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8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
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As a developer who used my first Macbook Air M1 8GB for a month or two before the 16" Pro arrived, I can say I was amazed that I didn't see any slowdowns in anything I am doing with the small amount of RAM.
That was coming from a 16" Intel i9 model with 16GB.
Controversial opinion in this forum: Apple is right, it is like 16GB on other systems.
In terms of what 99% of users experience.
Of course if you pick the exact workload that fits inside 16GB, but doesn't fit inside 8, you get a massive performance difference as the system starts swapping - this is silly and should surprise no one. At the same time you could also pick a workload that requires 32GB of RAM and you would see that 8, 16 both perform badly, but 32 performs well. And so on - those are artificial tests designed to show an outcome.
If you are a professional that uses a ton of RAM, get more RAM. Most people will never notice, but they will notice if they get an 8GB Windows machine or old Intel Mac, because those really don't work well with that little RAM.
iPhone was benching the same as the MacBook Pro from back when it only had 3GB of RAM, before the M1.
And yes in my own dev workload, I would get 16 or more for use cases like running Docker and multiple VMs, or if I were to run a Linux VM for some reason. Or if I did anything else that just uses a huge amount of RAM.
But running VS code, a bunch of browsers, and the usual kaleidoscope of around 20 apps on the 8GB M1 MacBook Air was fast and seamless. No problem.
I remember now I was running VS Code, 2 iOS Simulators, 1 Android Emulator, Android Studio, all on this little 8GB MB Ari just fine. It only started swapping when I tried to run 2 or 3 Android emulators, as each of those comes with 4GB RAM.... that's when I hit the 8GB limit consistently, and it wasn't fun, I had to shut down all but one Android Emulator. A very specialized use case I have not come across in my work since.
That was coming from a 16" Intel i9 model with 16GB.
Controversial opinion in this forum: Apple is right, it is like 16GB on other systems.
In terms of what 99% of users experience.
Of course if you pick the exact workload that fits inside 16GB, but doesn't fit inside 8, you get a massive performance difference as the system starts swapping - this is silly and should surprise no one. At the same time you could also pick a workload that requires 32GB of RAM and you would see that 8, 16 both perform badly, but 32 performs well. And so on - those are artificial tests designed to show an outcome.
If you are a professional that uses a ton of RAM, get more RAM. Most people will never notice, but they will notice if they get an 8GB Windows machine or old Intel Mac, because those really don't work well with that little RAM.
iPhone was benching the same as the MacBook Pro from back when it only had 3GB of RAM, before the M1.
And yes in my own dev workload, I would get 16 or more for use cases like running Docker and multiple VMs, or if I were to run a Linux VM for some reason. Or if I did anything else that just uses a huge amount of RAM.
But running VS code, a bunch of browsers, and the usual kaleidoscope of around 20 apps on the 8GB M1 MacBook Air was fast and seamless. No problem.
I remember now I was running VS Code, 2 iOS Simulators, 1 Android Emulator, Android Studio, all on this little 8GB MB Ari just fine. It only started swapping when I tried to run 2 or 3 Android emulators, as each of those comes with 4GB RAM.... that's when I hit the 8GB limit consistently, and it wasn't fun, I had to shut down all but one Android Emulator. A very specialized use case I have not come across in my work since.
It isn't as useless of a test as you proclaim, since nobody using a Mac cares about PC performance. The point is the test of 8GB Mac vs 16GB Mac is that the configuration is crippling the Mac as it ships from Apple. If the test was between 16GB and a 32GB Mac I'm pretty sure no such chasm in performance would have been seen.
This is ugly news. As a budget-first conscious geezer, I generally buy earlier gen with higher ram option, larger SSD and it works for me. One thing from this debacle that stands out is, as I recall, M1 and M2 throttled SSD performance for the 8 GB ram level due to fact that these units had what, one SSD controller chip but more if ram was 16 GB or more. Burning out the SSD is a nasty likelyhood if you are pushing one of these low-ram basic Macs. Disturbing.
Apple's new MacBook Pro models are powered by cutting-edge M3 Apple silicon, but the base configuration 14-inch model starting at $1,599 comes with just 8GB of working memory. In 2012, Apple launched the first MacBook Pro with Retina display, which also started with 8GB of RAM. Of course, Apple now uses integrated chips with unified memory architecture, which is why the company feels confident in arguing that 8GB on a Mac is comparable to 16GB on rival systems.
