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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.

Agreed - but I never said "no one needs more than 16Gb" ? What you describe seems like a good reason to get more.
 
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.
Just finished my testing 16 GB is fine for my workflow and i'm coming from 8GB where I was doing 10GB of swap every day.

1635341818394.png
 
Been playing with the updated mask tools in Lightroom and

Screenshot 2021-10-27 at 22.48.40.png


That was with maybe 4 masks and lots of quick edits. Lightroom aside was using Music and Safari with like 6 tabs open.

I'm sure I'll be fine in the medium term but slightly worried about performance in 3/4 years time tbh.

(the new mask tools are sick btw)
 
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Does anyone know what window server is and why it using so much memory - It's only low after I restart and after awhile it is high. This is without an external monitor and minimal programs open.
 
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.

By the time your SSD is noticeably slower or malfunctioning due to that factor your whole system will be archaic. So archaic you won’t even own it and probably won’t exist anymore, unless you collect vintage computers.

This thing has been said since the 1980s about a variety of hardware. It always ends up outlasting its owner unless some electrical problem/psu malfunction/voltage mismanagement happens.

Fact of the matter is, very specific recalls apart, hardware, apart from batteries, is incredibly durable. No matter what.
 
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By the time your SSD is noticeably slower or malfunctioning due to that factor your whole system will be archaic. So archaic you won’t even own it and probably won’t exist anymore, unless you collect vintage computers.

This thing has been said since the 1980s about a variety of hardware. It always ends up outlasting its owner unless some electrical problem/psu malfunction/voltage mismanagement happens.

Fact of the matter is, very specific recalls apart, hardware, apart from batteries, is incredibly durable. No matter what.

Yes, I appreciate that, but if you are writing *a lot* of data (e.g. running a database etc.) then it is something to consider on a consumer-grade machine. I know on the early M1 machines, some people were writing several TB per day. Given most small SSDs only have about 150-600TB write volume "guaranteed", you can see that it would be a concern. Of course, the SSD doesn't just die after this point, but would be be happy trusting your data that is outside of its operational specifications?
 
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Been playing with the updated mask tools in Lightroom and

View attachment 1881192

That was with maybe 4 masks and lots of quick edits. Lightroom aside was using Music and Safari with like 6 tabs open.

I'm sure I'll be fine in the medium term but slightly worried about performance in 3/4 years time tbh.

(the new mask tools are sick btw)
Thanks for sharing, I haven't tried Photoshop or video editing yet just normal workloads related to SysAdmin stuff

1635406285513.png
 
I'm on a 14-inch M1 Pro 10/16 with 16GB RAM, connected to a 34-inch ultra wide Philips monitor. Picked it up yesterday to replace my 16-inch i9 2.3GHz with 32GB RAM and the 5500 Radeon GPU.

My usage right now is Safari (>10 tabs), MS Outlook, MS Teams, MS Word (3 docs open), MS Powerpoint (5 docs open), MS Excel (5 docs open), Apple Music (currently playing the fabulous Wolf Alice), Apple News, Mail. I'd say a fairly typical day for me.

Screenshot 2021-10-28 at 13.38.42.png


Laptop is quiet. Spookily quiet. Including when I'm actually on MS Teams calls. Zero fan noise. Operating smoothly and quickly. Brilliant, I love it. Right now my 2019 16-inch would be mimicking either a fan heater or a rocket ship depending on it's mood. PS> I did switch Wolf Alice off to check that the fans were indeed silent. They are!

My conclusion - anyone with standard office or personal use would be more than satisfied with 16GB RAM.
 
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1635424526881.png


Standard "knowledge" worker. 20 odd tabs open in Brave, 10 odd tabs open in edge. Lots of office documents open, and Defender ATP (anti-malware) running chewing a fair bit of memory. Teams doing it's usual job of hogging memory. One external display connected via HDMI. 16GB is clearly the sweet spot for this kind of thing. 8 Core 14"
 
Maybe someone can open as many apps as needed to get memory pressure yellow or red and see what it takes. If one uses VMware Fusion or Parallels with a VM or two, Xcode, has Music Calendar Terminal Preview with several large PDFs and many other apps open, wondering when does 16 start to show its limits.
 
