Do i need 32GB of RAM when buying the new 16"?

[melihserbest]

hey guys, first post here.

So i currently have a late 2013 15” MacBook Pro. 2.3 i7 with 16GB of RAM

im going to upgrade to the 16" macbook pro so im not sure which one to get

i use my current macbook for mainly web browsing (lots of tabs and windows), email, light gaming like CIV, and VERY basic photo/video editing. and when i mean basic, i mean making a 20 minute 1gb video on imovie for my girlfriend

was thinking about getting the i7 base version and upgrading RAM to 32GB (which will take a month to arrive)

or the base i9 version which comes with the 1TB SSD and 5500 GPU obviously (which i can get now)

i think the 32GB of RAM would be way too much considering i do zero programming/coding etc? Some people have said for what i use my macbook for the base version is fine, but i want some sort of upgrade so was leaning towards the i9 version with the 1TB SSD

Cheers

 

[Ma2k5]

Even a base 13" would be more than good enough for your needs, so you are more than fine with a base 16".

 

[macnmac]

if you have the money why not?

 

[DanMan619]

The base would probably be fine for you. iMovie is highly optimized and is a pretty simple program, so it's not super taxing on the computer far as i know. I can't comment on how RAM intensive CIV is, but i'd imagine it'd be more CPU/GPU intensive and either the 5300 or 5500 GPU would probably handle CIV just fine unless you're trying to run it at max settings or something (which again is more a CPU/GPU concern than RAM). Web browsing with a ton of tabs/windows would probably be your biggest RAM hog. I'm still on a 2013 MBP (i'm either going to get a MBP 16 soon or try to wait out the fall 2020 MBP 16 spec bump) with 16 GB of RAM and i also am extreme Chrome tab/window abuser.

I have 3 windows with a little over 200 tabs open total (i know, i know...). I use The Great Suspender Chrome extension to suspend tabs i'm not actively using (but even suspended tabs still use RAM). My RAM usage is always at about 14 GB out of 16 GB, but that's not really the metric you go on. You look at the Memory Pressure (Which is a color coded graph). Here's what mine looks like right now with 200+ Chrome tabs, Telegram, and AirDroid all running.

Mine is always in the Green and never near the top. You want the RAM to actually be used and being near full in the Memory Used section is ok, but you don't want it to be under pressure, which would turn that graph yellow and/or red and raise the bar on it to the top and would start impacting your machines performance. I almost never experience User Interface slowdowns or crashes. And this is on a 2013 MBP. So for your usage, you should be more than fine with any MBP 16" and not likely not need the 32 GB RAM. Open Activity Monitor and go to the Memory tab and if your Memory Pressure looks like this:

With yellow and red spikes that are close to the top of the graph. Then you may want to go with the 32 GB RAM option.

 

[ChromeCrescendo]

I have always been in the camp of "get as much RAM as you can afford" -- it can come in handy down the line

 

[melihserbest]

The base would probably be fine for you. iMovie is highly optimized and is a pretty simple program, so it's not super taxing on the computer far as i know. I can't comment on how RAM intensive CIV is, but i'd imagine it'd be more CPU/GPU intensive and either the 5300 or 5500 GPU would probably handle CIV just fine. Web browsing with a ton of tabs/windows would probably be your biggest RAM hog. I'm still on a 2013 MBP (i'm either going to get a MBP 16 soon or try to wait out the fall 2020 MBP 16 spec bump) with 16 GB of RAM and i also am extreme Chrome tab/window abuser.

I have 3 windows with a little over 200 tabs open total (i know, i know...). I use The Great Suspender Chrome extension to suspend tabs i'm not actively using (but even suspended tabs still use RAM). My RAM usage is always at about 14 GB out of 16 GB, but that's not really the metric you go on. You look at the Memory Pressure (Which is a color coded graph).

View attachment 895503

Mine is always in the Green and never near the top. You want the RAM to actually be used and be near full, but you don't want it to be under pressure, which would turn that graph red and raise the bar on it to the top. I almost never experience User Interface slowdowns or crashes. And this is on a 2013 MBP. So for your usage, you should be more than fine with any MBP 16" and not likely not need the 32 GB RAM. Open Activity Monitor and go to the Memory tab and if your Memory Pressure looks like this:

View attachment 895505

With yellow and red spikes that are close to the top of the graph. Then you may want to go with the 32 GB RAM option.

thanks for that. i actually did check my memory pressure, i opened imovie, photoshop, a bunch of other apps, CIV etc, along with my chrome browsers and tabs, and i know the other apps were in idle, but i played a bit of CIV and kept checking the memory pressure and it was always in the green. note that i only did this as a test, i barely ever use those programs all at once and i play a game like CIV every once in a bluemoon, and if i did, i wouldn't play it with imovie, photoshop etc open in the background too.

obviously my current late 2013 did slow down a bit when i had everything open, however it seemed like that was more my CPU only having like 10% of idle power remaining.

i would like this new 16" to last me at least the 5 years this current late 2013 model has, which it seems it will. just seems weird that i bought 16GB of RAM 6 years ago and i may do the same now haha but i guess this is 95% just a browsing and email machine

 

[Fishrrman]

"i use my current macbook for mainly web browsing (lots of tabs and windows), email, light gaming like CIV, and VERY basic photo/video editing. and when i mean basic, i mean making a 20 minute 1gb video on imovie for my girlfriend"

No, I don't think you "need" 32gb of RAM.
16gb will do very well.

