8gb vs 16gb

[mac-jam]

How does the Macbook 2017 1.3 hold up with 8gb for emails, light photoshop and web surfing at the same time?

 

[Neodym]

eMails and Websurfing should be no problem (though the latter partly depends on the number of open tabs and the content therein).

Photoshop _can_ work, but everyone has a different idea of what “light” means in this context.

So in general it _can_ work out all together at the same time, but it heavily depends on the exact circumstances and your expectations.

 

[brdeveloper]

At ~7000 on Geekbench, I don't know how a Macbook can make use of 16GB at a time. My early-2013 Macbook Pro does 12000 on Geekbench and I think it seldom needs more than 8GB. It only needs 16 (or even 32GB) on bad coded applications, like ImageMagick when doing conversion of image-based PDFs with hundreds of pages. This happens only because it allocates memory for all pages instead of processing only one page at a time per core.

 

[revmacian]

How does the Macbook 2017 1.3 hold up with 8gb for emails, light photoshop and web surfing at the same time?

I'm doing pretty much that type of thing on a 2017 MacBook Pro 13" (non-Touch Bar) with 8GB RAM and I'm not seeing any issues. I just checked Activity Monitor and it's showing Swap Used = 0 bytes since yesterday when I set up the MBP after purchase.

 

[2984839]

I do that (and more) all the time on a MB with those exact specs. It's perfectly fine.

 

[DNAppleGold]

I am have a 2017 rMB with the M3 chip. I originally had the eight gig version but upgraded to16.I use the laptop mostly for work, which means having most of the Microsoft office suite of applications open, along with Salesforce and a few others. I am not one to close a lot of apps and I was finding the eight gigs limiting. I was often at 90% capacity and getting more spinning balls than I would like. I traded in for a 16 gig model and have found a noticeable improvement. I get that 8 gigs should be fine for the purposes I stated, which is why I got 8 gigs to begin with. But I swear there was a difference with the increased RAM. I should say I love it. While not a speed demon, it’s quick enough, great screen , and so portable

 

[EugW]

At ~7000 on Geekbench, I don't know how a Macbook can make use of 16GB at a time. My early-2013 Macbook Pro does 12000 on Geekbench and I think it seldom needs more than 8GB. It only needs 16 (or even 32GB) on bad coded applications, like ImageMagick when doing conversion of image-based PDFs with hundreds of pages. This happens only because it allocates memory for all pages instead of processing only one page at a time per core.

So in other words, 16 GB helps even in your situation.

It’s not as if you are going to rewrite the software for that ImageMagick developer.

I have a similar problem with PowerPoint 2016 BTW. It sometimes uses way more memory than it should be, but having 16 GB mitigates that problem. As of last month, the issue has not yet been corrected. It was released in 2015, 3.5 years ago.