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

[leman]

Nothing you’ve said contradicts anything I’ve said, except for a few minor errors you’ve made. I still don’t know what you disagree with me about.

Your terminology is all around the place, and you keep arguing about insignificant things while ignoring the important ones. Yet you say I am the one who is making errors.

You keep telling me things I already know, implying you’re disagreeing with me about something.

I am disagreeing with claims that Dynamic Caching has significant impact on system RAM usage. Dynamic Caching is about managing of internal GPU resources.

The whole logic is probably done in the memory controller.

This doesn't make any sense. Memory controller does not even come into play at the level or GPU register files.

BTW, there is no system RAM. When someone says system RAM, that is defined as the standard memory available to the CPU, also implying there is dedicated graphics memory, which there isn’t. In the case of the M-series of chips, the unified memory is used by both the CPU and GPU.

System RAM = the DRAM in the system. As opposed to private memory buffers and caches that live on specific processors (such as the fast on-core buffers used by the GPUs to accelerate local processing). I have no idea why you think that the term implies existence of separate graphics memory pool, but ok.

The GPU (or CPU) makes RAM requests to the MMU and the MMU allocates and deallocates accordingly.

The MMU does not allocate or deallocate anything. Its job is to translate addresses. Allocation of system RAM is the job of the OS kernel. In the context of the Apple patent, the private on-core MMU might have extended functionality (such as reserving local scratchpad memory if the simdgroup requests it), but that has nothing to do with the main system MMU.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

I think part of the issue is that most people misunderstand what “Pro” really means.

“Pro”s get their coffee at Starbucks.

Non-pros get their coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts.


“Pro”s have lunch at Panera.

Non-pros at lunch at McDonald’s.

Call me not a pro then because DD coffee is better than Starbucks

 

[Corefile]

It baffles my mind that Apple is still selling 8GB MBs. For a few bucks more, they would have created so much more goodwill than disdain.

It's actually cheaper for 16GB in volume that 8GB. AAPL gets and extra 200 bucks when anybody upgrades so a supply chain guy like Tim apple isn't going to scoff at that.

 

[KevinN206]

There's a reason x86 notebooks also ship with 8GB options still.

The majority of Mac laptop users are office workers who use web apps in the cloud. They don't need 16GB of ram. They're not doing anything that even touches that much memory footprint.

Maybe in 2030 that will change but not right now. If you say they should all be installing more memory then you're just increasing costs on large companies with many laptops and you will also create a situation where ram prices increase for the rest of us.

For $1600? Most office users would also benefit from having two external monitors, but the base M3 can only do one external monitor.

 

[Corefile]

I use PhotoShop and Illustrator on a regular basis on an M1 iMac and it kicks the ass of my Intel MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM. Not a popular opinion but 8GB RAM is sufficient for apps like PhotoShop and Illustrator. Most people aren’t “power” users.

It really doesn't matter. AAPL should not be shipping 8GB regardless of whether people need the extra headroom or not. They /should/ be shipping 16GB as standard as there's no other reason not to other than it would impact the AAPL bottom line. Tim Apple is a supply chain guy who maximizes profit from configs the Intel marketing way.

 

[KevinN206]

But, you see, it’s a known fact by almost ALL MacRumors readers that folks that use a computer a few hours a day to surf the web and play music eventually end up using Photoshop to edit high megapixel images while constructing enormous databases in a VM. 8 GB may be enough for their needs now, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE FUUUTURRRE? /s

There’s an only a tiny, exceedingly small group of users that launch at least 1 professional app a couple times a month or more. Everyone else is not anywhere near that.

Wanting 16 GB of RAM and two external monitor support for a $1600 laptop isn't being elitist.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

It's actually cheaper for 16GB in volume that 8GB. AAPL gets and extra 200 bucks when anybody upgrades so a supply chain guy like Tim apple isn't going to scoff at that.

It really doesn't matter. AAPL should not be shipping 8GB regardless of whether people need the extra headroom or not. They /should/ be shipping 16GB as standard as there's no other reason not to other than it would impact the AAPL bottom line. Tim Apple is a supply chain guy who maximizes profit from configs the Intel marketing way.

You sure are getting a lot of mileage out of that old Tim Apple meme.

Anyway, yes Tim's job as CEO is to maximize profit so he is doing his job whether we dislike it or not.

