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2020 MBA 16 gb vs 8 gb for developing in XCode

N

nill1234

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 22, 2012
311
215
Hello,

i would like to start developing some apps but I cant justify the extra 225€ for the 16 gb of ram. My config would be i5 512 gb storage and 8 gb ram. I just want to code some apps And i still have my windows gaming machine and several windows notebooks. Does XCode run good on 8gb ram?
 
More RAM is much better. I would suggest if you were tinkering then 8Gb but serious XCode then 16Gb or ideally more. A few posts on this topic on the Apple Developers forum.
 
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8GB will definitely get you by for early/initial development efforts using Xcode. 8GB doesn’t limit the actual ability to code, test or deploy. It does limit your efficiency though, as cycling between the various modes of development (edit, simulation) can be sluggish. More memory would help smooth things out, but is by no means an absolute requirement. I code iOS 10h/day for years - started with 8GB back then, now multiple machines with 64GB.
 
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Thanks for the advice, i just ordered it i5 256gb ssd and 16gb of ram. I will just use an external ssd if i need it, ram is more important to me.
 
nill1234 said:
Thanks for the advice, i just ordered it i5 256gb ssd and 16gb of ram. I will just use an external ssd if i need it, ram is more important to me.
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I am thinking of getting the same configuration. When is yours coming?
 
I'd like to hear from someone using XCode/Visual Studio/Vim/Docker/Kubernetes on a 2020 air.

My gut says the extra cores would be a big help and any processor boost wouldn't need to be sustained like it might be for a task like video editing - which would make this machine ideal.

I could be wrong - I'd like to hear from someone who hits a wall using a new air as a dev machine...
 
No direct experience of the 2020MBA myself yet but knowing the tools you've outlined I agree it should be perfect. Fast at bursts, no real need for sustained grunt.

I'd go i5 for core count / GPU snappiness with external display and 16Gb as Docker & VMs will benefit.
 
Yes I did the SwiftUI tutorial yesterday and my RAM usage was at 12 GB. So 16 GB should perform better.
 
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Falcon80 said:
Everything feels snappy?
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Yes everything is snappy and works flawless. Fan only comes on if you start the simulator but you cant hear it and its on only for a short period. Bur this was a small project dont know how it will behave in big projects. Overall im happy and i really like it to learn swiftui.
 
bosozoku said:
16Gb definitely
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Indeed, my machine currently has 9.7GB of active RAM just running normal apps: no Xcode, Photoshop or anything else particularly memory hungry running. I built it with 16Gb 2-3 years back. I think if I was doing it now I'd seriously consider 32Gb for future proofing.
 
I want to note that for example your device might have 32gb ram, you see a program uses 20gb of it. That doesn’t mean that same program will not be functioning well on a device with 8gb ram. Apps tend to allocate more ram than they actually need because they can access the memory cells faster. We cannot say this specific app uses X amount of ram. I’m not saying Xcode won’t benefit from more ram. More ram is always better, but we cannot make conclusions with ram usage only.
 
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Would it be an option to spend the extra on 16GB RAM and just get the base 256 instead of spending the money on the 512GB and get a high-speed external drive for data? A somewhat best of both worlds?
 
Iammetaldave said:
Would it be an option to spend the extra on 16GB RAM and just get the base 256 instead of spending the money on the 512GB and get a high-speed external drive for data? A somewhat best of both worlds?
Click to expand...
Thats what i did. I got the i5 16 256 and for 77€ a 512 GB external USB 3.1 Gen 2 ssd with almost the same speed as the internal one. For the upgrade costs of the 512 GB you can get a 2 TB external SSD.
 
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Iammetaldave said:
Would it be an option to spend the extra on 16GB RAM and just get the base 256 instead of spending the money on the 512GB and get a high-speed external drive for data? A somewhat best of both worlds?
Click to expand...

i went with this approach (MBP 2019). I can always add high speed storage later but not the case with RAM.
 
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These chips support 32 GB of memory... Its too bad Apple didn't make this an option...
 
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