I'm debating if I should go for 16 or 32 gigs. I plan on running parallales, mostly running excel, word and audible from windows store. What is your guys experience with running parallels with with 16 gigs? I plan on having a few windows programs as mentioned and on macOS I typically have 10-20 tabs open on safari, Spotify, a Onenote, youtube videos. Thanks in advance.
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16 vs 32 gigs?
- Thread starter mvp2885
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Are you running a single VM? How much ram do you allocate to the VM?
Personally, I think 32GB is overkill and won't really be used now or the near future for many users. I think there's a knee jerk reaction by mac users to get the most because they can't change it, but its my opinion that the majority will never need that much
Personally, I think 32GB is overkill and won't really be used now or the near future for many users. I think there's a knee jerk reaction by mac users to get the most because they can't change it, but its my opinion that the majority will never need that much
Thanks for the reply.. Yeh, just a single VM. I mean right now, I am not running bootcamp yet because it is downloading as I speak (apple just released bootcamp to 2018 MacBook pros today I believe). but even without bootcamp, sometimes by usage goes up to as high as 12.5 - 13.11 of ram usage, and that is without a VM. I am just wondering how others have experience with parallels or any other VM with 16 gigs. Thank you again for the reply.
Free ram is wasted ram. I know in windows you need to watch how much free ram, but with macOS, its not the same.
More importantly how is your memory pressure, is it green, yellow? I jumped into the yellow with 12 safari tabs open, two MS word documents, two spreadsheets open, Lightroom, photoshop and for giggles I opened up 20 chrome tabs. As you can see my iMac just started going into the yellow and I only have 8GB
I frequently run a game in a vm while flipping between youtube videos and other websites on a 16gb mbp which is set for an even 8gb/8gb split in Parallels. I have never looked at the pressure (as maflynn recommended) but there's no noticeable performance issues while I'm doing this. If that's your only reason for thinking about 32gb of ram, my opinion would be to skip it.
This is the same setup I would recommend, get 16 and split it 50/50 between the VM and host. A lot of my coworkers do this and everything runs great for them.
Unless you're running a lot of VMs, 32GB is probably overkill.
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Without seeing the actual task manager memory tab, that number is meaningless. Windows will try to use up all available RAM for caching. Like maflynn said, free RAM is wasted RAM.
The memory tab will give you a breakdown of what it is used for, similar to the MacOS Activity Monitor Memory tab.
I'll be looking to run multiple VMs, one windows, and various Linux distros, and while linux is lightweight compared to windows and mac memory requirements, I have no doubt that 16GB will be more then enough for my laptop
I see a lot as being 10+ at the same time. I was running 5-8 at a time on my 12" rMB without issues which had only 8GB. It just depends on RAM/CPU configuration of the VM and load.
I downloaded parallels and all, and only have 2 gigs allocated towards it, but make look at how close I am getting to 16 gigs. I mean I use a lot of programs at the same time and I tend to leave things open, tried opening another browser on MacOS and it slowed down a little bit. I might actually get the 32 gigs, this is cutting it to close and I am planning on keeping this machine for the next 3-4 years. Do I have to see the "yellow" indicator to really worry about it? that is what I am confused about.
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If you don't see yellow memory pressure this means that the OS has no troubles fulfilling any RAM requests it gets. In another words, it means that it doesn't really need any more RAM than that. You might see some performance benefits with 32GB (as things that would usually be evicted from RAM could be cached more aggressively), but these benefits are most likely going to be only minor.
With today's SSD, the occasional swap file, if out of memory, is very fast.
16gb is more than enough for most people.
16gb is more than enough for most people.
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Generally agree. Taking power users out of the equation I think this will only come into play a bit down the road and even then 16GB will not be some huge issue. 8GB is a little bit limiting on a Macbook Air and I am completely glad I speced it out back in 2012 for the max but I don't consider the 8GB upgrade in 2012 to be the same as 32GB upgrade in 2018.
Personally I would not cheap out on the SSD space though unless you know for sure you don't need it. I almost always regret not spending enough on storage as it ends up being a nagging thing over the years.
I got the 32GB, simply because I frequently run the following VM's - Windows 10, Windows 7 32bit, macOS Sierra, couple of Linux distro's. With the extra cores and ram I hope to be able to keep the Windows 10, 7 and macOS Sierra open all the time without slowing down. I appreciate my use case is not usual though, and I have managed on 16GB ok, just occasionally I have to shut down a VM.
What about 8GB Ram? I see that Apple sells the base 13” MacBook Pro with 8GB Ram. I have used the monitor on my current 2011 MacBook Pro and it never goes into yellow and that’s with 8GB of Ram on an old machine
I was surprised. I use my machine to write a lot in Final Draft, Pages, have tabs open in Safari for research, Watch YouTube videos in Picture in Picture mode, play the odd classic game such as Theme Hospital, Sims and so on. I also use iMovie, i have got Final Cut Pro X but I use that more on my iMac 2012 which does have 16GB Ram.
I can remember when 8gb was a LOT!
Like I said at most it will start to swap disk when out of memory. If you got an older hard drive you will notice and wait. The new SSD drives are so fast that there is very little waiting. I would not go below 16gb, but that is just me.
Like I said at most it will start to swap disk when out of memory. If you got an older hard drive you will notice and wait. The new SSD drives are so fast that there is very little waiting. I would not go below 16gb, but that is just me.
Lol, just going to say this, but that is a LOT of browser tabs open. I can't stand keeping more than 5 open.
But to your point 16GB RAM is way more than enough for most people. I see some people getting 32 gb, just because they can, but I don't see the average pro user (except maybe those with heavy VM and FCP usage) needing that much in the foreseeable future.
I can only speak for myself, but when I'm working on a project, I might have 10-20 tabs open related to it. Once I get down the process for that piece of the project, I'll take the info from the tabs and document everything together in one place. Then I close the tabs. However this could be a few days or weeks depending on how much I am jumping between projects. Which means more tabs before old ones get closed.
Yeah, everyone works differently, no right or wrong way. For me I usually (possibly less efficiently) read through a few tabs, right down my notes and bookmark pages if I need to reference them later, but then I close them. I get lost if I have too many tabs open. Lol.
If you're one of those people that feel like they need the top of the line specs and can afford it. Then go for the 32GB. It will just give you peace of mind.
Honestly for your use case, I think 16GB is fine.
Honestly for your use case, I think 16GB is fine.
I've never been sorry about buying more Memory that I needed - I have been sorry I did not buy enough !!
I guess it depends on the extra investment $$
Many video conversions - even in a browser can drive my 16 gig to Max and CPU temperature up to 90 degrees Celsius
so IMHO - it depends on the extra $$ - but is probably worth it.
I guess it depends on the extra investment $$
Many video conversions - even in a browser can drive my 16 gig to Max and CPU temperature up to 90 degrees Celsius
so IMHO - it depends on the extra $$ - but is probably worth it.