 

[jeyf]

NO

 

[macintoshmac]

hey guys, first post here.

So i currently have a late 2013 15” MacBook Pro. 2.3 i7 with 16GB of RAM

im going to upgrade to the 16" macbook pro so im not sure which one to get

i use my current macbook for mainly web browsing (lots of tabs and windows), email, light gaming like CIV, and VERY basic photo/video editing. and when i mean basic, i mean making a 20 minute 1gb video on imovie for my girlfriend

was thinking about getting the i7 base version and upgrading RAM to 32GB (which will take a month to arrive)

or the base i9 version which comes with the 1TB SSD and 5500 GPU obviously (which i can get now)

i think the 32GB of RAM would be way too much considering i do zero programming/coding etc? Some people have said for what i use my macbook for the base version is fine, but i want some sort of upgrade so was leaning towards the i9 version with the 1TB SSD

Cheers

16 GB allows you to open a lot of tabs and windows as you well know. 32 is going to be luxurious. You need to experience it to understand it. If you have the money, go for it. On the other hand, getting the i9 will help you keeping the video encoding time to a minimum so you can get back to whatever you want to get back to. It is a tough choice to make. Can't you just bite the bullet and configure a top-of-the-line MBP with the i9 and 32 GB RAM, despite the time it takes to arrive? You know you will be happier with it.

 

[revmacian]

i use my current macbook for mainly web browsing (lots of tabs and windows), email, light gaming like CIV, and VERY basic photo/video editing. and when i mean basic, i mean making a 20 minute 1gb video on imovie for my girlfriend

I actually do those same tasks, except for the gaming, on my base model 2019 MacBook Air (8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1.6GHz dual‑core 8th‑generation i5) and I don't see any issues/freezes/lag/beach balling.

So, I would think even the base model 16" MacBook Pro would perform those tasks even better. I feel 32BG RAM would be overkill.

 

[macintoshmac]

I actually do those same tasks, except for the gaming, on my base model 2019 MacBook Air (8GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 1.6GHz dual‑core 8th‑generation i5) and I don't see any issues/freezes/lag/beach balling.

So, I would think even the base model 16" MacBook Pro would perform those tasks even better. I feel 32BG RAM would be overkill.

I am doing that and also played an old but graphic-heavy game (Deus Ex Human Revolution) on an MBA 2017! Seriously, a sizeable chunk of people have no idea how much they can do in how little hardware, and the industry will never correct them.

 

[revmacian]

I am doing that and also played an old but graphic-heavy game (Deus Ex Human Revolution) on an MBA 2017! Seriously, a sizeable chunk of people have no idea how much they can do in how little hardware, and the industry will never correct them.

Yeah, people need to ignore industry/sales people and listen to truth.. to the people who actually use these products in everyday life.

When I was looking to buy my very first Apple laptop I was under the impression that the MBA was a basic laptop that couldn't do much more than browse the web. After a lot of testing, and many visits to Apple stores and Best Buy to actually play with the MBA, I realized I was sooo wrong. Now I own a 2017 MBP and a 2019 MBA - both base models - and my MBA is my daily driver because it's lighter and, believe it or not, a little bit faster. I will likely be happily using this machine for a few more years.. it looks like it can handle things without issue.

 

[macintoshmac]

Yeah, people need to ignore industry/sales people and listen to truth.. to the people who actually use these products in everyday life.

When I was looking to buy my very first Apple laptop I was under the impression that the MBA was a basic laptop that couldn't do much more than browse the web. After a lot of testing, and many visits to Apple stores and Best Buy to actually play with the MBA, I realized I was sooo wrong. Now I own a 2017 MBP and a 2019 MBA - both base models - and my MBA is my daily driver because it's lighter and, believe it or not, a little bit faster. I will likely be happily using this machine for a few more years.. it looks like it can handle things without issue.

It certainly can. We aren’t those people who need every ounce of power. We aren’t those people for whom a $20,000 Mac Pro would be a negligible fraction of the budget, so they can use that machine to do things in record time. We are everyday users for whom even 5 minutes here and there won’t matter much occasionally. The power to do everyday tasks has been ample for a long time.

Serious exception was 2016 MBP in 13” flavour. There were graphics-related issues on that thing and I knew that it was more a macOS issue than genuine lack of power in hardware, so I waited it out. But, by 2018 with Mojave we were still not up to the best there could be. Apps were great, macOS was not. After two years! On top of that, I had to get a keyboard replacement while using my device with utmost care like I always did with my 2011 MBP. I paid $2300+ for it and those failures in software and hardware were not acceptable to me. That’s why I sold it off. So this machine as of 2018 underwhelmed me compared to my 2011 MBP for everyday tasks.

The MBA 2017 with dual-core 1.8 GHz and 8 GB RAM I now use gives more joy in terms of macOS experience and is better than 2011 MBP with 2.4 GHz quad core and 16 GB RAM and dedicated graphics on High Sierra and also the 2016 MBP with 2.9 GHz dual-core and 8 GB RAM on Mojave.

 

[duorou]

Nope.

 

[macnmac]

I have always been in the camp of "get as much RAM as you can afford" -- it can come in handy down the line

words to live by

 

[Dragonmount]

16 is great. The ideal amount is between is closer to like 12 right now, but that's not available obviously, so the 16 would be the way to go here.

 

[macnmac]

the more the merrier!