But not everyone is convinced. Apple's decision not to equip base models with at least 16GB of RAM in late 2023 has proved incongruous to many users, including Vadim Yuryev, co-host of the YouTube channel Max Tech. Yuryev decided to perform several real-world tests on two 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro models, one with 8GB and the other upgraded to 16GB of unified memory. The embedded video above has all the results.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, Yuryev saw significant performance improvements across the board using the 16GB machine under both middling and heavier workloads. The 8GB model suffered double-digit losses in Cinebench benchmarks, and took several minutes longer to complete photo-merging jobs in Photoshop as well as media exports in Final Cut and Adobe Lightroom Classic.
These tests were conducted as single operations with nothing else running, but also repeated with browser tabs, YouTube videos, spreadsheets, emails, and the like, open in the background to simulate typical real-world multi-tasking scenarios. As expected, the performance gap between the two machines widened further as the 8GB increasingly relied on its SSD swap file, while all-round responsiveness took a hit. Yuryev even reported crashes on the 8GB model during Blender rendering and a Final Cut export.
Notably, Blender's raytracing acceleration was available as an option on the 16GB models, but was conspicuously absent on the 8GB MacBook Pro for an identical rendering job, suggesting the reduced memory pool actually prevents the GPU cores from utilizing certain features.
Tests like these present a dilemma for customers looking to purchase a new MacBook Pro (or a new 8GB iMac, for that matter). Settling for 8GB appears to hinder the M3 chip's performance, but choosing 16GB or 24GB configuration options at checkout costs an extra $200 and $400, respectively, and Apple's machines cannot be upgraded at a later date because of their unified memory architecture.
After factoring in the extra $200 for 16GB on a 14-inch M3 MacBook Pro, an M3 Pro model with 18GB and several other extra features is only $200 more at $1,999. More galling perhaps is the fact that rival laptops at similar ballpark prices (Microsoft Surface or Lenovo Thinkpad, for example) come with at least 16GB of memory as standard. Apple customers are expected to pay $200 extra each jump up, which surely includes a healthy markup, however much Apple pays its RAM suppliers.
Is Apple's 8GB starting configuration for a $1,599 MacBook Pro really acceptable in 2023? And has the company's memory pricing policy affected your own purchase options? Let us know in the comments.
Article Link: 8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
Yep - with the same CPU, in a realistic world where Apple doesn't ship pathetic configurations, you wouldn't see the base model fall on its face compared to the 2X RAM version of the same system. You apparently can't do anything taxing that actually uses the CPU/GPU because of the little RAM available to apps after the OS takes its portion.
More memory should just open up larger dataset possibilities or heavier multitasking, not be such a clear and obvious freeing up of base functionality.
I highly doubt that's true for any task that actually uses RAM.
Especially when you get into tasks where the storage matters. Yes, when you spread those 8 GiB across a handful of apps, you probably get along fine. But when one of those apps actually needs multiple gigabytes — because it's a large video, or a database, or you're compiling — then memory compression, UMA, and other tricks aren't going to be enough to compete against a 16 GiB model (which also has memory compression!).
So do you agree or disagree with "What Apple said is that the 8GB RAM M3 MacBook runs as well as a similarly priced 16GB RAM Intel machine, and that actually is true."? Because I for one disagree.
Yes, there are use cases where that's true. But no, as a generalized statement, I find that claim absurd.
You can stream true HDR video I suppose on the machine, but forget about creating it with a paltry 8GB of RAM.
Then let's include the entire industry. A base config for an HP/Dell/Lenovo is also 8GB.
If you go below $1,000, sure. Whether the $999 Air should have 8 or 16 is a separate discussion; we're discussing the $1,599 Pro here. All $1,099 and above Dell XPS models seem to have at least 16. If you look at Latitude (which… I'm not sure anyone voluntarily would), even a $749 model has 16.
Oh, and the upgrade from 8 to 16 is $100 with Dell (which is still quite a markup), not $200.
Dell XPS 13 ("Pro" Laptop) starts at 8GB......
Actually no, you can't get several SKU's of Lenovo thinkpad with 8GB as even an option, they come with 16G minimum. Maybe a base config of one of their consumer models, but not business laptops, and 8G base is definitely not true for all Lenovo laptops like that generalized statement implies. I bet it's not applicable to HP or Dell either.
Tens/Hundreds of thousands only run one app at a time on a $1,599 laptop? I wouldn't rule that out, but I think that's a stretch.
The only thing that we disagree with is that 8GB is enough for some users. No one is arguing that the costs of Apple's upgrades is great. The costs of the SSD and RAM upgrade SUUUCKS ....
Apple is known to have 30-40% margins. These RAM/SSD upgrades are where they get some of that margin. The R&D costs of Apple Silicon are immense. Dell does not have these development costs.
