It's not the fact that PCI-e ssds are 100x slower than RAM, which I agree. It's how much swap you'd think you would actually use. Yes, 8gb ram might be too small, what about 10? 12? Mavericks wouldn't create that much swap and so the amount of data transferred between ssd and RAM is minimal and the time added is probably very comparable to the difference between a low tiered quad core and a faster quad core.
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16 GB vs 8 GB - Is 16 G overkill?
- Thread starter Omar Comin' Yo
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It's not the fact that PCI-e ssds are 100x slower than RAM, which I agree. It's how much swap you'd think you would actually use. Yes, 8gb ram might be too small, what about 10? 12? Mavericks wouldn't create that much swap and so the amount of data transferred between ssd and RAM is minimal and the time added is probably very comparable to the difference between a low tiered quad core and a faster quad core.
Sure, don't get me wrong. The measurable difference between 8 and 16 gb might be non-existent in many cases.
I have 8GB on my mac mini running Macvericks and for normal to light usage, I've not seen one beach ball. The same goes with my 16GB rMBP.
I'm not saying its not a worthwhile upgrade, I consider it more insurance then anything else. I think by and large for most people, there is no difference in 8gb or 16gb in performance. I can't speak to you and your usage, but VMs are particularly demanding so it conceivable that 16GB is a better move for those types of tasks.
When you're browsing with 20+ tabs open at the same time, and doing some graphics, more RAM helps
When you're browsing with 20+ tabs open at the same time, and doing some graphics, more RAM helps
What Hogwash!
Any ol' mba with 4gigs of ram can easily run 100+tabs without any problem.
You can 'do some maths' or 'do the dishes' but wtf does 'doing graphics' mean?
What are u people doing to your macbooks that you think you are running into ram problems opening browser tabs. That has never happened to me ever. No matter how many tabs i open up. opening up more than 20 starts to get confusing anyway imho.
Whos gonna run a dev server on a laptop?
Of course you can just come up with some weird scenario where all of a sudden 16gb of ram are needed. You can come up with other odd things where tons of ssd or faster cpu is needed to.
In these cases dont bother with a macbook but get a desktop!
Meister, if recall correctly, at one point you advocated for getting more memory, what inspired you to join the rational side?
i got 16gb of ram, i have a monitor that shows how much ram is available and it usually sits at 11 or 12 gb of free ram. i know eventually im going to need all that extra room so it was worth it for me.
I looked at Newegg and 8 GB (2x4GB) memory from Corsair is $90! I then looked at my order history, because I bought mine in 2012, and I paid $37 for the exact same set.
Shouldn't memory be getting cheaper?
Shouldn't memory be getting cheaper?
I suspect that for the vast majority out there, a base model rMBP itself is overkill. So along those lines, any CPU and/or RAM upgrades would likewise be. Of course there is never a one size fits all for anything in life. At this juncture in computing, the tangible benefits of increasing RAM from 8GB to 16GB have been shown to have rapidly diminishing returns. If you are in the select group that actually requires the additional horsepower, you should likely be using a 15" with its quads, or even an iMac or nMP if your work is so intensive.
Time and observation.
I learned like many others as a kid how much difference a few megabytes of ram can make.
Lately ive been using lots of different computers with different specs and i came to the conclusion that this does not apply to todays machines anymore.
Its still true that you can never have enough memory but this applies to all specs and money can be spent much wiser.
Also most people who ask about how much ram they should get use their macbooks for laughable things like email and text editing. Its sorta ridiculous.
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How does that explain how the price of my memory doubled (I recall it being discounted from ~$45) in the last 15 months?
True. I guess what I'm saying is that maybe I won't need to. Maxing out the RAM is expensive.
Suppose staying with the stock 8 GB lets me use my rMBP happily for the next 4 years before the system is too frustratingly slow and I give up. Suppose upgrading to 16 GB lets me stretch that out to 6 years.
But maybe it won't matter whether my current rMBP will last 4 or 6 years because in 3 years I'll sell it and upgrade to the latest MBP which maybe has a 24-hour battery and weighs only 2 pounds. Who knows! Maybe the money I could have spent upgrading now from 8 to 16 GB could be used later instead.
