16” M1 Pro, how much ram for developers?

[salvatore.p]

Hi, I’m mainly a mobile software developer working on both iOS and Android native.
I’m about to pick a 16” MBP with M1 Pro and 1TB of SSD, but I’m unsure about ram.

I will use for development on both personal and work projects.
My personal projects are all iOS native but for work I need to use Android Studio and Visual Studio (xamarin).
I wouldn’t use any VM.

The company I work for sent me an M1 Mini 16/256 on February and I had generally no problem with the 16gb of ram, but the experience with Android Studio source code editor isn’t fun. (even with only AS open and an emulator it feels laggy)
Neither Visual Studio is fun, but I used only a couple of times.


I’m trying to decide if I should spend 400€ more to have 32gb instead 16gb.
I will benefit of the extra ram in my actual workflow?
Of course, the work can be done with 16gb but could be pleasing/faster with more ram?

Most of the reviews point out from video/photo editing perspectives, I would appreciate advices from other whig similar workflow.

 

[adamk77]

I'd like to refer you to this specific thread and read from this post onward: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nt-enough-for-long-term.2320935/post-30550651

 

[salvatore.p]

I'd like to refer you to this specific thread and read from this post onward: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...nt-enough-for-long-term.2320935/post-30550651

I’ve read that thread. I would like to have advices/experiences of other developers.

 

[ducati1212]

I am a developer and I maxed my ram out to 64. Mostly because as part of development I always have many docker containers running. I also enjoy the extra resources so its a personal preference. My take from using 64 gigs on this for 1 week is 32 would work fine with almost no issues. The 16 I had on my 2018 MBP was absolutely not enough but maybe with the new unified SOC it would be fine.

Again if you run lots of containers or anything else locally it does eat up RAM.

 

[AFK]

I’ve read that thread. I would like to have advices/experiences of other developers.

You're not going to get a different response than what's in that thread.

I've been browsing on and off most of the day and the trend here is when ppl ask about 32 almost everyone says to get 16. Even developers.

I am also a developer like you and work on mobile projects. I am buying the 32. Im on 16 now and its frustrating sometimes. My memory pressure shows high. And my paging file regularly gets huge. You said you are on 16 now too and its frustrating.

Just watch someone come here and post that video about 16 vs 32 for the 10000th time telling you to go with 16.

 

[Maxim Glukhov]

Mobile dev here professionally and as a hobby, worked on both Android and iOS native projects, as-well as React Native. You can get away with 16GB but the experience won't be the best, my advise is to get at least 32 GB. When you run Emulators and or Simulators as-well as your IDE(s) and multiple tabs you quickly go through that RAM.

I personally ordered 64GB as I usually have many projects open and I use mostly InteliJ based IDEs that are resource intensive. I allow them to use a lot of memory which is great for indexing and more.
For reference, I am on my Mac Pro with 96GB RAM, currently 53GB RAM in use and that's with just 1 Android Emulator running. Android Studio alone uses nearly 20GB of RAM.

 

[adamk77]

I’ve read that thread. I would like to have advices/experiences of other developers.

I would gently push you towards the 32GB if you can stomach the $400. I will likely opt for the 64GB myself. As I stated in that post, I want my productivity tools to become invisible and not work against me.

But I do not know if the extra RAM will improve your laggy Android studio experience. You said even with only Android Studio open and an emulator, it feels laggy. This does not sound like it is because you are running low on memory. So it is possible that with the extra cores on the M1 Pro or Max, this problem will go away even with only 16GB.

 

[salvatore.p]

I am a developer and I maxed my ram out to 64. Mostly because as part of development I always have many docker containers running. I also enjoy the extra resources so its a personal preference. My take from using 64 gigs on this for 1 week is 32 would work fine with almost no issues. The 16 I had on my 2018 MBP was absolutely not enough but maybe with the new unified SOC it would be fine.

Again if you run lots of containers or anything else locally it does eat up RAM.

64gb are overkill for me, even 32gb I think would be more an overkill than a need. I generally don’t use containers/vm but I need MS Teams always open and it eats up 1.5gb

You're not going to get a different response than what's in that thread.

I've been browsing on and off most of the day and the trend here is when ppl ask about 32 almost everyone says to get 16. Even developers.

I am also a developer like you and work on mobile projects. I am buying the 32. Im on 16 now and its frustrating sometimes. My memory pressure shows high. And my paging file regularly gets huge. You said you are on 16 now too and its frustrating.

