Can someone walk me through the logic of future proofing with 16gb RAM?

[CausticPuppy]

For the vast majority of users "future proofing" is nothing more than misguided buying advice. It serves no purpose other than to give Apple more money.

Not necessarily... "future proofing" means that you ensure your system will still be performing acceptably well in a few years. If you upgrade to a new computer every year, you probably don't need to go beyond the base config.

However, if you still want to make sure your system is usable in 3 years (still within the lifespan of Applecare), you want to make sure it meets the requirements of 2-3 future revisions of the operating system.

My macbook pro is over 3 years old, and if I hadn't upgraded to 8GB (which isn't even officially supported but it works) it would be barely scraping by running Lion, Aperture 3.x, virtualbox, etc. But with 8GB I can get at least another year out of it running very capably, especially if I put in an SSD which I might do when Mountain Lion comes out.

"Future proofing" simply means extending the usable life of a computer by 1 to 2 years beyond the typical lifespan, which would be 3 years based on applecare.

The only thing with the rMBP is you have to do your "future proofing" up front, at least for the RAM. 8GB of memory was expensive when I bought my laptop, but I added it a couple years later much more cheaply.

 

[HowEver]

I would have "future-proofed" had the 16GB model been available in stores OR had the online/educational/telephone sales methods taken my Apple store gift cards. I 'settled' for the in-store 8GB model. Of course, it's not likely I'll ever be able to tell the difference, but would have liked to have had that choice.

 

[colour]

You call it business model? I call it niche market. Look at LV bags. It's just ordinary bags, we've all seen bags that have more durability than those. But still many people with enough cash buy it. If LV try to make it into mass market, people won't buy it, because it's cheap. You will doubt the quality,etcs (althought they have exactly the same material).

You have no idea about LV, firstly, LV's status can not be compared to apples, if you had any idea about the companies history you would know that. So you learn something today, once upon a time apple computers were very expensive and designed to cater for a specific market. Today apples computers are design for the mainstream, more affordable and priced to compete with the consumer market. Unlike you and most people around, I don't buy products because they have a reputation of being superior, apple 2006 isn't apple 2010-2012.

Apple is like red bull they have some pretty cool products, they are different and niche but they are successful in how they are able to sell and market anything. The worst thing is seeing people switching over to osx as a result of the iPad over the past few years, if you have been following the company closely you would see its shift in priorities/quality ect.

To me, the OSX itself and the design are good things about apple.

Buy a refurb 15" or 13" with 4GB ram then, or a mac mini.

But this is true, OSX is why apple computers are so good, a large part of switcher buy apple computers for the image or product aesthetic reasons, which although apple make nice products some design choices are very poor and apples competitors make equally as good / better computers today.

Do you know why there are a lot of questions about this RAM upgrade? I'm sure all the askers all capable of affording the RAM. They need assurance boosts from other. It is natural.

Assurance boost from fan boys ? You'll be sure to get most expensive advice, more than likely the wrong advice. Third party RAM upgrades is your answer, and ram is dirty cheap as prices drop like crazy. . . if you have money to burn on these things then don't post on the forum and buy a $4000 macbook ultimate of choice every year.

 

[katmeef]

Here is one possible advantage to 8g that hasnt been discussed much, with 16 gigs of ram your system has to write 16 gigs to the ssd every time it goes into standby mode (roughly an hour or so after entering normal sleep), http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392 - over time that's allot of writes just from standby mode on the ssd.

If im not making sense let me know but if someone who lightly uses the 16gig rmbp at random times every day goes into standby mode 7 times a day, that's over 112 gigs written in just one day. Almost 41tb a year of writes to the ssd just for standby mode which would have been halved if the computer had 8 gigs of ram.

Of course the user could disable the standby mode and safe sleep features entirely, but doing so would loose the 30 day standby capacity of the machine as well possibly lead to data loss if the batteries run dry without the memory saved to disc.

Am I just paranoid or does that seem like allot of writes on the ssd? It's one of the things making me question if I really need to return the base model I have and get the 16 gig model, if future proofing (I never use more than 8g today) will take allot of life out the ssd over time is it such a good idea?

 

[P0stalTek]

Agreed, while I could close photoshop when I need to open Vmware, I choose not too because I'll need it, or keep safari open with a bunch of tabs when I open word and excel.

The 16gb of ram ensures that I can keep working the way I want to without having the laptop slow down, due to page outs. Given the price difference, and the lack of upgrading later on, its a no brainer to opt for the 16gb.

