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

[BrightDarkSky]

So if 8GB is plenty..... why do the M3 Pro models have 18GB if it's not really needed? Hey, why offer larger memory options at all? 😅🙄

Isn't 18 GB number very weird? I'm taking a not so wild guess that 2 GB has been prioritized for the GPU and running additional screens. 8 GB sharing two screens plus applications?

Older Macs with discrete graphics didn't have to worry about these issues. But here we are.

PS- Apple said their ram is faster so we should just be quiet and go home. Sad!

 

[hans1972]

Apple knows what it is doing. 3rd party resellers will have sales and discounts on the standard SKUs but Apple knows that if you want a 16 GB model you will need to come to them to buy BTO and they don't reduce the prices.

Here in Norway, I can buy pretty much buy any configuration from any Apple reseller. They might not have all of them in stock, but they'll order it for you.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Using swap is a good thing

How is it a good thing?

 

[ArkSingularity]

Isn't 18 GB number very weird? I'm taking a not so wild guess that 2 GB has been prioritized for the GPU and running additional screens. 8 GB sharing two screens plus applications?

Older Macs with discrete graphics didn't have to worry about these issues. But here we are.

PS- Apple said their ram is faster so we should just be quiet and go home. Sad!

It's because they're using 3-channel RAM with (presumably) 6GB chips. So it just works out that 18GB is the size they went with.

 

[hans1972]

It’s true limited RAM can go farther than it did years ago but that’s mostly due to SSD speeds increasing to the point where the performance hit from using swap/virtual memory isn’t as severe as during the mechanical hard drive era. That being said RAM is RAM, and loading a large 50 megapixel raw image into Photoshop to edit is going to eat into that no matter what compression or swap file trickery you’re using.

There’s no excuse for only 256GB of storage on a pro machine though. Heavy swap usage from the limited RAM will just wear the SSD out even faster and further constrain available space.

Those who will be satisfied will not use memory intensive applications. They will use several applications and browser tabs which will be below 2Gb and will be efficiently dealt with by using swap.

SSD wear out will not happen to a lot of Macs with 8Gb of RAM.

Apple have had SSDs for years now with 8Gb of RAM and there isn't an avalanche of SSD failures on older Macs.

 

[Bigkool2inSC]

a hypocrite's favorite line is....

"yeah, but that's different"

 

[James Godfrey]

The main issue is the fact that Apple don’t offer any higher RAM option in both the MBA and now base M3 MBP that are ready built to ship.

Therefore other companies generally only stock those options meaning 8GB RAM machines will sell a lot more units than 16GB MBA’s or MBP’s, so in Apples view they will see that as consumer acceptance that 8GB is enough, when essentially they’re being bought more than upgraded models due to them going on sale in retailers regularly and being more widely available.

Don’t get me wrong 8GB is fine for many people but it will always leave little to no headroom, what’s more concerning is that the M3 MBP only comes with 8GB… so essentially the Airs are going to be the same upon release mid next year, which means 8GB is going to be the ready built option until 2025 when M4 swings around, all we can hope for is 16GB base with M4 but I doubt it’s going to happen unfortunately.

 

[chucker23n1]

Isn't 18 GB number very weird? I'm taking a not so wild guess that 2 GB has been prioritized for the GPU and running additional screens. 8 GB sharing two screens plus applications?

No, the M3 Pro simply comes either in three 6 GiB modules (18), or three 12 GiB modules (36), and runs them in tri-channel.

 

[chucker23n1]

Of course, but if you're throwing inactively used data in there, it won't matter much.

Yeah, absolutely, but I don't think "Using swap is a good thing" is a valid assertion.

The existence of swap is arguably a good thing (though this brings us to the rabbit whole of: why does iOS still not have it?), but when OS is forced to use it, that does produce overhead.

 

[Altis]

This is the claim: Comparing our memory to other system's memory actually isn't equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture. Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently.

I know a lot of users who would be fine with 8Gb of RAM. The reason I know this is because they have Macs with 8Gb of RAM now and don't think the performance is bad.

That isn't even remotely true, though. There's nothing to indicate Apple has a 2:1 memory advantage over other systems, which implement the exact same memory compression and swap file techniques. RISC tends to use more RAM than CISC anyways, and the memory is shared with the GPU (which it isn't in the case of dedicated graphics in other systems).

That there exists users who are "fine" (the lowest bar possible) on a low-RAM computer doesn't make it a poor choice for an expensive new machine on the cusp of 2024. Many people would be "fine" on basic 10-year old computers, so what? Is the MacBook Pro meant for little old ladies who use it to check their emails once a week? It hardly takes anything to get the swap space fired up.

