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8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple

What a load of BS. For M1 when they first released, 8GB maybe enough , but in 2023, you’re in a world of hurt. Damn it Apple! Stop telling lies
 
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tobybrut said:
My wife would disagree with you. She was an engineering executive who spent most of her time in meetings and the rest of her time writing documents. That is one example of a pro who doesn’t need more than 8GB, but certainly needs that HDMI port for meetings without having to carry dongles. Her 256GB drive is half empty. People here seem to think all pros need 300,000GB of RAM and 2 million TB of storage just to write their Word, Excel, and PowerPoint documents. Those people are every bit as pro as the ones who render 8K Red raw footage. That’s why there are many levels of pro machines, each one of them progressively more powerful and with more RAM and storage. My wife would be an excellent candidate for the base M3 MBP while I would be a good candidate for the M3 Max with 48GB of RAM and 2TB of storage as a retired software engineer. Nothing about the base model would cut it with me, not the SoC, RAM, nor storage. There are many different kinds of pros, and fortunately, there are many levels of machines to choose from, and many different configurations within those levels. Just choose the right one.
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For the executive, they are free to use MBA or MBP as both of them should be enough. Pro is for heavy workload, multi-tasking, powerful etc, just like what Apple said many times in their advertisement.
 
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tobybrut said:
Go back to every review on the M1 MacBook Air, 13" MBP, and mini when they first came out. Everybody was amazed how well 8GB worked and ran those tests I was talking about, such as running 50 apps at once. People were saying back then that 8GB was just like 16GB. Apple was just borrowing those comments from three years ago. I'm sure a lot of people here remember that.
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Different agenda's today 😂
 
leman said:
Dynamic caching has nothing to do with RAM usage.
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Itt does, actually. It’s a RAM-saving feature. Normally, graphics require a pre-set buffer in RAM equal to the maximum amount it needs. Say, as an example, a video can use anywhere from 2MB-2GB worth of RAM depending on how complicated the individual frame is within the video. The computer has to allocate the full 2GB to accommodate that video for the entire duration of that video playing. With dynamic caching, it figures out on the fly how much RAM is needed and will allocate anywhere from that 2MB-2GB worth of RAM at the time it’s needed and take it away when it’s not needed. Because it’s done in hardware, it’ll be very fast. When the next frame’s needs go down, so does the allocation. That extra RAM is freed up for other things, while under the old standard method, that 2GB of RAM is mostly left empty except for the most extreme parts of the video and goes to waste.

So yeah, it has everything to do with RAM usage, especially since the CPU shares RAM with the GPU. That CPU is more than happy to use that RAM that was freed up. This makes the RAM go further and improves efficiency.
 
leman said:
Dynamic caching has nothing to do with RAM usage.
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You sure about that?

From https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/apple-dynamic-caching-explained/

Dynamic Caching is a feature that allows M3 chips to only use the precise amount of memory that a particular task needs. Here’s how Apple describes it in the official press release: “Dynamic Caching, unlike traditional GPUs, allocates the use of local memory in hardware in real time. With Dynamic Caching, only the exact amount of memory needed is used for each task. This is an industry first, transparent to developers, and the cornerstone of the new GPU architecture. It dramatically increases the average utilization of the GPU, which significantly increases performance for the most demanding pro apps and games.”
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The efficiency of the architecture is true, but still, 8 GB is 8 GB, and 16 is 16.

If a car’s top speed is 150, it’s 150. Even if one can get there twice as fast as the other.
 
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1 - Nobody believes this. Not even the guy saying it.

2 - It would cost almost nothing on a unit basis to make 16 the base.
 
T-Flame said:
1 - Nobody believes this. Not even the guy saying it.

2 - It would cost almost nothing on a unit basis to make 16 the base.
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Right.

But I bet there'd be people defending it even if they offered 4 GB RAM on the base model and he said 4 GB RAM was enough.
 
Isamilis said:
For the executive, they are free to use MBA or MBP as both of them should be enough. Pro is for heavy workload, multi-tasking etc, just like in their advertisement.
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Considering how many people seem to think the MacBook Air shouldn’t throttle and get hot while rendering 8K Canon Raw video (*cough*, MaxTech), just how do you define professional? How many times do you forget to bring your dongle on your business trip and find yourself frantically searching stores near the hotel for that dongle that’s sitting on the dresser at home? My wife has a pouch with all sorts of emergency dongles and cables she might need on the road. And she’s left items out of it many times when she took them out to use them and forgot to put them back in. It’s awfully nice not needing those dongles.

It’s worth the peace of mind to have a professional machine. Yes, she can use a MacBook Air, but the M3 MacBook Pro would be better suited for her needs. The M3 Pro would be overkill, but the Air would be deficient in ports. Like I said, professionals come in all shapes and sizes, all with different needs. The M3 MBP is a pro machine, just not the kind you think it ought to be.
 
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M1 air with 8gb works super well for everything I throw at it (even though my Studio is noticeably even better) 🤷‍♂️
 
Gudi said:
That's like 4GB on a Mac. 😧
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The confusing part is Apple still release base config MBA and Mini with the same 8gb base config of “Pro”. I think they should put 4gb RAM for base config Air/Mini, lol.
 
I've beachballed with 16GB of RAM in Photoshop on large projects on an M2 Pro, little did I know it was actually 32GB of memory!
 
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Hastings101 said:
I'm not defending 8GB RAM on something labeled a pro device, it's ridiculous, but it is usable. Apple has such a long history of predatory devices anyway meant to be sold to clueless customers like the old iMacs with the 5400RPM drives, nothing new.
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Oof, I had forgotten about the slooooow spinning rust they used to sell as base. Eventually they moved to extremely fast SSDs thankfully.
 
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tobybrut said:
Considering how many people seem to think the MacBook Air shouldn’t throttle and get hot while rendering 8K Canon Raw video (*cough*, MaxTech), just how do you define professional? How many times do you forget to bring your dongle on your business trip and find yourself frantically searching stores near the hotel for that dongle that’s sitting on the dresser at home? My wife has a pouch with all sorts of emergency dongles and cables she might need on the road. And she’s left items out of it many times when she took them out to use them and forgot to put them back in. It’s awfully nice not needing those dongles.

It’s worth the peace of mind to have a professional machine. Yes, she can use a MacBook Air, but the M3 MacBook Pro would be better suited for her needs. The M3 Pro would be overkill, but the Air would be deficient in ports. Like I said, professionals come in all shapes and sizes, all with different needs. The M3 MBP is a pro machine, just not the kind you think it ought to be.
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I am not the one who define “Pro” word. It’s in Apple advertisement. No offense here. But clearly, Apple shows their greedy and arrogant.
 
yellowbunny said:
M1 air with 8gb works super well for everything I throw at it (even though my Studio is noticeably even better) 🤷‍♂️
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Very few people are saying the base of every model should be 16. I see no issue with the base model Air starting with 8.

The main issue for most people here is we're talking about a "Pro" laptop that costs about 2 times as much as your Air and has 8 GB.
 
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T-Flame said:
1 - Nobody believes this. Not even the guy saying it.
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Everybody believed that in late 2020 when the M1 Macs came out for the first time. The marketing guy was just regurgitating what everyone was saying back then. Nothing’s changed since then. I’ll bet if you went back to December 2020 on MacRumors, you could find a number of people saying just that. You would also find a ton of YouTube reviewers saying not to waste your money on 16GB when 8GB was enough for most uses.
 
How is this claim substantiated? It sounds like typical marketing bumfluff from AAPL.
 
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