I do that currently on a late 2011 MBP with 8GB of memory. That said, I have been eyeing a 16GB kit for purely "why not" reasons, but for me that is only a $110 proposition for top of the line.

 

[Dangerous Theory]

Here is one possible advantage to 8g that hasnt been discussed much, with 16 gigs of ram your system has to write 16 gigs to the ssd every time it goes into standby mode (roughly an hour or so after entering normal sleep), http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392 - over time that's allot of writes just from standby mode on the ssd.

If im not making sense let me know but if someone who lightly uses the 16gig rmbp at random times every day goes into standby mode 7 times a day, that's over 112 gigs written in just one day. Almost 41tb a year of writes to the ssd just for standby mode which would have been halved if the computer had 8 gigs of ram.

Of course the user could disable the standby mode and safe sleep features entirely, but doing so would loose the 30 day standby capacity of the machine as well possibly lead to data loss if the batteries run dry without the memory saved to disc.

Am I just paranoid or does that seem like allot of writes on the ssd? It's one of the things making me question if I really need to return the base model I have and get the 16 gig model, if future proofing (I never use more than 8g today) will take allot of life out the ssd over time is it such a good idea?

Are you not confusing standby with hibernation? I could be wrong, but I thought in standby mode just puts the computer in low-power while keeping the RAM active (hence you get almost-instant wakeup times). Hibernation is a much deeper sleep that writes the RAM to the HDD/SSD page file before shutting it down.

 

[Feed Me]

Am I just paranoid or does that seem like allot of writes on the ssd? It's one of the things making me question if I really need to return the base model I have and get the 16 gig model, if future proofing (I never use more than 8g today) will take allot of life out the ssd over time is it such a good idea?

You're assuming that the 16gb RAM is 100% full every time the user sleeps the machine. I doubt Inactive or Free memory is written to the drive when entering standby mode.

Also, my iMac has been on for about 5 hours today, and according to Activity Monitor, I've done 4.5GB of reads and 2.6GB of writes without doing anything taxing on the system. Just imagine the size of the reads/writes if I were editing photos or movies.

16GB (at worst) of writes is a trivial amount. If SSDs aren't able to last for years under typical loads of several hundred GB a day, they wouldn't be used.

 

[cruggles]

Now people are saying that you need 16GB? LOL What ever.

I can give you a good reason.

I just bought a camera with 36.3 megapixels. There's a noticeable difference in handling between 8 and 16GB, especially if you have more than one image open in more than one application at a time.

All cameras are heading into higher and higher megapixel realms. Only matter of time before 24-36mp is straight-up normal on ever camera.

Given the price difference, and the lack of upgrading later on, its a no brainer to opt for the 16gb.

... ^^^ what he said...

 

[gpzjock]

4 GB vs. 8 GB vs. 16 GB

I Geekbenched my Mum's 13" i5 MBP before and after doubling the RAM from 4 GB to 8 GB: http://browser.primatelabs.com/geekbench2/compare/565556/404974
The overall score raised just 230 points, very small change but the cost of the upgrade was only £36.75.
Looking at the stream performance (last column of tests) the difference is over 1600 points or about 30% faster. If you need a boost to your data stream then double the RAM makes sense. If you don't why bother?

When I increased my Mac Pro 3,1 from 10 GB to 16 GB I didn't notice much difference until I had about a dozen things running in the background while playing WoW, the 16 GB made slowdowns less common.

As for the future, if you think your rMBP needs 16 GB then buy one with it in. If you think 8 GB is adequate for the whole of its useful life, then you save some dollars, just not many compared to the cost price of the whole laptop.....

 

[katmeef]

Are you not confusing standby with hibernation? I could be wrong, but I thought in standby mode just puts the computer in low-power while keeping the RAM active (hence you get almost-instant wakeup times). Hibernation is a much deeper sleep that writes the RAM to the HDD/SSD page file before shutting it down.

Hibernate mode does it as well as standby (deep sleep) From the apple page explaining standby on airs and rmbp http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392


A computer with a fully charged battery can remain in standby for up to thirty days without being plugged into an AC power source.*

The state of the computer is saved to the flash storage (SSD), then the power to the hardware subsystems turns off to increase the length of the standby. For example, RAM memory and the USB bus are powered off during the standby.

You're assuming that the 16gb RAM is 100% full every time the user sleeps the machine. I doubt Inactive or Free memory is written to the drive when entering standby mode.

Also, my iMac has been on for about 5 hours today, and according to Activity Monitor, I've done 4.5GB of reads and 2.6GB of writes without doing anything taxing on the system. Just imagine the size of the reads/writes if I were editing photos or movies.