 

[hans1972]

It's true that the M1 with 8GB is a better CPU than any Intel laptop CPU with 16GB, but that's despite the lack of RAM not because of some efficiency magic inside the RAM.

Apple isn't claiming this. They're claiming they're more efficient.

Also: "And so what I would say is I would have people come in and try what they want to do on their systems, and they will I think see incredible performance. If you look at the raw data and capabilities of these systems, it really is phenomenal. And this is the place where I think people need to see beyond the specs, [...]"

 

[ArkSingularity]

Those who will be satisfied will not use memory intensive applications. They will use several applications and browser tabs which will be below 2Gb and will be efficiently dealt with by using swap.

SSD wear out will not happen to a lot of Macs with 8Gb of RAM.

Apple have had SSDs for years now with 8Gb of RAM and there isn't an avalanche of SSD failures on older Macs.

I hope so. My M1 MPB already has over 45TBW on the SSD, and that was after only about a year and a half of daily driving it.

Assuming it can get to 150TBW, that should still be at least five years or so. In all likelihood, it will probably last longer, but outliers can happen.

 

[hans1972]

That isn't even remotely true, though. There's nothing to indicate Apple has a 2:1 memory advantage over other systems, which implement the exact same memory compression and swap file techniques. RISC tends to use more RAM than CISC anyways, and the memory is shared with the GPU (which it isn't in the case of dedicated graphics in other systems).

Apple are much more aggressive with swap usage on Apple Silicon Macs than Intel Macs and at least Windows systems I have used.

macOS will swap early and often.

Thus if you use only applications with low memory usage and a lot of browser tabs within Safari (not Chrome), you'll see that you often won't notice any slowdown because the application or browser tab being kicked out of memory is already in swap.

The usage where it breaks down is if you one or two memory applications like 6 +4 Gb. Then a 8Gb MacBook will suffer.

If you use mainly Office apps, Safari, Teams/Slack and the occiasional simple editing in iPhotos, you won't notice much difference between 8 and 16 Gb in an Apple Silicon Mac either.

 

[Technerd108]

What is laughable is when your phone has the same amount of ram standard and a bunch of Android phones come with 16gb and some even going to 24gb. Doesn't the latest iPhones have 8gb ram? At least the Pro models.

So my MacBook pro is somehow more efficient with ram than my phone? Phones basically have ram on the SOC just like Apple. Bandwidth isn't close but besides more bandwidth on a Mac what is the difference?

The base ram should at least be 12gb by now for the Pro models. It would still encourage people to get more but at least not be a bottleneck if you try to do any Pro tasks on your Pro laptop.

 

[ArkSingularity]

What is laughable is when your phone has the same amount of ram standard and a bunch of Android phones come with 16gb and some even going to 24gb. Doesn't the latest iPhones have 8gb ram? At least the Pro models.

So my MacBook pro is somehow more efficient with ram than my phone? Phones basically have ram on the SOC just like Apple. Bandwidth isn't close but besides more bandwidth on a Mac what is the difference?

The base ram should at least be 12gb by now for the Pro models. It would still encourage people to get more but at least not be a bottleneck if you try to do any Pro tasks on your Pro laptop.

Part of it is that phones don't have swap, so they can't really absorb an increase in RAM needs quite the same way that a Mac can. They just start closing apps instead.

iOS is quite efficient with RAM, all things considered. But you're right, if iPhones are getting 8GB, I think it's time for Apple to start upgrading the Macs. 8GB is what the MacBook Pro came with in 2013.

 

[hans1972]

Surface Laptop 5
$1368 8Gb vs $1389 16Gb on Amazon

Surface Pro 9
$1973 16Gb/1Tb vs. $1999 32Gb/1Tb

Maybe this is why

Is the problem 16Gb isn't in the base configuration or is it the price to upgrade which is the problem?

Most people here complains only about the base configuration without mentioning the price, so it seems the price isn't the main problem.

 

[hans1972]

8GB is absolutely unsuitable for a professional system. I'm at 25GB used out of 32GB here.

Including...
Powerpoint - a simple 10 slide presentation, is using 1.1GB
Terminal - 970MB. Sure there's a few tabs here, but that's a lot!
Outlook: 1GB
Teams 1.8GB across several processes and helpers
IntelliJ - 5.6GB - probably not dissimilar to a heavy project in a media application if that's your boat.
Chrome - several GB across loads of helper processes
Office - another GB across Word,Excel,OneNote.

