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4, 8 or 16Gb of RAM?
- Thread starter MartinAppleGuy
- Start date
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Wow.... 8 GB or RAM and you are taxing it? What the heck are you gys doing wit these things, trying to round off infinity?
I probably score at the lower end of this calculation and I'm leaning towards a 4GB model but then you start thinking..... Should I just go for 8 GB?
Ugh.
In 10 years of buying apple products I've learned to worship two things: SSDs and RAM. Many people will tell you that you're fine with 4GB. My advice, if it's not too hard of a dent in your wallet, get the 8.
A handy guide........no idea if it actually is true but i scored 9 anyway, saving some well needed cash and sticking with 8GB, not even close to needing 16. Thanks!
Always wondered about people who say you HAVE to get 16gb with a apple laptop, then it niggles at the back of your mind as the Retina is non upgradable so you worry but now....im worry free!
Always wondered about people who say you HAVE to get 16gb with a apple laptop, then it niggles at the back of your mind as the Retina is non upgradable so you worry but now....im worry free!
A handy guide........no idea if it actually is true but i scored 9 anyway, saving some well needed cash and sticking with 8GB, not even close to needing 16. Thanks!
Always wondered about people who say you HAVE to get 16gb with a apple laptop, then it niggles at the back of your mind as the Retina is non upgradable so you worry but now....im worry free!
From both my experience and others, the scoring is very spot on. If you scored 9 and bought 8Gb of RAM, expect at least 5 good years before a noticeable drop in performance. Remember that if you don't upgrade the OS, it will theoretically be as just as fast in 10 years, as when you bought it. I would recommend upgrading to the next version of OSX though, as if the rumoured UI changes are true, keeping it on 10.9 will make it look old. All I'm saying is that if you upgrade the OS 3-4 times, you will have great performance until the day you buy a new one.
Enjoy your MBP
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Last night I imported 56,002 photos into Aperture.
You are the type of person that knows how much RAM you need. This thread is really made for people that don't know how much RAM to get.
By the way, how long did that import take?
Interesting idea. It might be worth talking about page outs, or having a link to somewhere that talks about. In my opinion, that's the only way to know if you need more ram. From your pointing system, I score 10 and constantly get large amount of Page Outs and system slowdowns on 8GB of ram right now. I'd add having a bad Chrome tabs addiction in there.
I added up my scores and arrived at a 13. I have to say that I plan to use my macbook pro for final cut pro, aperture, and logic pro. Is 8gb enough for me? Currently I have a macbook pro from 2011 with 4gb and I get a lot of lag and issues where the program has to close. Help!
If you plan to use FCP X and Logic Pro heavily, you should be considering a 15" instead
If you plan to use FCP X and Logic Pro heavily, you should be considering a 15" instead
What if I'm planning on running this through a Thunderbolt/third-party monitor at some point in the near future?
You're still better off with a 15", because for heavy usage of FCP X and Logic Pro, you're going to need a quad-core system.
after effects multiprocessing can eat through ram. opening large 3d scenes can eat through ram. i know this guide is more for casual users who can probably get by on less, but i also know from experience (look at my posting history) that not enough ram can make creative work a living hell. going from 8 to 16 for the above tasks made a WORLD of difference, and i would score at the low end of 8gb by this questionnaire.
Yep. After Effects will pretty much use as much RAM as you let it. I have 96GB in my work workstation and it'll use most of that working in 4K.
Check this out to know if you need more ram. Restart your computer and go about a regular day or two. Then have a look at the page out number. If it's zero, more ram would do absolutly nothing for you. If it's a few MB then it means that at some point you ran out of ram but it wasn't too bad (if you've been using your computer for a few days). In that case, you can consider upgrading your ram, especially if you know you'll be doing even larger projects. Lastly, if you have gigs of page out, then you really need more ram.
The programs you mentioned all could easily break that 8 GB barrier depending on how you're using them. Yet if you're diligent in your use, you can get by with say 2 GB (heck we were just a few years back).
However, from the lag you're experiencing, it sounds to me like you could benefit from an SSD.
I'd say get the 15" entry with 8Gb of RAM.
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This thread is for people that don't know how much RAM to get. If you are using heavy 3D applications, you already know how much RAM you need. Imagine this is just for the people that make RAM threads asking how much RAM they should get.
That's the thing, I think people get so fixated by memory they forget that OSX has really great memory management.
I remember paging out with a hdd was horrific. My attitude was also to always get as much ram as possible.
This has now completely changed since ive used the new pcie-ssd macbooks.
The only way to run out of memory now is, if you multitask multimedia apps like crazy.
And then I noticed you run into another problem: battery life.
You only get maybe 3hours out of a macbook working like that.
So if you know you need to do hardcore multimedia stuff, try a desktop.
Macbooks are there to be mobile.
My attitude hasn't changed too much, in that you should short change the configuration because of OSX's memory management but rather not to over buy.
If 8GB is going to suit you for the next year or so because of the apps you run (or rather don't run) then don't get 16GB. You'll not really use the ram, and even if the 8GB swaps once in a while, it won't bring the system down.
I think the 4gb is a tad meager and why set yourself up for frustration
If 8GB is going to suit you for the next year or so because of the apps you run (or rather don't run) then don't get 16GB. You'll not really use the ram, and even if the 8GB swaps once in a while, it won't bring the system down.
I think the 4gb is a tad meager and why set yourself up for frustration
With RAM compression, I was really pushing my 8Gb of RAM in my iMac. With all of my apps running (50+ apps), as well as video rendering, and around 140 tabs open, I was using 20.5Gb of RAM with 2Gb being swap. So really, the most 8Gb of RAM can be pushed with RAM compression is around the 18.5Gb before heavy page out's occur. I am also using a HDD in my iMac, and the page out's only became apparent at the 16-17Gb in use. I'm very impressed that I was able to push it that much.
Yes, if you have multiple applications open and are using an SSD drive. I recently had to go back to an HDD in my non retina macbook pro it feels soooo slow and it becomes unresponsive once I start getting page outs.