Thus far this has not been my habit, because my laptops have basically become an extension of "me" and it takes a lot of time and effort to move my data and applications. (Plus, it costs money to upgrade, of course.) But as more of my data becomes cloud-based, that gets easier. (Example: I didn't have to migrate my iTunes library from my 2007 MBP to my 2013 rMBP. Nor did I want to, with only a 256 GB SSD on board.)
Apple's newest machines are getting cheaper and less upgradeable -- they are turning into throwaway consumer electronics products. I think they can do this because of the move to cloud services. Instead of "my whole life is on this computer!!" it is now "my whole life is stored in iCloud and iTunes and Dropbox and Google Drive and this pile of external hard drives -- and this computer is just the tool I use to access it all".
This also has an impact on what exactly I use my computer for. "Back in the day" I did a lot of video editing (back when it was Firewire video capture of DV tape). If I was editing 4K HD video today I'm sure I would have opted for the 16 GB upgrade, no question. But I don't do prosumer/hobby work. All I typically need to do is capture a quick clip and share it. "Back in the day" the only way to do that was capture the video from your camcorder and then edit it up and burn it to a DVD to share. Now I can take video directly off my cell phone and upload it to YouTube and Facebook. No heavy lifting required.
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How does that explain how the price of my memory doubled (I recall it being discounted from ~$45) in the last 15 months?
It doesn't, and it shouldn't do it either. Messieurs S. Upply and D. Mand will have an answer for your question.
I guess that's possible. The insurgence of non-upgradable rMBP's must have cMBP owners scrambling to get the most out of their current machines.
My God, did this really turn into another one of these threads? Can't we have just one? I guess it's better then when we had like 3 going at the same time.
The answer is "it depends on what you're doing and how long your planing on keeping the computer"! Anything more then that is case-by-case.
The answer is "it depends on what you're doing and how long your planing on keeping the computer"! Anything more then that is case-by-case.
If you are going to keep your MBP for a long time, and many of my clients still do with old core duo models with SSD upgrade/lion I would not hesitate to max out the ram every time now they are soldered in. If it is old and you wish to sell it there will no doubt be a premium paid on the used market for those with 16gb over 8 models
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I guess that's possible. The insurgence of non-upgradable rMBP's must have cMBP owners scrambling to get the most out of their current machines.
Actually I'm pretty sure that it was due to the floods in SE Asia that wiped out several manufacturing plants. The same happened with hard drives a few years back.
I guess that's possible. The insurgence of non-upgradable rMBP's must have cMBP owners scrambling to get the most out of their current machines.
One of the main reasons my 2010 17" will be replaced by a late 2011 17". Aftermarket SSD's too and opti bay upgrades. That and not being a fan of the wildly variable quality screens and rubbish gamut compared to the old beast. Runs cooler and much bigger battery also helps
We were using an older Macbook Pro, a couple years old, that did fairly well. It was upgraded with a SSD and had 8 GIGS of RAM. not sure on the processor, but it handled what we threw at it pretty well.
I'm not set on any camera just yet, as my friends have a few what we all use, but I do want to buy one this year.
Well, this is not strictly just internet/email/youtube. As I stated earlier, there were be a decent amount of programs at work that I was wary on just relying on the Macbook Air for. So the question becomes a rPro with the RAM question, or possible an older Macbook Pro non-retina.
I started looking into this at your suggestion. It is fairly comparable in prices for a much higher spec'd Pro without the fancy screen.
Refurbished 15.4-inch MacBook Pro 2.7GHz Quad-core Intel i7 with Retina Display
Originally released February 2013
15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
for 2100+ seems like a good deal
Originally released February 2013
15.4-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2880-by-1800 resolution at 220 pixels per inch
16GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
512GB Flash Storage
720p FaceTime HD Camera
NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M with 1GB of GDDR5 memory
for 2100+ seems like a good deal
I didnt mean you.
There were other people asking over and over for months now about ram and they used their macbooks for pure consumerism. Your question was not ridicolous after u explained what u want to use it for.
MacBook Air 2011 models with more soldered in ram over here in the uk typically fetch £100-150 more. As a photoshop user who now has a Mac Pro I realised very quickly that 8 gb isn't enough for my needs, 16 at least and it's bliss having 32Gb in my Mac Pro. If you are working with raw images and layers the more memory the better IMHO.