Just watch someone come here and post that video about 16 vs 32 for the 10000th time telling you to go with 16.

I saw that video but is from a video editor perspective, I work on xcode/android studio for 8-10 hours a day and has a different memory pressure than a benchmark that runs once or twice.

The experience isn’t all abut compile speed, but more on the source editor. Sometime when you are out of memory (i had an early mbp with only 8gb of ram) the highlight plugin and the auto completion both goes and you need to restart the machine to have back

Mobile dev here professionally and as a hobby, worked on both Android and iOS native projects, as-well as React Native. You can get away with 16GB but the experience won't be the best, my advise is to get at least 32 GB. When you run Emulators and or Simulators as-well as your IDE(s) and multiple tabs you quickly go through that RAM.

I personally ordered 64GB as I usually have many projects open and I use mostly InteliJ based IDEs that are resource intensive. I allow them to use a lot of memory which is great for indexing and more.
For reference, I am on my Mac Pro with 96GB RAM, currently 53GB RAM in use and that's with just 1 Android Emulator running. Android Studio alone uses nearly 20GB of RAM.

Thanks for your sharing.
Can I ask how to limit/allow the amount of memory used for indexing? I’m new to Android Studio, my company “forced” me to learn and work on android native last march and I admit that if the experience with the ide itself hadn't been so choppy/laggy/poor I probably have be more time on it and probably became a bit better.

 

[mosh.jinton]

Would be interested in any more perspectives on this. My own use case is Android Studio development, normally testing on a physical device but occasionally with one Android VM open, and maybe Figma and a few tabs as well.

 

[tdbrown75]

My perspective… The answer is 16GB, no matter your use case. Recommending anything more than 16 will get you flamed, accused of not knowing anything about computers, and clearly rich and willing to waste money. Even if you buy the Max 16” (which only ships with 32GB), you are still wrong.

Tim

 

[Sanpete]

My perspective… The answer is 16GB, no matter your use case. Recommending anything more than 16 will get you flamed, accused of not knowing anything about computers, and clearly rich and willing to waste money. Even if you buy the Max 16” (which only ships with 32GB), you are still wrong.

Tim

Ftr, that hasn't happened.

 

[Maxim Glukhov]

64gb are overkill for me, even 32gb I think would be more an overkill than a need. I generally don’t use containers/vm but I need MS Teams always open and it eats up 1.5gb


I saw that video but is from a video editor perspective, I work on xcode/android studio for 8-10 hours a day and has a different memory pressure than a benchmark that runs once or twice.

The experience isn’t all abut compile speed, but more on the source editor. Sometime when you are out of memory (i had an early mbp with only 8gb of ram) the highlight plugin and the auto completion both goes and you need to restart the machine to have back




Thanks for your sharing.
Can I ask how to limit/allow the amount of memory used for indexing? I’m new to Android Studio, my company “forced” me to learn and work on android native last march and I admit that if the experience with the ide itself hadn't been so choppy/laggy/poor I probably have be more time on it and probably became a bit better.

Check out this article on developer.android on how to configure it, there's more to just memory settings.

 

[goMac]

If you’re working on multiple IDEs for multiple platforms at the same time, I would go for 64. It’s probably overkill, but 32 might be a bit under.

Remember the new machines use RAM for video too. So if you connect a few external displays that will eat more RAM now. In addition to multiple IDEs.

If the 64 is out of your budget, the 32 gigs is probably workable. Like I said, you’ll rarely use the full 64 gigs, but you will definitely start hitting swap on the 32 gig. But, especially if you’re cost constrained, hitting swap won’t be the end of the world.

Whenever I work on multiple platforms I easily exhaust 16 gigs. I can exhaust 16 gigs sometimes just with Xcode on complicated projects. 16 gigs is probably flat out a bad idea if you’re writing and testing on multiple environments at once. I literally have to start scrambling and killing any Electron apps and big pages I have open when doing serious work on 16 gigs. Environments like SwiftUI will spin up tons of simulators that will use a bunch of RAM. Gone are the days where Xcode was a text editor with a text editor RAM budget.

 

[War833]

Developer here - definitely 32 GB. I need more than enough memory to run IDEs on large codebases and to be able to build large codebases, run hundreds of browser tests, etc. No reason to go for 16 GB and wear out the SSD with swap and suffer worse performance when I could get 32 GB for a couple hundred quid more.