16GB (at worst) of writes is a trivial amount. If SSDs aren't able to last for years under typical loads of several hundred GB a day, they wouldn't be used.

16 gb is trivial, but 41 tb a year certainly is not.

It would be nice if you were right about not writing inactive or free memory to the Sleepimage.... But as a test to verify, you could delete the Sleepimage at /var/vm/Sleepimage and cause your system to standby with half ram used. You will see the new Sleepimage file that gets created will be the size of your systems ram regardless how much of it you're using at the time.

More info: http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-optimize-sleepimage.html

 

[Feed Me]

16 gb is trivial, but 41 tb a year certainly is not.

Actually, 41 tb a year is trivial.

Your average NAND MLC cell (the type found in consumers SSDs), can withstand 10,000 writes.

On a 512gb SSD, that's 5,120,000 gb of writes throughout the SSD's lifetime.

Let's assume you plan to use your computer for three years.
Over the span of three years, you can write 4,675 gb per day before the drive (on average) will fail.
Per year, you can afford to do about 1.7 million gigabytes of writes.
41,000 gb is very very trivial indeed when compared to the actual limits of the drive.

 

[katmeef]

I think the point is being lost that twice as many writes are being used up by doubling the ram. If there's no need in ones usage over the life of the machine for the 16 gb ram, its causing needless wear on the ssd.

Maybe 41tb annually of system generated writes does not concern you, however we do not know if the drive is really going to last 5,120,000 gb of writes. Its
not unheard of for ssds to fail far before the mtbf, and it is write cycles that cause the wear..

 

[zerotiu]

You have no idea about LV, firstly, LV's status can not be compared to apples, if you had any idea about the companies history you would know that. So you learn something today, once upon a time apple computers were very expensive and designed to cater for a specific market. Today apples computers are design for the mainstream, more affordable and priced to compete with the consumer market. Unlike you and most people around, I don't buy products because they have a reputation of being superior, apple 2006 isn't apple 2010-2012.

Apple is like red bull they have some pretty cool products, they are different and niche but they are successful in how they are able to sell and market anything. The worst thing is seeing people switching over to osx as a result of the iPad over the past few years, if you have been following the company closely you would see its shift in priorities/quality ect.

Once upon a time , my only mac I have is MBP early 08 with 2gb and I use it until now, to type this post. I've worked with many macs,PCs, iPads, Android tabs, but this is my only Apple product. So I'm not the one that like to buy anything new, unless my current gadgets exceed my time period for change.

and I think you don't get my previous idea. I compare thin 'premium' laptop from Apple and HP (spectre). Look at the price. They are the same to me (I accept that mac is more expensive because it uses OSX) . For windows users, they are expensive. For Apple users, retina is also expensive. They both have the same price to upgrade 16GB RAM.

The mainstream product from Apple today are macbook air and macbook pro 13".

Remember when Apple launched MBA for the first time? Do you still remember the price? It has premium price. At that time, MBA was not for mainstream market. It is a niche market. It is the same with retina now.

Buy a refurb 15" or 13" with 4GB ram then, or a mac mini.

I'm saying this in retina context. Not the previous model.

Assurance boost from fan boys ? You'll be sure to get most expensive advice, more than likely the wrong advice. Third party RAM upgrades is your answer, and ram is dirty cheap as prices drop like crazy. . . if you have money to burn on these things then don't post on the forum and buy a $4000 macbook ultimate of choice every year.

Yeah... I'm a fan boy with only 1 mac. If you read my previous-previous-previous-previous post , I've said that I buy 16GB to satisfy myself because I haven't had any new macs for at least 4 years. I have PCs though.. So it is OP's choice after read my comment.

and to make it clear, I made my previous comment because I don't agree about your view about Apple. I currently use macs, windows, android tab + phone and blackberry. Definitely I'm Apple fanboy!

I assure you that I love Apple. Why? Because by using OSX (don't tell me to buy refurb mac because we are here inside this thread want a RMBP, not MBP), I can increase my productivity compared with windows.

From your comments, I don't know, it seems you hate Apple so much. What I think now :

*You think Apple is greedy -> don't like apple products -> why are you here?

*If you are here -> you like / at least use apple product -> then why it seems no support at all?

*No support comments at all about Apple-> I assume you don't use Apple product -> why you are here?

Because we are all fanboy of something. I am Apple fanboy, I am windows fanboy, I am android fanboy, I'm not really a blackberry fanboy though (use it only for works) and I am rainy-day fanboy. The difference is the level between those categories.

