16GB or 8GB is 16 Worth it?

[Wicked1]

I am battling over whether to get 16GB or 8GB upgrade on my 2012 Base 13?

I do basic stuff, just not sure I will need 16GB but can anyone out there with 16 explain to me if it was worth it and what you are doing with your Base 13?

I am really on the fence if I will even use it, so thinking of 8GB unless someone can tell me that there is a point to 16

 

[ChristianVirtual]

If you don't do heavy video, image processing or virtual machines you can easy stay with 8GB; that's far enough for Safari, iTunes, Facebook and email.

What do you mean with basic stuff ? Do you foresee a change in near future ?

 

[Wicked1]

Basic Stuff, email, internet, some photo editing, MS Office stuff, some games from the App Store, but then ran fine on my 2011 Base Mini with 8GB

 

[MCAsan]

is the machine doing lots of memory paging.....using a hard disk as a substitute for memory? You can see that in the admin statistics.

 

[richnyc]

You'll be fine with 8GB

 

[duckrabbit]

If you're like me and keep your machines for a while (I usually keep mine until they can't run the latest OS), then I'd recommend going with 16 to be safe. If you don't do any memory-intensive work at the moment and you usually sell your machine when new models are announced, then 8 is probably fine.

Edit: I assumed you were going retina, but I realized you might not be. If you're not going retina, then 8 is fine since you can upgrade later on the off chance you need to.

 

[roxxette]

Go with 8gb, you can upgrade ram in the future if you feel is necessary.

 

[takeshi74]

Basic Stuff, email, internet, some photo editing, MS Office stuff, some games from the App Store, but then ran fine on my 2011 Base Mini with 8GB

Doesn't sound like you'd benefit from 16 but, as stated in this and many other threads, you'd have to look at your specific usage to definitely answer the question. Worth is always highly subjective so you can't answer questions of worth using broad, sweeping generalizations or by polling others. You have to look at your specific situation.

 

[terriyaki]

...

If 8GB was fine on your mini for what you plan on doing for this new MBP then I'm pretty sure 8GB will be fine for it as well.

 

[iaymnu]

If one can afford extra ram. Max it out. There is no downside except the $$

 

[Mac-Tech]

Go with 8gb, you can upgrade ram in the future if you feel is necessary.

If you get the RMBP you can not UPGRADE the ram later on. So I would go with 16GB.

 

[elchemor]

If you get the RMBP you can not UPGRADE the ram later on. So I would go with 16GB.

I second that ! think three years down the line, you dont wanna buy a new laptop cause you simply cant upgrade the RAM, and u wish you purchased yours with 16GB instead !

 

[roxxette]

If you get the RMBP you can not UPGRADE the ram later on. So I would go with 16GB.

Well the word retina macbook pro is not found on the first post, i assumed it was the vanilla mbp hence the word base 13.

 

[ChristianVirtual]

If one can afford extra ram. Max it out. There is no downside except the $$

One more side effect: if you use sleep mode for MBP it will consume an 16GB file for the memory snapshot each time you close the lid. Nothing severe or a show stopper. But good to be aware of.

 

[benwiggy]

You can never be too rich, too clever, or have too much RAM.

 

[leman]

Get 8GB, 16Gb won't give you any advantage. Of course, if you have the money, get 16GB, why not.

I second that ! think three years down the line, you dont wanna buy a new laptop cause you simply cant upgrade the RAM, and u wish you purchased yours with 16GB instead !

If three years down the line something horrible happens in the computing industry so that 8GB becomes a serious bottleneck, the CPU would become obsolete even before that. 16GB is a good choice if you work with extremely large data sets or multiple virtual machines at the same time. Besides that, it does not bring any serious advantage.

 

[elchemor]

Get 8GB, 16Gb won't give you any advantage. Of course, if you have the money, get 16GB, why not.



If three years down the line something horrible happens in the computing industry so that 8GB becomes a serious bottleneck, the CPU would become obsolete even before that. 16GB is a good choice if you work with extremely large data sets or multiple virtual machines at the same time. Besides that, it does not bring any serious advantage.

i wouldn't call that something horrible, 3~4 years ago when i purchased my macbookpro5,1 core 2 duo, standard memory was 2GB, i maxed it to 4GB at the time of purchase, and later an upgrade to an unofficial configuration of 8GB was found to be necessary to be able to run parallels, photoshop, excel, mail, safari, Xcode, etc... back in 2008 2GB RAM was acceptable and would do the job, but was not any longer the case in 2010~2011 with the introduction of OS X 10.6, which was more memory hungry.
now with OS X 10.7 on a normal day, i am running with 6GB of used memory (activity monitor snapshot attached) 3~4 years from now, a 32GB of RAM would be a necessity for memory intensive applications..... that's my 2 cents !

 

[ChristianVirtual]

if you work with extremely large data sets or multiple virtual machines at the same time.

to run parallels, photoshop, excel, mail, safari, Xcode, etc...

But that's more then the basic stuff mentioned by OP ...

 

[Spetsnazos]

I'm nearly always at 6-9 gigs of used memory on my 16g. I prefer to multitask

 

[jomirrivera]

One more side effect: if you use sleep mode for MBP it will consume an 16GB file for the memory snapshot each time you close the lid. Nothing severe or a show stopper. But good to be aware of.

you can stop the machine from doing that!