 

[mctrials23]

I've gone for 32GB but probably would have been fine with 16. The SSDs are crazy quick to the point that it compensates really well for a lack of RAM for certain tasks. That being said, if you can afford it relatively easily, just get the 32GB.

I'm not a believer in future-proofing because thats not really how tech works. In 3 years, that £2000 extra you spent to max out a MBP would buy you almost a completely new machine that kicks your machines ass. Buy what you need now and what you think you will benefit from in the immediate future.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

I'm a Cloud Engineer / Dev not using xCode though. 16GB is fine there's a bit of swap when you try to to push a bit of workloads but that's normal because that's how it works

16GB is more than fine honestly especially with how quick the 1TB SSD is.

 

[RemedyRabbit]

In 3 years, that £2000 extra you spent to max out a MBP would buy you almost a completely new machine that kicks your machines ass. Buy what you need now and what you think you will benefit from in the immediate future.

This post should be stickied at the top of every thread on this forum lol

 

[salvatore.p]

In 3 years, that £2000 extra you spent to max out a MBP would buy you almost a completely new machine that kicks your machines ass. Buy what you need now and what you think you will benefit from in the immediate future.

This is absolutely right. Unlikely the past 10 years, I expect a big leap in performance at every new iteration of Mx chips.

For me, the only extra money are for 32gb or ram. 1Tb of storage is absolutely I must, so I consider only the extra 400€ for the ram as maxing out.
In the end I will pay 600€ more than the base 16" config (waiting 5 more weeks ). I thought about adding 200€ more for the M1 Max but in the end I will never use the extra GPU power.

 

[ASX]

The gpu power is useful, for playing 1 time shadow of tomb raider @ hdr . I would go for the max, if it's only 200 Dollars more. I has double bandwith for the ram.

 

[PikachuEXE]

I am a web dev not mobile one
I run IDE and many browsers for debugging/testing
My memory usage always exceed 16GB and I got several GB in swap usually and I am using a 32GB machine (2018, not 2021 yet)
I would say you should observe your current usage (RAM + swap), and predict how much you need in most cases
The swap probably would be faster, I have no idea how fast though or how would that affect YOUR workflow
So we are all guessing here
But for me since I got several swap even in my current 32GB, I ordered 32GB (but 64GB really too much)

 

[salvatore.p]

The gpu power is useful, for playing 1 time shadow of tomb raider @ hdr . I would go for the max, if it's only 200 Dollars more. I has double bandwith for the ram.

Anandtech's review shows that real bandwidth allocated for the cpu cores is limited. The additional bandwidth is reserved for the GPU.
Fun fact: I have an RX 5700XT on my windows desktop since last november and she hasn't seen any game at all ahahah

 

[PikachuEXE]

Anandtech's review shows that real bandwidth allocated for the cpu cores is limited. The additional bandwidth is reserved for the GPU.
Fun fact: I have an RX 5700XT on my windows desktop since last november and she hasn't seen any game at all ahahah

I got GTX 980Ti and it still perform fine
But I do want to upgrade it... (next year maybe)

I agree CPU-RAM bandwidth is not an issue here, since now the bottleneck is latency
This is due to how CPU use data from RAM
For more details find the videos yourself

 

[pke]

I'd go with 32GB. My work dev intel MBP has 32GB and I'm often well into over 25GB of RAM usage and I don't even run containers, just IDEs + Chrome tabs. If you are researching something and don't have a habit of closing tabs often, Chrome alone will eat through most of the 16GB.

 

[salvatore.p]

I'm happy to have deleted the 16GB order to upgrade the ram.
This is my Activity monitor with just a light swifui project on Xcode and my company's Android app on Android Studio.
I have: Xcode, iPhone 13Pro simulator, Android Studio, Pixel 4 simulator, MS Teams, 8 Safari tabs.
I consider this a light workflow.

 

[nbjustforfun]

I am a web dev not mobile one
I run IDE and many browsers for debugging/testing
My memory usage always exceed 16GB and I got several GB in swap usually and I am using a 32GB machine (2018, not 2021 yet)
I would say you should observe your current usage (RAM + swap), and predict how much you need in most cases
The swap probably would be faster, I have no idea how fast though or how would that affect YOUR workflow
So we are all guessing here
But for me since I got several swap even in my current 32GB, I ordered 32GB (but 64GB really too much)

You cannot compare an intel MacBook to an M1 MacBook from a ram usage perspective. Intel, definitely more ram. M1 memory management is way more fine tuned and efficient.