 

[G3Blue]

.

 

[ArkSingularity]

For $1600? Most office users would also benefit from having two external monitors, but the base M3 can only do one external monitor.

Yea, it's the price point that gets me. And the majority of home users probably aren't going to have dual external monitor setups, so a lot of people aren't going to really have any need to care about it. But anyone who is going to need the second monitor is going to be limited to just one on a $1600 machine, and will be forced to spend $2000 to be able to do it.

It's just one of those things that is almost guaranteed to irritate some people who do have these kinds of setups, since it's something the older Intel Mac models could do easily (with CPUs that had only a tiny fraction of the transistor counts of the Apple Silicon ones). It leaves people with this sort of feeling of disappointment in their machines, like they've just bought a subpar piece of hardware even though the machine is otherwise stellar.

 

[JohannesO]

Well, Adobe doesn't give a sh*t.

Full requirements.

 

[jillpygok]

Reminds me of the South Park episode where the Feds have a new average penis size so all MacBook 8GBs in the country have an average or bigger sized Ramdi(s)k. What a joke from Apple but this is brain dead marketing at work.

 

[KevinN206]

Posters should stop equating base configurations on PCs and comparing that to Apple.

Yes base on pc is often 8Gb but Apples success was built on being better and more forward thinking and where 16Gb would do so much for PR and where it would cost Apple peanuts.

In considering PC v Apple base it misses out that unified memory for Mac costs? More RAM on an upgradeable PC costs?

Apples strength was built on innovation usability and forward thinking in advance of pc base 8Gb where it would demonstrate that difference.

Apple didn't get to make $23 billion of net income in Q2 2023 by giving users 16 GB on a pro device that starts at $1600.

 

[jillpygok]

I’d like to see some tests from the you tubers that prove this theory. Although regardless of the outcome - my macs have lasted 10 years so i‘d expect that out of my next mac and i just don’t see 8GB being able to last another decade. I think 16GB will be a push

I get the performance aspects (speed, better caching I suppose, compression) but my entry level 2.2GHz 2015 MBP Retina has 16GB. Basically a 9 year old design and an 8 year old laptop.

 

[jillpygok]

The out of memory error I got in Photos on my M1 Air says otherwise.

Sir, you’re ummm “photo-ing” wrong. /s. Please stick to potato level quality photos with tiny resolution and you won’t have a problem.

Or get the Pro with a whopping 8G..eh never mind.

 

[mrfunnypenguin]

make 16 the base.

I totally agree with this statement! 8GB is not enough!

 

[theluggage]

For $1600? Most office users would also benefit from having two external monitors, but the base M3 can only do one external monitor.

That's not an unreasonable criticism, but it is a physical limitation of the base M1/M2/M3 resulting from a trade-off decision that was made during the design of the system-on-a-chip (might also be a pragmatic decision regarding the amount of GPU power needed to drive more than two high-DPI displays smoothly).

16GB just means putting two 8GB LPDDR packages mounted on top of the SoC in place of two 4GB ones (that probably aren't much cheaper but let you charge extra for upgrades). The SoC is already designed to support that.

 

[Motorola68000]

Apple didn't get to make $23 billion of net income in Q2 2023 by giving users 16 GB on a pro device that starts at $1600.

Perhaps they would make $30 billion by selling more devices if they kept ahead of the game, and 16Gb with a nominal price hike, and savings from not having to produce the 8Gb could do that.

Apple products have been popular because of their ease of use, decent design, their reliability and forward looking as far was technology goes. Advancing to 16Gb base would keep the critics at bay, improve PR where critics do point out that 8Gb for 'pro' products doesn't seem correct.

Far better to be ahead of the game, charge a few more bucks for the 16Gb, as it would cost them peanuts to do that, and then no doubt they'd get even more customers with less criticism of its base configurations, and the large cost of upgrading from 8Gb to 16Gb etc. etc.

 

[yellowbunny]

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.

Very good point! And I totally agree. But my experience does kind of support what Apple are saying here too.

 

[jillpygok]

This is an example of Apple being so far up their own ... and inside their own bubble that they no longer realise that the public know better.

Apple's last quarter profit was $23 billion. Not revenue which would have been awesome. And that figure is not profit for the entire year, it is for 3 months. This level of profit is a reason they put 8GB RAM as standard so in 2023 if you want more they can gauge you for the upgrade.