14" Pro 8 Core set up as new - typical daily apps while connected to an LG 4k monitor. Someone mentioned indexing, could this be the cause of yellow or transferring 150 GB to the SSD? I'll keep monitoring this in the next couple days.
Screen Shot 2021-10-29 at 8.50.33 AM.png
 
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14" Pro 8 Core set up as new - typical daily apps while connected to an LG 4k monitor. Someone mentioned indexing, could this be the cause of yellow or transferring 150 GB to the SSD? I'll keep monitoring this in the next couple days.

I think that comes closest so far to answer whether 16 is enough. I imagine that with such apps open, you may occasionally or often open some or many other misc apps to use throughout the day. Perhaps you could try such and see what it takes to get memory pressure into the red? Then maybe experiment with switching apps and see how responsive is the system?

Among those of us interested in this question, there are perhaps many that simultaneously use several heavy apps, like to leave them open, and also use Mail Preview Calendar Terminal Photos Music Zoom Slack Notes Tasks and many other misc apps. Such will better help us decide how is 16.

As with how there was much talk about swap with the first M1 Mac and 8 GB RAM, perhaps looking at such past discussions will help you decide if such SSD usage may affect lifespan.
 
Been playing with the updated mask tools in Lightroom and

View attachment 1881192

That was with maybe 4 masks and lots of quick edits. Lightroom aside was using Music and Safari with like 6 tabs open.

I'm sure I'll be fine in the medium term but slightly worried about performance in 3/4 years time tbh.

(the new mask tools are sick btw)
I had the same problem: Try to turn off GPU acceleration. This saves a lot of RAM while using Lightroom.
 
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So finally got around to properly setting up my 14" base model to test whether I would need 32GB... safe to say I need nowhere NEAR 32...

Attached my memory pressure and activity monitor below which consisted of the following: Rekordbox with some decks hooked up whilst actively mixing and powering the decks through my laptop, downloading 7/8 songs in the background on Mediahuman (although this happened absolutely lightning quick in comparison to my 2015 MBP (10 seconds vs about 2 mins) so not even sure it made a dent in the RAM pressure), had open Spotify, Soundcloud (app via Brave), Brave (about 5 tabs), Whatsapp, VPN, hooked up to a standard 23" HD external monitor.

Absolutely nothing was happening with the pressure so I thought alright let me chuck in a VM on UTM just for shets and gigs. Opened one up and ran some terminal programmes running... that tiny mm increase about halfway along the pressure bar is from the VM.

This is very typical use for me (I do no creative video/ photography work etc.) so safe to say that majority of people won't need 32GB and these laptops are crazy crazy fast and incredible at memory management - I was dead set on convincing myself I needed 32GB and was about to blow that money but so glad I bought one and tested, so just going for the 1TB model.

Also watch this if you haven't and are undecided 16 vs 32:

Screenshot 2021-11-03 at 21.57.46.png
 
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MacRumors, Youtube, etc... 6 tabs in Safari + VS Code and Chrome for updating my website + Capture One Pro for photo editing + Fusion 360 for some 3D modeling

Screen Shot 2021-11-03 at 2.24.25 PM.png


The worst I've seen was when I batch-processed 350 photos with these workspaces. It took up about 1.5GB of swap and went into the yellow range, but then dropped to green within about 10 seconds.
 
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Been playing with the updated mask tools in Lightroom and

View attachment 1881192

That was with maybe 4 masks and lots of quick edits. Lightroom aside was using Music and Safari with like 6 tabs open.

I'm sure I'll be fine in the medium term but slightly worried about performance in 3/4 years time tbh.

(the new mask tools are sick btw)
I have found that Lightroom uses a lot more memory on the MBP M1 Pro than on an iMac (2020 27"), for the same edits. With or without the new masks. Doesn't seem to slow it down, though.
 
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