Well that does it. The videographer professionals and animators at Pixar better think twice before buying the lowest end Mac for their heavy rendering work!
I did fully configure it. And when it says +$400, maybe that’s what it actually means. 🤷🏼♂️. I’ll show you screenshots right here, they’re both the exact same processor and storage capacity. And it quite clearly says +$400, and then when I configure it up to 16GB of RAM, lo and behold, I see an extra $400 on the total. And even if we go with your totals, your numbers say it’s a $300 upgrade (which disagrees with the +$400 on the button), and that’s still higher than Apple’s $200 upgrade charge. So anyway you want to cut it, Microsoft’s RAM upgrades are more expensive here.
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The MBP is a very popular corporate computer (and thanks to bean counters, is purchases with a bae config) . For every 3-4 base versions that go to the corporate traveler, one machine can go to the Engineers that need them.
I agree with that statement per my experience. I regularly use very RAM hungry software like Chrome, Affinity Designer, Affinity Photo. And I don’t take it easy when it comes to browser tabs and files I leave open in those apps, I regularly work with 6K or 8K files with hundreds to thousands of layers each, and I tend to have at least 30 such files open at once, plus a ton of smaller files, plus I tend to have well over 30 browser tabs open at once in Chrome, not even mentioning all of the other tabs I’ve had open on other browsers at the same time. That definitely uses RAM, and there isn’t much of a speed difference.
Sure - on sub-$500 economy laptops for which it doesn't make sense to compare any spec - whether its CPU or RAM - with a MacBook Air/Pro. Apple doesn't have a horse in that rate.
Now look at something from a range like Dell XPS that is a competitor to Mac (small & light, 'premium' finish, fixed LPDDR5 RAM) - UK website has the cheapest Dell XPS 13, 10 core i7 processor for £969 (c.f. base Apple MBA at £999), and that comes with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD... Go to customise, upgrade to 32GB/1TB and it adds £160.
I've looked, and it's similar for Lenovo and HP. Yes, they have cheap'n'cheerful << $1000 laptops with 8GB configs but the premium models which might be mentioned in the same breath as Apple (ThinkPad etc.) mostly start at 16GB and usually 512GB storage - and the upgrades are generally cheaper too (plus, many of them use upgradeable M.2 storage).
Of course, these companies all have a confusing dumpster fire of overlapping ranges and never-ending "special offers" so if you go hunting you will probably be able to find exceptions... and of course, there's the Microsoft Surface range, which make Apple look like the cheap option, but that's probably why MS don't show up in the list of top PC vendors (but then every other PC vendor is also an income stream for Microsoft - heck, even many Mac users buy/subscribe to Office - so they're probably not that bothered).
The “you can only run one app at a time on an 8GB RAM laptop” argument is a totally fallacy. Reality is that many people are able to run lots of apps at once with 8GB of RAM. If you’re talking a really resource intensive app like Blender, then sure, you’re probably running that by itself. But let’s be honest, people using Blender aren’t going to be very interested in the base spec configuration, they’re probably going with the M3 Pro chip for its greater GPU performance. But plenty of Pros aren’t using Blender, they’re using Excel, Word, Microsoft Office, Slack, Chrome/Safari, Photoshop, Lightroom, etc. These are all fine to run on an 8GB RAM computer. “Use a MacBook Air for those things”, you might say, but lots of people like some of the features of the Pro better, they like the extra ports, they like the extra battery runtime, they like the higher quality display and sound system so they can enjoy their content better. Just because 8GB isn’t enough for you doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be an option for others that can use 8GB RAM and save some money.
Possible website quirks aside - yes, Microsoft charge Apple prices for PCs. Which may be why Microsoft sell fewer computers than Apple, and don't even show up on the list of top vendors. MS may be massive when it comes to software and XBoxes, but they're a boutique store for actual computers - of course, they get a rake off from almost every PC sold so the Surface computers are more of a showcase for Windows.
There are a few PC makers like that (Razer are the other ones that spring to mind) but people here are mostly making comparisons with "premium" ranges from the top 5-6 who make up ~80% of the market: Lenovo, HP, Dell, Apple, Asus and Acer according to Wikipedia.
I know — and corporate environments generally have a few more apps running in addition to the web browser, such as Teams, Outlook, Word/Excel/PowerPoint. Maybe things like Trello.
What Microsoft is charging there is above Apple’s prices. And unlike those other sellers like Acer that flood the market with cheap plastic junk to make up the “top 80% of the market”, Microsoft sells only premium computers, similar to how Apple sells only premium computers, so it’s actually a pretty fair comparison. I highly doubt the other manufacturers premium offerings are what’s making up the 80% of their Windows computer sales.