Apple Silicon Unified Memory: How Much Mac RAM Do You Need?

[Abazigal]

I suspect the “magic number” is going to be just a little more than whatever the base model provides. What else are the people here going to complain about, if not manufactured outrage?

Now that 16 is the norm, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before attention turns to the 24 gb ram in the pro M models and how it seems like only a small boost over the default 16 gb and that Apple should provide 32 gb ram instead.

Or something along that line.

 

[BingoBongo123]

Well said...

The other unknown is NPU/AI accelerator performance. Will the RAM needs of future Apple Intelligence features become a problem before the processor performance does?

Also unknown... Will Apple artificially gate future AI features to try and drive hardware sales. For instance, how they don't add new software only camera features to new iPhones due to camera improvements being a selling point for iPhones.

Time will tell where this all goes, but I agree with you that Apple isn't generous so they aren't bumping specs for free or without reason. Likely they have some MacOS 16 AI features that already make it a must have and they want to improve adoption of those features next year by having devices that can use the new features on Day 1.

Many unknown things. We even don't know which of that future stuff will run on device or in their cloud server. It's difficult to predict.

Yeah with the NPU it's a good point. I am sure maybe next year, at latest 2026 there will be on device AI features that won't come to M3 or older models (because of their weaker NPU). As you said, Apple wants Apple Intelligence to sell products. That's the time M1, M2, M3 users have a reason to upgrade, a problem for Apple since years. With M4 series I don't expect to get a problem with getting new AI features in the near future, because of the improved NPU (same story with A17 Pro and newer). M1, M2 and M3 chips weren't designed for AI tasks, because Apple completely missed the AI 'hype train' (same story with the iPhone 15 and older models with to less RAM).

Even the next Pro model iPhones rumored to get 12GB of RAM, which would be a big jump for an iPhone. I don't want to say everyone should be upgrading to 24GB now. It's just, that whole thing to say '16GB for 95% out there' isn't as easy as it was 3 years ago.

 

[Ethosik]

Apple uses LPDDR, while nVidia uses GDDR. GDDR typically has much higher bandwidth, so it is better for graphics intensive applications.

Also, you cannot compare Apple LPDDR memory costs to nVidia GPU costs. That's like comparing apples to oranges.

Lack of VRAM trumps performance. I tested with a colleague's NVIDIA GPU with more VRAM and my Mac Studio was able to advocate more to it.

 

[0423MAC]

I suspect the “magic number” is going to be just a little more than whatever the base model provides. What else are the people here going to complain about, if not manufactured outrage?

Now that 16 is the norm, my guess is that it’s only a matter of time before attention turns to the 24 gb ram in the pro M models and how it seems like only a small boost over the default 16 gb and that Apple should provide 32 gb ram instead.

Or something along that line.

Nah it's likely that it will be storage. 512GB should be standard at this point on the lower entry macs with pro models starting out at 1TB.

 

[frozencarbonite]

I made sure to put 32GB in the M1 machine I bought back in 2022. But now I feel like it’s already not enough in 2024. Too late now though. Can’t install more now. 🤦🏼‍♂️

 

[SMH4KIDIOT]

They sell base models at the lowest price possible and use the upgrade options only a certain percentage of users actually buy to subsidize it all. The best selling Mac is always the entry level air.

Apple is not subsidizing the base models. The profit is bult into the price.

 

[kiranmk2]

Well said...

The other unknown is NPU/AI accelerator performance. Will the RAM needs of future Apple Intelligence features become a problem before the processor performance does?

Also unknown... Will Apple artificially gate future AI features to try and drive hardware sales. For instance, how they don't add new software only camera features to new iPhones due to camera improvements being a selling point for iPhones.

Time will tell where this all goes, but I agree with you that Apple isn't generous so they aren't bumping specs for free or without reason. Likely they have some MacOS 16 AI features that already make it a must have and they want to improve adoption of those features next year by having devices that can use the new features on Day 1.

There does appear to be a new arms race kicking off in the compouting world based around the NPU for the world of AI. I can see the NPU power quadrupling in the next 2-3 years. How that will impact on Mac usability is anyone's guess. As you have mentioned, perhaps you will need an M5 to access the best LLM/AI features by 2026. Thus, I think trying to future proof a Mac today by bumping the RAM is a fools errand unless (i) you need that extra RAM today (ii) you are certain that you don't care if you are cut off from MacOS/AI features in a couple of years due to the increases in NPU. You might not care about AI today, but I can imagine it is only going to become more embedded in the core experience of not just the OS, but most of the software that we use too.

