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64GB RAM is not a wise buy, and here's why

robvas said:
It's never been financially sound to live on the bleeding edge, or buy the highest config, but if you need, it, you don't have a choice!
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This 100%. If you NEED this, it is because you are using the machine to make money and it will pay for itself - so long as it will pay for itself inside of the machine(s) lifetime and generate enough additional revenue on top, upgrading is financially sound.

If you aren't using it to make money you are playing - your mortgage isn't getting paid by it and thus it is not financially intelligent.

Eliott69 said:
The more RAM you assign to the VM the slower it will get. If you assign 8 GB to the VM the OS in that VM will try to make use of this, and you will only have 8GB for your macOS and VMware. VMware recommends to assign 2 GB RAM for the VM. See Set the Amount of Virtual Memory.
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This is the biggest load of baloney. How much RAM to allocate to a VM depends on
  • What the VM is actually doing. Basic desktop to run some trivial little desktop app? Sure 2 GB might be plenty. Running an SQL database server? You'll need more.
  • How much RAM is in the host
  • What other VMs (or desktop programs on the host, if it is a desktop/laptop and not a proper vm server) are competing for resources on the host
Allocating TOO MUCH RAM to a VM on a memory constrained physical host is a common error, but if the VM needs it to do its job at an acceptable speed (or at all), it needs it, and you need to add more RAM to the host.
 
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CM_1986 said:
Very few would actually need it, and by the time is becomes the norm to tap into that amount of RAM while computing the rest of the MBP will have dated.

Get 16-32GB now, and 3-4 years down the road when 64 is the new "32" you switch over to 64GB and also whatever new processors and graphics are out at the time.
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However if you are running massive sound libraries--film scoring---youi need the 64gigs. otherwise you get constant CPU errors and makes mixing really a pain twice as long
 
fiddledeedee said:
However if you are running massive sound libraries--film scoring---youi need the 64gigs. otherwise you get constant CPU errors and makes mixing really a pain twice as long
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64 GB is just so nice. It has me leaning more towards desktops over laptops these days. But that's because we're in WFH mode where my computers are stationary.
 
It’s interesting because I’ve read that RISC processors are often faster, but require more RAM to achieve high performance. So maybe wait to buy 64 gigs until the transition, unless you know you need it now?
 
profcutter said:
It’s interesting because I’ve read that RISC processors are often faster, but require more RAM to achieve high performance. So maybe wait to buy 64 gigs until the transition, unless you know you need it now?
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RISC processors typically have instructions that are fixed-size and the instructions aren't as powerful or complex so you need more of them to accomplish what some CISC CPUs do in one instruction. CISC CPUs often have variable-length instructions so that you can pack more of them into the same amount of memory. The downside of variable-length instructions is that there's a performance penalty for unaligned reads (not sure if this has been fixed today).

That said, I wouldn't buy more RAM because of program size as the amounts of memory available today are huge compared to program sizes for consumer programs. Some of the software I work on is hundreds of GBs but RAM is cheap. Micron had a great earnings report last night because people are buying more RAM with their systems and for the cloud.
 
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RISC v cisc... cpu density is less but most of your apps is DATA these days.

Code size may be 1.2-1.5x but code size is likely 10% of the total memory requirement.

it’s not that significant now. Nowhere near as much as 1-2 decades ago where we were dealing with much smaller data sets and code made up a larger percentage of the total.
 
Winstonp said:
Why does that require 64gb?
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One of my trading tools is set for up to 12 GB. I think that it will use up to 24 depending on what you do. I have another tool that uses 2 GB but I’ve just started using it. Firefox can take 16 GB too. I may also do some development on Firefox.

My 2008 Dell has 48 GB of RAM and runs nicely for an old marching as everything is cached.
 
Winstonp said:
Why does that require 64gb?
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Not on my Mac (but if I was running an iMac or Mac Pro to do the job) - my VM simulation workload (2 site Active directory, a couple of clients, Config Manager, radius server and a couple of firewalls - plus a Windows VM for work) can easily blow through 50+ GB of memory without too much trouble at all.

And that with me being careful to be not too over the top with memory requirements on the VMs (balancing VM responsiveness vs. VM hosting capacity).
 
If I was doing something that requires that many VM’s I would get a cheap server and remote into it from my Mac.
 
32 GB in my workstation is pretty ample, I only hit once or two times maxed out 32GB and touching swaps due gigantic PS file, but that's not everyday case.

I had 64GB now and it indeed provides more headroom, I do light VM and the rest is for CAD/PS running. I can go with 128 but that's not priority.
 
If you need it, you should get it. If you think you might need to do one thing that could benefit from it, but aren't sure, you should get it. Apple doesn't let you get it later and they'll certainly not let you pay to upgrade to a better logic board after the fact. I'd say the only reason NOT to get more RAM or a bigger SSD is that you're certain that your needs won't one day require it. If you're a casual user who doesn't do anything that would ever benefit from going beyond 16GB of RAM, then don't upgrade. Also, don't get the i9, and also don't upgrade the graphics option. But the whole point of getting a 16" MacBook Pro to begin with is that the 13" MacBook Pro isn't enough.
 
Screenshot 2020-10-09 at 4.32.24 PM.png


I wonder if I could have played around with some (fairly large) text files in BBEdit with ease if not for 64GB of RAM. "With ease" is very important when you are exploring datasets since you would want to execute your ideas as fast as your "speed of thought". It would be a lot more unpleasant if these are urgent tasks and the VMs are running.
 
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chengengaun said:
View attachment 964533

I wonder if I could have played around with some (fairly large) text files in BBEdit with ease if not for 64GB of RAM. "With ease" is very important when you are exploring datasets since you would want to execute your ideas as fast as your "speed of thought". It would be a lot more unpleasant if these are urgent tasks and the VMs are running.
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In the ancient days of computing, before Virtual Memory, programs paged their own data in and out. In the PC world, this would be easy to solve. I think that I could put 256 GB of RAM in it if I needed it. It's verified with 128 GB but I'm sure that it wasn't tested with 64 GB DIMMs. I ordered 2x32 so I can just add another 2x32 if necessary.
 
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The title of this thread is stupid. And here's why.... 😛
So many people just believe that the world revolves around them and what is right for them is what everyone else needs. How can anyone know what other people do with things without being inside that persons mind?
The reason I have 64 GB of RAM and a 4 TB hard drive in my machine is because I am a gigging music producer, song writer, film producer, photographer, UX designer, professional chef, dj, philosopher, amateur physicist & oddball to name a few. I currently have 52 chrome tabs open and am running 14 applications at this moment. Logic is open and has 153 channels running (with multiple plugins on each) with ableton rewired. My machine is not falling over. And that's lucky because I will need to call on a lot more of its resources to finish this tune.
That is why some people need 64gb of ram. It gives me the space to do whatever I want.
I think this thread should just be locked. Frankly it's a pointless waste of time reading this and it certainly doesn't need to be any longer. I don't really know why i bothered writing this message. 😂
 
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