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16GB is NOT enough for anything greater than administrative work.
- Thread starter CM_1986
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This is simply, not true. I use Lightroom, and fcpx both heavily, with 16gb. I do not need 32gb.
Lol, getting a CS Ph.D. myself, 16GB is more than enough. Never been in a CS department that didn't have servers for their students to use for bigger problems. Half the people in the Ph.D. program are using 8 year old POS plastic Windows computers held together with tape. Get out of here with this entire ******** thread.
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Another reader of the CS bible, always good to see them out in the wild.
If you can’t, you should really consider a different major as simply asking that question is disqualifying. Old hand Unix admins and programmers are laughing at you in their easy chairs right now.
Well, if you say so!
I use AutoCad LT, like the industry recognized program from AutoDesk, and it takes 400mb of ram. Every now and again the processor bumps up over 3% to prove that my computer is actually doing something.
I tried to use all 16mb of ram I have available on my 2013 machine. I really tried, but I failed. I use Firefox, which uses quite a bit of ram. With 30+ tabs, most of which were youtube videos, some playing, some paused....and various applications running....I saw a peak of 14.5gb ram used, and ~700mb paging files. It always uses about that much in paging files, so not a sign of memory pressure.
Oh boy, where to even begin... the OP is talking about Photo Editing. A typical .jpg photo taken by a decent SLR camera (or newer iPhone) clocks-in at about 4MB and he's claiming 16GB RAM isn't enough to edit it. Now keep in mind 16GB is enough RAM to store FOUR THOUSAND copies of a 4MB photo. Yes the OP claims that 4,000X isn't enough -- he needs 8,000X the size of the .jpg file to work with it. Okay... 
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I hope that he's not editing JPEGs!😂Oh boy, where to even begin... the OP is talking about Photo Editing. A typical .jpg photo taken by a decent SLR camera (or newer iPhone) clocks-in at about 4MB and he's claiming 16GB RAM isn't enough to edit it. Now keep in mind 16GB is enough RAM to store FOUR THOUSAND copies of a 4MB photo. Yes the OP claims that 4,000X isn't enough -- he needs 8,000X the size of the .jpg file to work with it. Okay...
Oh boy, where to even begin... the OP is talking about Photo Editing. A typical .jpg photo taken by a decent SLR camera (or newer iPhone) clocks-in at about 4MB and he's claiming 16GB RAM isn't enough to edit it. Now keep in mind 16GB is enough RAM to store FOUR THOUSAND copies of a 4MB photo. Yes the OP claims that 4,000X isn't enough -- he needs 8,000X the size of the .jpg file to work with it. Okay...
Eh, I agree with the sentiment, but a JPEG needs to be decompressed to be edited. And a full buffer uncompressed can be quite a bit bigger. It’s usually ~4 bytes per pixel, 3 bytes if you have no alpha channel, more if working in 10-bit color or more. So an uncompressed 12MP image (iPhone) is going to be pulling about 36MB. My 42MP camera spits out 80MB RAW files which aren’t even RGB, but the uncompressed RGB version for editing would be over 120MB.
Once you start adding more pixel layers, it can add up quick. My larger multi-layer projects can get up in the 1GB range in Affinity Photo. I’ve got a few Panoramas pushing close to 2GB before resizing and compression.
But I’d still have no problem working in 16GB RAM. That would let me have multiple projects open and moving layers between them easily enough.
Their MacBooks only have 32GB of RAM. Locking threads requires 128GB of RAM.
This is one of those threads that needs to get moved to the "wasteland" category...
This is one of those threads that needs to get moved to the "wasteland" category...
I hear it takes 32GB and the mods are stuck at 16.
But honestly it could be useful with some advice on how to size memory for those who are wondering.
My defining use that led to 32 GB was virtual machines. But that is a fairly simple summing of the RAM you have allocated to each VM you want to run concurrently and then in my experience you need 8 GB left over for the Mac.
I do a bit of photography, Nikon D850, 45 MegaPixel images. Previously I used LightRoom now I have switched CaptureONE. I have never felt that RAM was a problem there, but I did no heavy lifting. Could anyone give some guidelines what is too much for a 16 GB machine.
If we for a moment disregard Microsoft Office as the driving factor.
My defining use that led to 32 GB was virtual machines. But that is a fairly simple summing of the RAM you have allocated to each VM you want to run concurrently and then in my experience you need 8 GB left over for the Mac.
I do a bit of photography, Nikon D850, 45 MegaPixel images. Previously I used LightRoom now I have switched CaptureONE. I have never felt that RAM was a problem there, but I did no heavy lifting. Could anyone give some guidelines what is too much for a 16 GB machine.
If we for a moment disregard Microsoft Office as the driving factor.
I edit 42MP RAW images using Bridge, CameraRaw, Photoshop and Luminar on both an iMac with 64GB and a MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM with no problems.
If we for a moment disregard Microsoft Office as the driving factor.
TBH, RAM isn’t Office’s problem.
Since you asked; I can understand the photo editing bit, but 30+ tabs in a web browser? I can't imagine any use case that would require that. I would think that the Add To Reading List and Bookmarks functionality would be much more efficient.