You can't push this all onto SSD, even if the SSD has a special SLC Swap space to increase longevity at the cost of capacity.

1.1 + 0.97 + 1 +1.8 + 3 (office) + 3 (estimated for Chrome) = 10.87 Gb which would be fine for a 8gb system by using swap.

So if you drop IntelliJ there isn't any problem.

The OS and applications uses more RAM when you have more RAM available. You can't directly compare memory usage on a 32Gb system to how it would be on a 8Gb system.

On my system, Outlook is using 380Mb.

 

[hans1972]

You see .... I'd say it's a perfectly valid claim to say that 8GB on Mac gets you further than 8GB on your typical Windows machine.

Does he even say Windows? He says "other systems" or did I miss something?

 

[BrightDarkSky]

When the M1's first came out, every reviewer was raving about how 8GB was like 16GB, with tests such as opening 50 apps at the same time with no slowdown. That was only three years ago. What was WOW three years ago is now considered an insult. Just an observation, but I'm sure you all remember what everyone was saying not so long ago, which was exactly what this Apple executive was saying. Does the normal user need 16, or only techies like us who visit these forums who are likely not the average or base machine type user? Think marketing person or program manager. They are pro users, too.

I checked some Windows machines. I found a rather interesting thing. Microsoft's own Surface Laptop has a base model of 8/256, costing $200 to upgrade to 16GB. Dell is a little cheaper, but not by much (closer to $150). It looks like most of their base machines are 16/256. HP's base machines that I found were all 8/256. It seems a lot of computer makers have very similar base specs as Apple does. Maybe these companies know something we don't as consumers, such as what the average user needs?

One could argue that most of those machines are being used as business terminals. Why?

Easy - Because nobody for home use is buying 8 GB of RAM machines. Businesses toss out old and out of date windows boxes about a thousands every single day. And all they care about is price. So this makes sense.

 

[ProfessionalFan]

Is the problem 16Gb isn't in the base configuration or is it the price to upgrade which is the problem?

Most people here complains only about the base configuration without mentioning the price, so it seems the price isn't the main problem.

A 1600 DOLLAR "pro" laptop should not have 8GB RAM. The price is absolutely a big issue here. The Air is cheaper so starting it with 8GB is fine IMO, but $1600 is a ridiculous price point for 8GB RAM.

 

[hans1972]

But to say 8GB is equivalent to 16GB's of RAM, I'd definitely have to see independent data on this one.

He doesn't say that. He uses the phrasing "is probably analogous" which is weaker.

 

[BrightDarkSky]

It's because they're using 3-channel RAM with (presumably) 6GB chips. So it just works out that 18GB is the size they went with.

That's interesting I had no idea 6 GB chips even existed. 😱

 

[ProfessionalFan]

He doesn't say that. He uses the phrasing "is probably analogous" which is weaker.

When you have to resort to pedantic arguments, your debate points become weaker FYI.

His intent with that quote was pretty clear.

 

[poldidak]

The exorbitant add-on cost of another 8GB of RAM is why I've often ended up having to forgo getting the latest, fastest processor, and buy a gently used, maybe still under warranty model from a previous generation. Even recently, I opted to purchase an M1 MBA instead of one of the cool new M2 models, so that I could get 16GB and 1TB of storage and keep costs to under $1300. Imagine that, I paid $1300 for last year's model! Hopefully I'm not a fool for doing so. I love my M1 MBA so far.

 

[bradman83]

Those who will be satisfied will not use memory intensive applications. They will use several applications and browser tabs which will be below 2Gb and will be efficiently dealt with by using swap.

SSD wear out will not happen to a lot of Macs with 8Gb of RAM.

Apple have had SSDs for years now with 8Gb of RAM and there isn't an avalanche of SSD failures on older Macs.

Oh I don't dispute this. I had a 2018 13" MBP i5 8GB model. I'm an avid photographer who is regularly using Lightroom, Photoshop, and other photo editing apps, albeit not to the maximum edge of that laptop's performance. I never noticed memory pressure slowdowns except in two circumstances - running a Windows VM in Parallels, and playing Cities: Skylines. For most users 8GB is perfectly serviceable given how speedy and durable modern SSDs are.

Where most peoples' displeasure comes in has to do with the fact that the base M3 model of the 14" MBP is still marketed as a Pro model even though many true pros will hit a bottleneck with 8GB (whereas consumers might not). I think 8GB is fine for entry level consumer machines but for anything labeled Pro then Apple really should up the ante.