 

[Feed Me]

I think the point is being lost that twice as many writes are being used up by doubling the ram. If there's no need in ones usage over the life of the machine for the 16 gb ram, its causing needless wear on the ssd.

Maybe 41tb annually of system generated writes does not concern you, however we do not know if the drive is really going to last 5,120,000 gb of writes. Its
not unheard of for ssds to fail far before the mtbf, and it is write cycles that cause the wear..

I'm not even sure where you got the 41 TB figure from.
are you assuming the average user will put their rMBP into standby 7 times a day 365 days a year? Because that's the only way I can arrive at your 41 TB conclusion.

In actual reality, writes to the SSD due to standby mode will never even approach 41 TB/year in 99% of cases. No sane user sleeps their computer that much, and even if they did, it wouldn't matter, as 41 TB/year of writes is a trivial amount.

TL;DR: Writes caused by sleeping your rMBP with 16gb of RAM are a non issue.

 

[Dangerous Theory]

Hibernate mode does it as well as standby (deep sleep) From the apple page explaining standby on airs and rmbp http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392


A computer with a fully charged battery can remain in standby for up to thirty days without being plugged into an AC power source.*

The state of the computer is saved to the flash storage (SSD), then the power to the hardware subsystems turns off to increase the length of the standby. For example, RAM memory and the USB bus are powered off during the standby.



16 gb is trivial, but 41 tb a year certainly is not.

Ah, my mistake, I was thinking of standby and sleep as one and the same. So there's effectively 3 forms of sleep mode Thanks for the information though.

 

[Benbikeman]

For the relatively small price premium on an expensive laptop, I think it's a no-brainer if you intend to keep the machine longer than a year or so.

If you buy 8Gb and you make the wrong decision, worst-case is you've spent a lot of cash on a machine which fails to keep up with future demands and has to be replaced. If you buy 16Gb and make the wrong decision, worst-case is you've paid 10% more than you needed to.

As an indication, I bought a mid-2009 MBP 17 with 4Gb RAM, and there came a point where I was getting >1Gb page-outs (lots of photo-processsing work). An upgrade to 8Gb cured that. At some point, a future version of OSX, more demanding photo-processing, a need to include video or higher-resolution photos is going to require 16Gb. With an upgradeable machine, you can do the upgrades as & when required; with a non-upgradeable one, better to risk over-paying a bit than over-paying a lot when you have to buy a new one early.

 

[VFC]

Not necessarily... "future proofing" means that you ensure your system will still be performing acceptably well in a few years. If you upgrade to a new computer every year, you probably don't need to go beyond the base config.

However, if you still want to make sure your system is usable in 3 years (still within the lifespan of Applecare), you want to make sure it meets the requirements of 2-3 future revisions of the operating system.

My macbook pro is over 3 years old, and if I hadn't upgraded to 8GB (which isn't even officially supported but it works) it would be barely scraping by running Lion, Aperture 3.x, virtualbox, etc. But with 8GB I can get at least another year out of it running very capably, especially if I put in an SSD which I might do when Mountain Lion comes out.

"Future proofing" simply means extending the usable life of a computer by 1 to 2 years beyond the typical lifespan, which would be 3 years based on applecare.

The only thing with the rMBP is you have to do your "future proofing" up front, at least for the RAM. 8GB of memory was expensive when I bought my laptop, but I added it a couple years later much more cheaply.

I agree with your post. The only thing I would add is future proofing also applies to resell (if you are the type who sells your old equipment). You could get a premium and more prospective buyers if you are selling a hardwired rMBP that Is still able to run the current level OS at a reasonable performance level. Now you will take a ding on the price because of the cost to replace the battery.

 

[photosaurus]

My opinion: If you currently find yourself fully utilizing 8, get 16. 4 or less? get 8. You only have 4 currently, and it's constantly using swap? Get 16.

Personally, I had 8 and was constantly using swap. I got 16 on my new rMBP, and I've snuck my way into swap several times already. If they offered a 24, I'd regret not getting it.

If you're in my shoes, here's some advice for avoiding swap. When you see you're at the tipping point, run the command "purge" from a Terminal.

I deal with very large aperture libraries, very large image files, and very large java projects. No VM's, though I do run VNC sessions. I've hit swap on my 16g just using Aperture and PS alone, with maybe a few browser tabs open.

That said, my wife uses Aperture with much smaller libraries and images on a 4g macbook air. It gets by just fine.

 

[Tibits]

For the vast majority of users "future proofing" is nothing more than misguided buying advice. It serves no purpose other than to give Apple more money.

You very well may recoup that $ when you go to sell and 16GB is the standard.