At the same time, until last week, Apple have been selling Macs with 8GB RAM, so I'm fairly convinced that they will have to ensure that MacOS works to an acceptible level on these machines until at least 2028.

 

[ferox83]

Technology is inherently deflationary, so buy what you need now, no need to future proof. The way Apple prices, the value proposition goes down the more you add-on.

You can get two base model for less than the upgrade to 32gb ram and 512gb storage. (With the added benefit of an extra M4 chip).

In other words, the best future proofing is to buy what you need now, then upgrade to the better one later.

 

[maxoakland]

It's not great that MacRumors didn't seem able to critique Apple's lie that 8GB is enough but now all of a sudden you need 16GB for the basics. That makes MacRumors look a little bit like lapdogs

 

[maxoakland]

In other words, the best future proofing is to buy what you need now, then upgrade to the better one later.

That's bad for the environment

which is another reason upgradeability is more important than the slight increase in speed we get from the unified architecture

 

[maxoakland]

Can someone explain the markup on RAM? How does something that costs less than $5 end up costing $1000? The prices below are spot so I assume that large companies like Apple have contracts that likely lower the cost even further.

Obviously there are integration / manufacturing costs for Apple but I can't imagine those costs taking a $5/chip to $200/chip.

https://www.trendforce.com/news/202...igns-of-loosening-likely-to-persist-until-q4/

View attachment 2447222

They're price gouging because they can. We don't have the option to upgrade because they removed it. That wasn't an accident

 

[AlexJaye]

But I was always told that Apple's MagicMacRAM 8GB is enough for everyone, everywhere, no questions asked.

 

[Jay Tee]

For the average user downloading stuff from the App Store, you'll be fine with 16GB. But if you're going to venture into homebrew and beyond, then get more RAM to be safe.

 

[svish]

Good article. Always good to have more RAM. But 16GB should be good enough for a large number of people.

 

[goro123]

I am doing Unity Programming, along with VSCode and Pixelmator for graphics, all open on an MacBook Air M1 with 8GB. Also have plenty of Safari tabs open. I do run into memory issues, but quite rarely.
Those machines are already very powerful. 16GB should be plenty for most people.

 

[phrehdd]

I just wish there was better memory management. Shame we have to compensate for the lack of such a feature by getting more RAM. My time with MacRumor can go between 1/2 gig up to 1.8 gigs on any given visit to this site. That is rather ridiculous. I am sure it is the design of the site set up and the ads that eat up everything they can.

 

[Velli]

Expect RAM use to grow over the life of your Mac. Plan accordingly... Looking to future Mac memory purchase needs:

My Advice: If you have an Apple Silicon (M1, M2, or M3) Mac now with only 8GB of RAM, you may want to consider selling it on eBay or Facebook Marketplace right way, or give it away to a family member, and get a minimum 16GB RAM M4 based chip Mac, before everyone else with an 8GB RAM Mac dumps theirs for cheap, lowering your resale value. 8GB RAM Macs will soon be dinosaurs, in the age of Apple Intelligence and modern memory hungry apps.

If you want to future-proof yourself even more, get a M4 Pro and M4 Max Mac that has Thunderbolt 5 ports, so you can have external Thunderbolt 5 SSD drives (with over 6,000 MB/second transfer rate) and high end displays supporting up to 120 Gbps support. See the first Thunderbolt 5 external SSD drives here: https://www.owc.com/solutions/envoy-ultra

UPDATE for Clarity: If you like what you have, then please keep it. I was just saying in my post that there likely will be a lot of people dumping their 8GB Macs very soon, so if you want to upgrade from a 8GB RAM Mac, do it now, before the resale value of your 8GB RAM Mac tanks.

Thanks for the clarification - I still think the best value will be to upgrade when you need to upgrade, not in anticipation of the future.

My 8GB M1 Air has a resale value of probably 400USD where I live. If I get two years out of it (which is likely with my use), even if resale value goes to zero, that’s a cheap computer. And it won’t, I sold my 12 year old, almost uselessly slow MBP for 150 USD recently. I’ll likely have a “good enough” computer for two more years, costing me max 300 USD, and then I can get an M6, or an M5 on a discount. I’ll even get some interest by investing the money I’m not spending to be “future proof”.

 

[neuropsychguy]

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 system will use the RAM available. If you had less, you’d use less.

Also, you must be doing other things than having just a browser, music, and maps open. Maybe you have browser tabs that are using a lot of RAM though. I have an M1 MBP with 32 GB of RAM and with Chrome with dozens of tabs, Safari with several tabs, Apple Music, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and more running I’ll never go above 50% utilization.

