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Any M4 Pro 24 vs 48GB RAM comparisons?

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Kaitlyn2004

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 17, 2008
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I’ve been trying to watch and read many of the reviews I can find, but I’m not really finding anything covering the 24 vs 48gb ram conundrum.

I am very new to apple silicon and I know the memory is shared but also used more efficiently. I’ve got 32gb on my current pc. But the jump from 24 to 48 is a big jump and also a big cost.

I primarily am working in the photo editing space. But I also do tend to be a bit “sporadic” in my computer usage. I may open a bunch of tabs and whatnot, and I know some programs will make use of available ram… but that doesn’t mean the same thing as you actually needing it or it making a measurable difference or truly offloading disk swap usage.

I also hear a lot that more ram would help with longevity but base units also used to be (disappointingly!) 8gb. That default is now 16, and the m4 pro has a bump from even that at 24.
 
Kaitlyn2004 said:
I’ve been trying to watch and read many of the reviews I can find, but I’m not really finding anything covering the 24 vs 48gb ram conundrum.

I am very new to apple silicon and I know the memory is shared but also used more efficiently. I’ve got 32gb on my current pc. But the jump from 24 to 48 is a big jump and also a big cost.

I primarily am working in the photo editing space. But I also do tend to be a bit “sporadic” in my computer usage. I may open a bunch of tabs and whatnot, and I know some programs will make use of available ram… but that doesn’t mean the same thing as you actually needing it or it making a measurable difference or truly offloading disk swap usage.

I also hear a lot that more ram would help with longevity but base units also used to be (disappointingly!) 8gb. That default is now 16, and the m4 pro has a bump from even that at 24.
Click to expand...
Please check "memory pressure" in activity monitor in the middle of your work and while on the "sporadic spree". If it stays green all the time, 24GB will be OK. If it's in the high yellow range, you'll need to get an upgrade.
There is no magic with the Apple Silicon unified memory, you need the same amount as on Intel systems.
 
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Andrey84 said:
Please check "memory pressure" in activity monitor in the middle of your work and while on the "sporadic spree". If it stays green all the time, 24GB will be OK. If it's in the high yellow range, you'll need to get an upgrade.
There is no magic with the Apple Silicon unified memory, you need the same amount as on Intel systems.
Click to expand...
I don’t have my Mac in hand just yet but have heard about this memory pressure a few times.

Over what timeframe will it be displaying my memory pressure? Can I fool around and stuff for 10 minutes, then see how high the pressure got over that time? How much swap was used?

Presumably unless you have TONS of ram, swap will always happen basically right? So what amount of swap is reasonable vs excessive?
 
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Kaitlyn2004 said:
I don’t have my Mac in hand just yet but have heard about this memory pressure a few times.

Over what timeframe will it be displaying my memory pressure? Can I fool around and stuff for 10 minutes, then see how high the pressure got over that time? How much swap was used?

Presumably unless you have TONS of ram, swap will always happen basically right? So what amount of swap is reasonable vs excessive?
Click to expand...
Just simulate your normal workflow and check the colour of memory pressure. Do it several times for different scenarios.
This colour is the most important thing, as some swapping is always going on.
You don't need to look at any numbers, just check the graph.
 
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Basic75 said:
How much swap is used is less important than the rate at wich the swap space is written to and read from. Is editing photos part of your job?
Click to expand...
I used to be a pro photographer but taking an extended break

It’s not like upgrading the ram would put me in financial hardship, but I also don’t want to just throw away money on principle alone.

So if it’s not amount and it’s the rate.. is there sort of a baseline of acceptable vs excessive?
 
Kaitlyn2004 said:
So if it’s not amount and it’s the rate.. is there sort of a baseline of acceptable vs excessive?
Click to expand...
That depends on a lot of factors, some of them subjective. I got my M1 Max with 64GB so that I don't have to think about swap for the next couple of years even when running 20 apps and 2 VMs.
 
Kaitlyn2004 said:
I used to be a pro photographer but taking an extended break

It’s not like upgrading the ram would put me in financial hardship, but I also don’t want to just throw away money on principle alone.

So if it’s not amount and it’s the rate.. is there sort of a baseline of acceptable vs excessive?
Click to expand...
I consider 128GB excessive. My wife has that now in her iMac. I'm sure it would've worked the same with 64GB, even though Mac OS shows that it uses all 128GB. Memory pressure is in the low green zone all the time though.

48GB for you is not excessive, because you're on 32GB now, and you're doings lots of photo editing. It becomes even less excessive if you tend to keep your Macs for a long time, i.e. more than 5 years.
 
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Kaitlyn2004 said:
I primarily am working in the photo editing space. But I also do tend to be a bit “sporadic” in my computer usage. I may open a bunch of tabs and whatnot, and I know some programs will make use of available ram… but that doesn’t mean the same thing as you actually needing it or it making a measurable difference or truly offloading disk swap usage.
Click to expand...

I do a lot of photo editing. Presuming that you're not editing 100GB panoramas stitched together from large format bodies, 24GB should be fine. I had to use Capture One Pro to edit RAW photos on a borrowed 8GB Early M1 for a while. To my utter surprise, it just worked.

Kaitlyn2004 said:
I also hear a lot that more ram would help with longevity but base units also used to be (disappointingly!) 8gb. That default is now 16, and the m4 pro has a bump from even that at 24.
Click to expand...

If you're referring to wear on your SSD by longevity, you don't need to worry about that. The SSDs in Macs are enterprise class and can take a lot of wear and tear. If by longevity, you're talking about future proofing... nobody can predict the future. Just buy what you need. Memory pressure can be a misleading stat.

I've been doing photo work alongside running virtual machines as a developer on 16GB of RAM for 3 years now and had no issues worse than a rare stutter every now and then. I'm considering upgrading to a 48GB M4 Pro, but only because I want to have a second copy of MacOS running in a VM for software testing. Otherwise, I'd consider 24GB more than enough.

I may ultimately stick to 24GB anyway because I've already run a virtual Mac that only got allocated 8GB and it was fine for what I needed it for.
 
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Basic75 said:
What do you mean with "enterprise class", that they still use MLC instead of TLC? Do you have a source for that?
Click to expand...
Browse through this thread right about here:

Also, someone here decided to try to kill the SSD on a couple of Mac Minis because he was going to swap out the SSDs anyway. He subjected to a script to perform continuous writes until they died. They never died. They kept going.

I'm not sure if that experiment is part of the thread above or not.

Anyway, you can use tools to check your SSD health rating. Even when you're doing some insane things, the health percentage rarely changes.
 
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smirking said:
Hey I found the thread from that guy who tried to kill the SSDs in his two Mac Minis.
Click to expand...
This looks like the important part:
I wrote with a script 700TB of data before their SMART "remaining life" status went to 0% which is remarkable for 256GB SSDs. This is a 700TBW "official" lifetime.
Click to expand...
700TB on a 256GB drive is 2800 writes. That's better than the 1000 normal for TLC but not close to the 10000 for MLC. So Apple is either using the best TLC or the worst MLC chips.
 
Basic75 said:
This looks like the important part:

700TB on a 256GB drive is 2800 writes. That's better than the 1000 normal for TLC but not close to the 10000 for MLC. So Apple is either using the best TLC or the worst MLC chips.
Click to expand...

You should ask the guy who ran the experiment. He sounds like he'd have something interesting to say.
 
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