 

[7even]

Here is one possible advantage to 8g that hasnt been discussed much, with 16 gigs of ram your system has to write 16 gigs to the ssd every time it goes into standby mode (roughly an hour or so after entering normal sleep), http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4392 - over time that's allot of writes just from standby mode on the ssd.

If im not making sense let me know but if someone who lightly uses the 16gig rmbp at random times every day goes into standby mode 7 times a day, that's over 112 gigs written in just one day. Almost 41tb a year of writes to the ssd just for standby mode which would have been halved if the computer had 8 gigs of ram.

Of course the user could disable the standby mode and safe sleep features entirely, but doing so would loose the 30 day standby capacity of the machine as well possibly lead to data loss if the batteries run dry without the memory saved to disc.

Am I just paranoid or does that seem like allot of writes on the ssd? It's one of the things making me question if I really need to return the base model I have and get the 16 gig model, if future proofing (I never use more than 8g today) will take allot of life out the ssd over time is it such a good idea?

I actually checked for this, and the default hibernate mode on the rMBP is actually 0, so I think safe sleep is disabled by default I'm guessing it only goes to hibernate when the battery is critically low.

 

[gentlefury]

I don't really see it as "future proofing" I hate that phrase...nothing can be future proof. A well built machine will last a good 4+ years...but that doesn't mean its future proof...just that you paid enough to have a lasting machine.

I personally need 16GB ram for what I do. I have maxed that out many times on one project.

 

[Pipper99]

For the relatively small price premium on an expensive laptop, I think it's a no-brainer if you intend to keep the machine longer than a year or so.

If you buy 8Gb and you make the wrong decision, worst-case is you've spent a lot of cash on a machine which fails to keep up with future demands and has to be replaced. If you buy 16Gb and make the wrong decision, worst-case is you've paid 10% more than you needed to.

As an indication, I bought a mid-2009 MBP 17 with 4Gb RAM, and there came a point where I was getting >1Gb page-outs (lots of photo-processsing work). An upgrade to 8Gb cured that. At some point, a future version of OSX, more demanding photo-processing, a need to include video or higher-resolution photos is going to require 16Gb. With an upgradeable machine, you can do the upgrades as & when required; with a non-upgradeable one, better to risk over-paying a bit than over-paying a lot when you have to buy a new one early.

You took the words right out of my fingers.

 

[gsmumbo]

Personally I got the 8GB as I got it in store and they don't customize with higher RAM(looking at that shipping thread, yeah I need it before a month from now). I can say though that 16GB is beneficial beyond just future proofing. I work from home and as such I regularly have Parallels open with some Windows only tools, Chrome, Excel, Word, Skype, Colloquy and a few more apps open that are all eating away at my RAM. I would definitely love having the 16GB for now. I can only imagine what we'll need in the future.

 

[01mggt]

I bought mine with 16gb of ram for "future proofing" so to speak. Here is why, I plan to use the computer for 4 years of college and almost a year worth of use before I even start college (Currently finishing up my last year of military service) . So I understand the CPU and video card will be outdated. However, my MacBook that I just sold to get this was from 2008. It was the first unibody macbook. And YES, the core2duo and 9400m video card were outdated but, with 8gb ram and a hybrid ssd/mechanical hard drive it ran great. By future proofing I think alot of people are more concearned with the operating system and apps they currently use. As these get upgraded they will require more ram. I can't imagine how mountain lion would run on 2gb. It was sluggish on 4gb. An upgrade to 8gb made it run smooth as silk and made it feel as if my macbook was much newer than it actually was.

 

[stevelam]

I bought mine with 16gb of ram for "future proofing" so to speak. Here is why, I plan to use the computer for 4 years of college and almost a year worth of use before I even start college (Currently finishing up my last year of military service) . So I understand the CPU and video card will be outdated. However, my MacBook that I just sold to get this was from 2008. It was the first unibody macbook. And YES, the core2duo and 9400m video card were outdated but, with 8gb ram and a hybrid ssd/mechanical hard drive it ran great. By future proofing I think alot of people are more concearned with the operating system and apps they currently use. As these get upgraded they will require more ram. I can't imagine how mountain lion would run on 2gb. It was sluggish on 4gb. An upgrade to 8gb made it run smooth as silk and made it feel as if my macbook was much newer than it actually was.

i actually have the macbook non-pro 2008 unibody as well. currently running lion and using it for work (dev/designer). still using a regular hard drive. the bottleneck is definitely not the RAM anymore so i'm upgrading the entire system.

this is exactly what anandtech said. depending on your usage, you will likely run into cpu/gpu/space limitations before running into ram issues.