
 
I'll try to remind myself of this thread the next time I have to write a research paper, those usually end up with like 2 Word docs, an Excel sheet, 20+ Chrome tabs, and other random crap open
 
SoN1NjA said:
I'll try to remind myself of this thread the next time I have to write a research paper, those usually end up with like 2 Word docs, an Excel sheet, 20+ Chrome tabs, and other random crap open
Click to expand...
Thanks! Trying to collect information for those who are undecided I will report back later today with mine.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jára Tyky
Bumping up the topic as I feel that there a quite a lot of people unsure whether to pick 16 or 32 GB of RAM.
Can anyone share his/her memory consumption while executing the usual workflows?
 
I have a 16 gb - mine was showing similar to user AppleDoesNotListen - and I didn't have many things open at all. I did a restart for the first time since setting up the computer - my memory pressure is around 7b - low green. There's really no way that I should need more than 16gb of ram for my work flow.
 
I will repeat what I said in a different thread:

This is my MacBook Pro 15" from 2016. I am running: Zbrush with a 60 million polygon model. Photoshop with an 8K PSD file with a lot of layers and two 4K PSD files with 40 layers. Multiple smaller apps, including Mail, Bear Notes, Notes, Things, etc. iMessages, Viber and Discord. I have a large PDF file open. Also, I have 15 tabs in Safari, with graphically intensive websites.

My memory pressure is in the green. System is just as responsive, everything loaded in memory opens instantly and I have no slowdowns (and of course I don't, that's what memory pressure in the green means, Apple put this there for a reason)

CleanShot_2021-10-23_at_21.56.282x.jpg


And this is with a 5 year old Intel Mac.

Look, more RAM is always nice - but this attempt to eliminate Swap is just.... insane. For the majority of you here, based on what you say your usage is - 8Gb RAM will be enough for a responsive, fast system. For some reason, though, the dominant opinion here is that you need 64Gb RAM for browser tabs.

Listening to people here, an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air can open two Safari tabs and Mail, and if you open something else, it explodes.
 
  • Like
  • Haha
Reactions: JahBoolean, Jeff Kirvin, donster28 and 15 others
My 16GB is showing 22% memory pressure and 63% memory used in iStats. I believe pressure is the better measurement as OSX will use unused memory whenever it can, but can release when anything else comes in?

This is with me running only a handful of light apps, mainly Office related
 
  • Like
Reactions: Unregistered 4U
pst23 said:
I have a 16 gb - mine was showing similar to user AppleDoesNotListen - and I didn't have many things open at all. I did a restart for the first time since setting up the computer - my memory pressure is around 7b - low green. There's really no way that I should need more than 16gb of ram for my work flow.
Click to expand...

Of course you don't - you look at memory pressure, not at swap file sizes or memory usage, because things are way to complicated and there are way too many factors to judge preformance based on that. This is why Apple put a memory pressure graph there - to help you know if you're ok or you need more resources.

Here's what Apple says:

When you have free or unused memory, your computer performance does not necessarily improve. macOS obtains the best performance by efficiently using and managing all of your computer’s memory.
Click to expand...

The Memory Pressure graph lets you know if your computer is using memory efficiently.

  • Green memory pressure: Your computer is using all of its RAM efficiently.
  • Yellow memory pressure: Your computer might eventually need more RAM.
  • Red memory pressure: Your computer needs more RAM.
If memory pressure is yellow, red, or has spikes, check to see if an app is using up memory and causing the memory pressure to increase. If you no longer need to have the app running, you should quit the app.

Your computer’s memory pressure is accurately measured by examining the amount of free memory available, the swap rate, and the amount of wired and file cached memory to determine if your computer is using RAM efficiently.
Click to expand...
 
  • Like
  • Love
Reactions: donster28, baummer and chabig
On my new M1 Max 64 G Ram not doing anything just a few tabs open I think 12, photos, some other apps, but not running anything my memory used sits at 19 gigs. Now im sure apple is smart enough to know how much Ram you have and use it if its there but seems like a-lot I am glad I got the 64 now. My 2018 MBP im replacing had 16 gigs and it swapped often. Memory pressure would fluctuate in use from green to yellow.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Jára Tyky
aevan said:
Of course you don't - you look at memory pressure, not at swap file sizes or memory usage, because things are way to complicated and there are way too many factors to judge preformance based on that. This is why Apple put a memory pressure graph there - to help you know if you're ok or you need more resources.

Here's what Apple says:
Click to expand...
I think ultimately - the graph was showing yellow and I didn't have anything really happening. I figured a restart would help and since then I have not seen yellow. Maybe my system was still setting up? I don't know. However, this is my first MBP with 16gb ram - I alway had 8gb or less and I never had complaints on the previous notebooks. I didn't think it made sense for me to pay the extra approx 400 dollars for 32gb of ram. :)
 
At what memory pressure is it worth going for more ram? I'm hitting orange, about 58%, with Figma, Notes, Chrome, Code, etc. Got 16gb, thinking of exchanging for 32.
 
tomswift99 said:
At what memory pressure is it worth going for more ram? I'm hitting orange, about 58%, with Figma, Notes, Chrome, Code, etc. Got 16gb, thinking of exchanging for 32.
Click to expand...

Hitting yellow means you should consider more RAM, yes.

Could Chrome be the issue?
 
aevan said:
I will repeat what I said in a different thread:

This is my MacBook Pro 15" from 2016. I am running: Zbrush with a 60 million polygon model. Photoshop with an 8K PSD file with a lot of layers and two 4K PSD files with 40 layers. Multiple smaller apps, including Mail, Bear Notes, Notes, Things, etc. iMessages, Viber and Discord. I have a large PDF file open. Also, I have 15 tabs in Safari, with graphically intensive websites.

My memory pressure is in the green. System is just as responsive, everything loaded in memory opens instantly and I have no slowdowns (and of course I don't, that's what memory pressure in the green means, Apple put this there for a reason)

CleanShot_2021-10-23_at_21.56.282x.jpg


And this is with a 5 year old Intel Mac.

Look, more RAM is always nice - but this attempt to eliminate Swap is just.... insane. For the majority of you here, based on what you say your usage is - 8Gb RAM will be enough for a responsive, fast system. For some reason, though, the dominant opinion here is that you need 64Gb RAM for browser tabs.

Listening to people here, an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air can open two Safari tabs and Mail, and if you open something else, it explodes.
Click to expand...
Some other things to consider are:

1) Using lots of swap will add write cycles to your SSD, which (in the extreme) will shorten its life. There was a massive thread on this when the M1 Macs first came out, but subsequent OS updates seem to have greatly reduced the problem. BTW, I've found it's not just the size of the swap, it's the usage - if you are switching apps regularly, you will read/write to swap frequently. If you do it infrequently, you may see a large swap size that may eventually reduce, but it has a reduced effect on performance and disk usage.

2) Do you need to do graphically intensive work. Remember you are sharing the RAM with the GPU. For example on my 16GB Mac Mini, Davinci Resolve can use up to 10.6GB for the GPU...that doesn't leave much RAM, so you're back into worrying about swap usage and possible performance impact.
 
aevan said:
Hitting yellow means you should consider more RAM, yes.

Could Chrome be the issue?
Click to expand...
Think it's mainly Figma and having a bunch of projects open at the same time (need to for my workflow). Also Notes takes a surprising amount since I use it as a visual notebook.

I think I'll be swapping for 32gb. That's what I have on my main driver, a 27 inch iMac.
 
  • Like
Reactions: mciarlo
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back