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8 gigs of ram
- Thread starter tim1000
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No, on an early 2015 base macbook pro, but the 2018 air is a bit more powerful so it should perform even better. With the 2 VMs running and some programs open on MacOs and windows it almost runs out of ram and sometimes it lags a bit, but it works fine most of the time. My usual setup is Safari with about 5 tabs, mail, Skype, excel, word and parallels with a windows 8.1 machine running a special software that I need for my work. According to activity monitor, mi CPU is idle at 80-90 % and my ram is at 7,1-7,5 gb used out of 8.
On my 8GB Macbooks, I run VM Ware Fusion 8, with 2 VM's. Windows 10 64bit which I assign 4GB, and a Ubunutu 17, which I assign 2GB, leaving OSX with 2GB... I haven't run into any major performance issues... I might have Safari open with 2-4 tabs, Apple Music playing in the background, and it's still plenty fast with no noticeable hiccups.
You mean you can live with it. I too run VMs and they are slow to start. Sure once they are running they may be fine but they are still slower.
Is my 8GB macbook sprinkled with magic dust? How is it that it’s working with 8GB?
Maybe I’m just more competent?
[doublepost=1542477276][/doublepost]
Impossible!!
Working and enough are 2 different things. Your competency is not a call I can make.
Ten years ago I got a Dell laptop. That same year I also got a MacBook. The Dell died and was fixed under warranty. It died again a few years later. The MacBook is still in use. Same specs. Is this due to the unibody construction and build quality? You tell me.
Posted this in the 16gb ram thread.
I have 8gb in my early 2015 13" rMBP and currently have open, with no issues according to the memory pressure:
Safari with 6 tabs running
Mail
WhatsApp
Messages
Excel
Powerpoint
Streaming from Apple Music via iTunes
For light to medium use 8gb will be perfect for most.
I have 8gb in my early 2015 13" rMBP and currently have open, with no issues according to the memory pressure:
Safari with 6 tabs running
Messages
Excel
Powerpoint
Streaming from Apple Music via iTunes
For light to medium use 8gb will be perfect for most.
There was a thread a few months ago in the Pro area where a student described his use case, which would be viewed as very light use by anyones standards. That thread was hilariously bombarded by the 16GB RAM crowd. That thread could have quite possibly made it onto a late night comedy show..
I don't doubt some need 16GB but in the Air? I've asked several times and still have yet to get a single answer that makes sense:
1. Considering who the Air is directed at, a legit 16GB use case
2. Considering the CPU and GPU used in the Air, a legit 16GB use case
I'm still waiting..........
2 GB is basically unusable. Not acceptable even as a bare minimum.
4 GB is usable but there will be slow downs. Even with light usage (recipes and Safari) I'd sometimes get the spinning beachball of death
8 GB is good for most lighter usage. The problems I experienced with 4 GB in light usage disappeared completely with 8 GB.
16 GB is nice for heavy multitaskers, and it is also nice because it caches a lot of apps so apps load quickly after they've been launched the first time.
Source? Myself, running various Mac laptops at 2, 4, 8, 16 GB. All are currently running High Sierra or Mojave. FWIW, my older less-used machines have 8 GB, and my 2017 MacBook has 16. I lasted about 10 minutes at 2 GB. 4 GB was OK, 8 GB was better, and 16 is luxury for moderately heavy usage but does have benefits.
I'd say for the OP, 8 GB is fine, but if s/he wants to keep the machine for a long time then 16 GB is a consideration. In my experience, memory usage goes up around 50% every 5 years or so.
Perhaps the biggest mistake that I believe people make when buying devices is allowing themselves to be up-sold. For the uses described in the original post, 8 GB is perfectly fine and likely will be for some time. On a tech enthusiasts forum like this you will always have people telling you that you need better specs.
This right here is a key metric, I don't know about others, but for me I tend to many several tabs open, way more than 4. It could be that I'm shopping, or looking at different reviews, or doing research, it's easy to open a lot of tabs. And the thing is a lot of people dismiss "web browsing" as trivial, but it's a resource hog not to be underestimated.
Just your browser with several tabs open could eat up those 8gb easily, and then you might have a sluggish system.
Do MBAs from 2017 and before really fail? They are pretty much very mature from the production line so you're pretty much golden.
8GB is enough to comfortably run regular apps for most normal people. If you need to run advanced things like VMs then probably need 16GB.
I always wonder why a few people brag about running 2 VMs with 8 GB RAM. Yeah, you can do it, but why? I can understand if it's just because it's a legacy machine that can't be upgraded, but I would never recommend buying an 8 GB machine if the intent is to run VMs. If you know you're going to be running VMs, getting 16 GB seems like a no-brainer.
As for the upsell, getting 16 GB doesn't seem all that expensive to me, given its benefits. Everyone has different needs, but it makes more sense for me personally to get 16 GB than a 512 GB SSD for example. Memory cannot be upgraded, but external storage can be added for cheap. Indeed, I have a 1 TB external USB-C drive, but I usually use only about 80-100 GB on my MacBook's 256 GB internal SSD drive.
I’m curious about the amount of ram, as well. About 3-4 years ago, I upgraded my hard drive and ram on my 09 mini. I installed a 256gb hard drive and 8gb of ram. I just checked my usage, and I have used around 140gb of my hard drive left and I’m at 2.8gb of ram used up in those years. Of course, knowing myself, I will keep the thing for 5+ years. It will be a graduation gift, so maybe I’ll splurge and get the 16gb.
I’m not well versed in all this, but when I checked my activity monitor it said 2.8gb beside memory. Is that not talking about ram?
That's just what is currently in use not what has been used over the last few years. If you restart your mini you will see the figure change, if you open a few apps again it will change.
RAM is volatile memory in the sense that a reboot clears it. It's not permanent like a hard drive/SSD which requires the user to delete data. If you look at my screenshot I posted further up and the one below. You can see I'm using less RAM at the moment as I'm just browsing and only have WhatsApp and Messages open.
Oh I gotcha. I didn’t know how it worked. It just said used so I figured it worked like a hard drive. LOL.
[doublepost=1542607089][/doublepost]Do you find 8gb is sufficient most of the time? When I was trying to figure out how much ram to get to replace in the mini, people were suggesting 8gb, but the mini I don’t use very often. The air would replace my iPad Pro, so it would get more use than the mini currently does.
Yes, I haven't had an issue in the last near 3yrs on my MBP. The MBA is ever so slightly more powerful in a benchmark than my current MBP (2.9ghz I5, 8GB 1867mhz RAM, 512gb SSD). So I doubt I would run into an issue given my current workload for the computer. I mainly use
Messages
Safari (never more than 10 tabs open and usually only 5-6)
Excel
Word
PowerPoint
Keynote
Pages
Photos - to do the odd tweak/crop
iMovie - very occasionally
iTunes - to stream Apple Music when not at home
Sonos - to stream to the home sound system
I sometimes plug my MBP into my TV via HDMI and don't have any issues either. But it's only a 1080p tv.
Unless you are going to do something that requires heavy processing power or graphics power then you shouldn't have any issues for the next 3-5yrs with a MBA and 8GB RAM
I never said it was, so apologies if my post came across that way.
I just meant that the MBA as a whole will be fine with 8Gb RAM. Unless you do something requiring heavy CPU & GPU. What I should have added is in which case the MBP should be considered.
Get what your are saying. If someone said they would need 32GB ram in a MBA then probably not the right machine for them.