And we are part of the “problem”. The high end default M3 Max needs $1300 of upgrades to get the RAM to 128GB leaving everything else alone (apart from the compute / cpu bump). And we will pay for the privilege and we will like it.

 

[NEPOBABY]

For $1600? Most office users would also benefit from having two external monitors, but the base M3 can only do one external monitor.

Most office workers don't use two external monitors. They hot desk nowadays. Their laptop is taken with them as they go from department to department.

 

[Gudi]

Wanting 16 GB of RAM and two external monitor support for a $1600 laptop isn't being elitist.

It's delusional. You don't tell Apple what price to ask for which features. Just to maintain a premium image, they must annoy some poorer customers. Like the larger iMac crowd, you can only wish for your dream Mac, but you can't demand to get it. The world doesn't work that way.

 

[ChrisA]

Does anyone have one of the modern machines? How much RAM does the system take up and how much is generally left for user apps?
I’m not an intensive user and I’m wondering if I could get by with the 8GB standard

Yes, I have one. But look at this question. It asks for someone to look using instrumentation to see how much RAM is in use. It does NOT ask about actually using the Mac to do actual work.

Everyone who looks will say "Almost all of the RAM is in use." Of course, it is because MacOS finds a use for all the RAM you have. If any is free, it will get used to cache files.

This is the point of the article, people who really don't understand OS internals are using tools to measure RAM use. THat is NOT what they should be doing. They should be doing things like using Lightroom to process a few hundred shots they just took with a DSLR, or they should be designing some parts with 3D CAD and then talking about how the Mac handles that task.

One last thing: If you need to use instrumentation to see inside the Mac, or if you need to set up tests and use a stopwatch, this means the effect you are talking about is too small to be noticed with normal human sesnses. Why worry about stuff no human can notice?

 

[jillpygok]

Windows >= 10 supports memory compression (and compressed memory can't be active, it acts similar to swap), unified memory is a fancy word of saying iGPU which uses shared memory (which actually takes away from system memory rather than magically adding to it as Apple wants to make it seem).

Not sure how macOS is magically much more efficient than Windows in terms of memory. Even in "light office usage" situations there'll be chonky Electron/Edge WebView apps like MS Teams running as well as a browser with a few tabs open. Efficient native apps fare a lot better, but the reality looks different nowadays. And when you add actively advertised "Pro" workflows involving photo and video editing, there's no getting around that 8 GB is simply not enough.

What they meant was PCs running Windows Millennium. Or Vista. Or XP. Or Windows 98. Do you realize how many PCs still run 98? Ask any of them what they think of 8 gigs of RAM /s

 

[jillpygok]

And if you opted for the GT 750M on that MBP, you also had 2 GB VRAM added on. While on this 2023 machine, it is 8GB total.

Not quite. About 75% of the unified memory is usable by the GPU by default. Where do you think the OS is gonna go if the GPU uses all 8 gigs? The 75% is across the board. 8gigs or 128gigs.

 

[macduke]

I mean, we all know it’s more efficient than Windows. That’s why we bought Macs! But this is basically a 2024 model and we need way more than that for professional anything in 2024.

Also saying it’s equivalent to 16GB is quite the stretch. Didn’t memory compression, which was added ages ago, only improve up to a max 50%? So more like 12GB.

But unified memory architecture? Doesn’t that hurt his argument? The RAM is shared with the GPU, so doing anything GPU intensive could bound you up quickly, when previously it was separate, like how my old Intel MacBook Pro that I recently sold had 32GB RAM and 8GB VRAM? That’s 40GB total.

If I had configured it with 8GB RAM and the same GPU it would still be 16GB. The M3 is a more modern GPU and you’re telling me it’s not going to eat up that 8GB like my old Radeon did? This whole thing sounds fishy.

16GB RAM and 1TB SSD should be the baseline for any pro machine, especially one that shares GPU RAM. By keeping these base specs low for so many years, they are simply hiding the inflation by making us have to add thousands to the base price to get something decent that will last us a while. I know because I just had to do that to get over 36GB RAM! I’ve upgraded my 5K iMac over the years to 64GB for cheap and my usage is often around 48GB in iStat for heavy multitasking across three displays.