 

[SpanishAppleNerd]

I have 16 on all my Macs, but considering how much I use Parallels, when I upgrade in a few years I am getting at least 24

 

[LeMo]

I have 8Gb on my M1 MBA. It's really fine for the workloads I throw at it and still shows free RAM and low swap when I use it. It's normal productivity tasks - and I expect those will be fine in 5 years with the same amount of RAM.

I do virtualise on dedicated hardware with more RAM.

 

[Velli]

I opted for 32 GB and it idles at 70% usage with browser tabs, music, and maps in the background.

I just checked Activity monitor for probably the first time since the first couple of weeks after buying my 8GB M1 Air. I opened some extra stuff just to see what happens. I have Mail, Safari with four tabs two of which plays video, three Music applications playing music (one playing a hi-res FLAC file from drive, the other two streaming - sounds fun!), Maps, Photos, Word and Excel with a small file but with macros, and I'm at 7GB memory and 900 MB swap. Before opening up extra stuff, it said 6,5GB memory and 500MB swap. None of it seems sluggish to use, however with my light use I probably wouldn't notice if it takes 0,8 or 0,5 seconds to switch apps.

I then opened up my most used game - Bloons TD6 (no, I don't play actual AAA games). This brought the swap to 3GB, and definitely slowed down the system a bit, but not to the point where anything seemed to stutter, and I could still quickly switch around and do various things in each app. Still felt no more sluggish than my 16GB Lenovo (on which I experienced stuttery hi-res audio playback with TWO apps open...). This is more heavy use than I would EVER do under normal circumstances.

Without knowing anything about memory addressing, it seems to me that the system manages it in a way where it prioritizes spreading ressources and slowing down the system a bit, over massively swapping. Since this slowed-down state is actually still fast enough for surfing, mailing, writing in Word etc, it seems a good compromise for "casual use".

 

[Velli]

Few months ago there was a similar article saying 8GB RAM was enough for most.

Source? I only remember reading articles that said 8GB RAM was enough for "light usage". Not for "most users", unless you assume most users are light users.

According to Apple, 8GB in a Mac is the equivalent of 32GB in Windows.

Source? I specifically remember Apple claiming 8GB in a Mac is equivalent to 16GB in Windows (which rhymes with my personal experience).

 

[Velli]

My wife inherited my 2019 Intel Macbook Air with 8 gb of Ram when I bought my M3 Macbook Pro with 18 gb of Ram.

So I did a test a couple of days ago; I did an export to Movie of a Keynote file with 500 slides, all the slides have animations on the slide. I did the export to 1080p at 60 fps.

Result: my MBP M3 with 18 gb of Ram did the export in 24 minutes. My wifes 2019 MBA with 8 gb of ram did the export in 52 minutes.

Sure, mine was a bit more than twice as fast. But her nearly 6 year old MBA with 8 gb of RAM had zero problem doing the task.

She never, ever does anything of that nature on her MBA. She's happy as can be with the computer, doing light graphics work and basic browsing and productivity work.

If you need more, you know you need more. But most people, by a very large margin, simply don't even think about RAM, and suffer very little for it.

Consider also that a 2019 Macbook Air is Intel. An 8GB M1 would be WAY faster than that.

 

[Velli]

I need 192GB now, and even that doesn’t seem like it will be enough in a couple of years.

For some users, I'm sure that is 100% correct.

 

[Velli]

Can someone explain the markup on RAM? How does something that costs less than $5 end up costing $1000? The prices below are spot so I assume that large companies like Apple have contracts that likely lower the cost even further.

Obviously there are integration / manufacturing costs for Apple but I can't imagine those costs taking a $5/chip to $200/chip.

https://www.trendforce.com/news/202...igns-of-loosening-likely-to-persist-until-q4/

View attachment 2447222

The price on almost anything you purchase from any company is not based on the cost price, but on which selling price gives the highest total income. A lot of people assume that pricing involves taking the cost price and adding some specific margin on top of that. That's not how it works, and usually it's actually calculated the other way around: You start with figuring out which product at what price can give you the most revenue, and then you try to manufacture that as cheaply as possible, and you take whichever margin that results in, assuming it is enough to make the business case valid. Apple's cost price on RAM is irrelevant, the fact is that they are able to charge 200USD for 8GB extra RAM, so that's what they do. Whether that costs them 150 USD or 1 USD, is irrelevant. As long as they are not deemed to be misusing a monopoly.