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Apple Silicon Unified Memory: How Much Mac RAM Do You Need?
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I keep hoping. But the M1 minis are holding price very well. Maybe they will come down after Christmas. The 2018's are selling for the same price as the M1s probably because they can run Windows and Linux with no compromises. It is an interesting time.
I opted for 32 GB and it idles at 70% usage with browser tabs, music, and maps in the background.
The debate would be over if the cost to upgrade is more reasonable, but Apple needs their margins and planned obsolescence...
The debate would be over if the cost to upgrade is more reasonable, but Apple needs their margins and planned obsolescence...
wow. My safari is using 82 MB, Mail is using 60 MB. Have you been hacked?
At work I was using a PC with 256 GB of RAM, for image processing (lightsheet). 128 GB was the bare minimum... We have computers with 1,024 GB RAM on each node.
It will never stop.
For a Mac at home I will now consider that 32 GB is the minimum to be safe in the coming years (5 years max). Right now I'm using a MBA M1 with 16GB, and the extra RAM was a great "investment".
It will never stop.
For a Mac at home I will now consider that 32 GB is the minimum to be safe in the coming years (5 years max). Right now I'm using a MBA M1 with 16GB, and the extra RAM was a great "investment".
Nothing says “I love you like” like dumping your useless tech on a family member.
64GB has been good for our needs (pro photographers) and 16GB for my wife's backup 16" MBP is perfectly fine for general use and some editing as well. My gaming PC has 32GB and that's also more than enough, it's the ancient i5 and GTX 970 that are the bottleneck there. Can't complain, I got it for free and have put less than $200 into upgrades (RAM, SSD, newer wifi card).
I agree. They can become a decent "chromebook" for kids and school.
I went back to school to learn Swift + Kotlin and bought an M2 MacBook Air 15-inch with 16Gb RAM + 512Gb SSD. It's enough for Xcode to run smoothly but I should've at least bought it with 1GB of SSD. Still the MBP14 is tempting... 😏😏
LOL RIGHT!
that's all I see when discussing 8gb ram... "they need 16gb to be the base ram", and now they did it, and it's not enough 😂
I wish I had 196GB
I do
And I have 6/12 slots left still. Will hang on to this Mac Pro until they catch up with the GPU... There are rumours there might be a discreet Apple Silicon GPU in the next Studio / Pro. That might be a game changer.Mac Pro 2019 with Vega II duo - 28.3 Tflops
Mac Pro 2022 with M2 Ultra - 27.2m Tflops
Which is great and all...
but the Nvidia 4090 is 82.58 Tflops and the 5090 is probably about 110...
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I just picked up a used M2 Max Mac Studio base model for $1,350 on Facebook Marketplace here in the Saint Louis, Missouri area. I see many Mac Studio M1 Max used base models for about $999 on eBay and Facebook Marketplace. It looks like some Mac Studio owners are dumping their M1 Max, M1 Ultra, or M2 Max Mac Studio models to get M4 Max or M4 Pro MacBooks or Mac mini models.I keep hoping. But the M1 minis are holding price very well. Maybe they will come down after Christmas. The 2018's are selling for the same price as the M1s probably because they can run Windows and Linux with no compromises. It is an interesting time.
I can't even currently sell on Facebook my iMac Pro (w/ 27" Monitor) with 18 core Xeon, 256GB RAM, AMD Vega 64X 16GB video card, and 2TB internal SSD for $850. That custom iMac Pro was almost $15,000 new from Apple in 2019. No one has expressed any interest.
I can imagine how 2019 Mac Pro tower owners feel also with the low resale prices they are seeing.
Soon the minimum bar to purchase a Mac will likely be M4, M4 Pro, or M4 Max or higher for new purchases. Why get lower single core speeds and lower web browser speeds with an Intel, M1, M2, or even an M3 Mac, when for only $499 (with education discount) you can get a new 16GB M4 Mac mini that is faster at single core and neural engine speeds than the older Intel and M1, M2, and M3 Mac models?
Due to the long life of a Mac, the amount of memory picked on a new purchase will not be enough in a few years. Even with Safari's basic ad-blocking, web designers keep upping the amount of media and other crud cluttering up their pages that soak up CPU & memory. Plus the annoying tendency for the media to be downloaded first rather than the desired content, the page getting refreshed several times as it's rearranged, and the fan volume increasing before everything settles down.
Figure out how much you need and go up a least one level to reduce the frustration factor that will happen in a couple years at most.
Figure out how much you need and go up a least one level to reduce the frustration factor that will happen in a couple years at most.
Or 16GB. I am a professional Designer working on an M1Pro mit 16 GB since it was released. Never had any performance issues or had to wait with a lot of documents open in figma, sketch, adode ps, safariwith multiple tabs, slack, mail and many more apps simultaneously open.
I usually buy a high end config with a lot of memory because I keep it for 6-7 years. Although next time I'm thinking I might get something more in the middle like an M9 Pro and max out whatever memory option it has, and then keep it for 4 years instead. Like the new M4 Pro (high) with 48GB memory and 2TB SSD would save me nearly $1000 over my M3 Max (high) with 64GB memory, and it has better battery life, so I could just upgrade it more frequently without losing as much on the sale. And I don't need as much memory because I'm not keeping it as long.
Probably 48 GB is a typically good number for M4 Pro usages. Folks who would use more RAM typically should be on an M4 Max chip.
Web browsing speeds? Really?? 😆
I have an M1 Air. My buddy has a M3 MBP with 32gb. Browsing is identical..sure, you can benchmark and see a difference, but it’s imperceptible by a human.
Rendering, compiling, games, sure. Web browing….lol
My personal needs are a bit higher as ideally I would want a MacBook Pro to ship with a 256GB RAM option, but perhaps in the next year or so that will be a reality. Of course I will also complain about the price like everyone else does
What type of work required 256GB or RAM, curious.
16 is enough for anybody, except for people who know why they need more. If you can't articulate why you need more than 16, you don't. And don't give me that "future proofing" song and dance. It's your money, do what you want, but it's unnecessary.
I guess I'm still old-school. I select the amount of ram based on the number of physical cores (performance cores) . I do not like to go below 4 GB per core, ideally 6 GB --- used in scientific computing.
I stopped "future proofing" a long time ago. Base model has always been enough for me.
It is plenty for my lightweight use case.
If it somehow ends up not being enough, i'll just sell it and buy a new one and get all the other advantages of that new model. But i still don't have a reason to replace my 2020 M1 Air with 8GB, even though when it was released (and waaay earlier) people were complaining about 8GB being too little. 4 years later it has not slowed down one bit.
i don't expect this to be any different by the time i'm buying a model with base 16GB.
It is plenty for my lightweight use case.
If it somehow ends up not being enough, i'll just sell it and buy a new one and get all the other advantages of that new model. But i still don't have a reason to replace my 2020 M1 Air with 8GB, even though when it was released (and waaay earlier) people were complaining about 8GB being too little. 4 years later it has not slowed down one bit.
i don't expect this to be any different by the time i'm buying a model with base 16GB.