HD or RAM upgrade for better performance on new mac?

[Appletise]

l am about to replace my 2012 mbpr with 8GB RAM 256GB HD (still 40GB free) with either an M1 mac air / M1 macbook. my 2012 mbpr is performing fine for my requirements! (Trading using Trading software, browsing, libreoffice)
question is, which would make most difference to performance, upgrading from 256GB to 512GB HD with the standard 8GB ram, OR upgrading 8GB ram to 16GB ram with 256GB HD? l could stretch it to have 16GB RAM and 512GB HD. which of these offer the best price to performance ratio?
is it true that the air will be better? thanks for help

 

[Falhófnir]

Unless you know you will need more than the basic 8/256GB configuration the most cost effective strategy is always to go with the base model and put any savings into upgrading again sooner. With the MBA, having both upgrades costs $400 (or $450 with the extra GPU core) which is half the cost of a whole new base machine! A different story if you know you will need more RAM or storage for what you’re doing with the computer, but for most that’s really the best ‘future proofing’ strategy.

 

[Significant1]

If you only have 40GB left I would say 512GB ssd, since ssd need a bit of free space to operate optimal an minimize wear. But if you can also strech it to 16GB of ram, it will not hurt.

 

[IceStormNG]

Look. You can buy storage afterwards (external SSDs), but you cannot buy more RAM. If your question is more RAM or more storage, you should always look into more RAM first.

The real question is though, do you need more than 8GiB. While I usually recommend to not buy anything under 16GiB these days, there are some people who run very light applications that simply don't need more. While the additional RAM would be used for caching and would slightly boost your system performance, it might be a waste of money as Apple charges premium prices for that extra 8GiB. Still, I would only recommend going for 8GiB if you're on a budget. "Modern" apps are often Electron or web-based. They eat a ton of RAM for no good reason. The system also needs 3-4GiB of RAM for its services and also a bit of headroom. So 8GiB is really low for a Mac these days.

When it comes to performance, the real difference is, that the M1 MBP has a fan and can deliver sustained performance. The M1 Air will start to throttle under sustained high load (after like 5 minutes). If you're not going to fully saturate the CPU (which you very likely won't with the apps you listed), there is no noticeable performance difference.

Otherwise: The Pro has a touchbar, different chassis, and a slightly brighter screen. Otherwise, they're the same. So you might just want to go for the Air and spent the extra money you saved into getting either more storage or more RAM or some accessories. The new MacBook has only Type-C ports so you might also want a hub or dock depending on what external devices you want to connect (if any).

 

[chabig]

which would make most difference to performance, upgrading from 256GB to 512GB HD with the standard 8GB ram, OR upgrading 8GB ram to 16GB ram with 256GB HD?

Neither RAM nor storage will improve performance (assuming you mean computing speed), which mostly depends on the CPU/GPU. The SSD is long term data storage, which doesn't affect speed at all. And RAM is temporary working memory, which also doesn't affect speed as long as it's enough to hold what you're working on. macOS is very good at managing memory. Unless you're doing highly intensive data tasks, you could put an 8GB machine and a 16GB machine side by side and you'd notice no difference.

 

[iluvmacs99]

l am about to replace my 2012 mbpr with 8GB RAM 256GB HD (still 40GB free) with either an M1 mac air / M1 macbook. my 2012 mbpr is performing fine for my requirements! (Trading using Trading software, browsing, libreoffice)
question is, which would make most difference to performance, upgrading from 256GB to 512GB HD with the standard 8GB ram, OR upgrading 8GB ram to 16GB ram with 256GB HD? l could stretch it to have 16GB RAM and 512GB HD. which of these offer the best price to performance ratio?
is it true that the air will be better? thanks for help

It's a difficult question to answer because we don't know what's your RAM pressure and usage. The key to any performance bottleneck is when you are opening up applications that exceed the base memory configuration and 8GB RAM is at the low end of that scale for what you are doing and you will face memory paging. Memory paging is a process where when the computer offloads part of that unused portion of data in memory on to the hard drive and then load in new parts of data into the same memory space allowing to work with your applications even if you don't have enough memory to hold all of your applications and browsing tabs. I suspect that 16Gb of RAM with your 2012 MBPR will improve the performance even more, because trading software does take a significant chunk of that 8Gb of RAM depending on which software you use. With 40Gb free; that's already pretty tight because you want to allow at least 20% of the total storage capacity for memory swapping purposes and the system will slow down when the OS needs to swap out memory. The more RAM you have in your computer, the less memory swapping you need and the more snappiness you feel with your computer.

I can't really tell you what is the best price to performance ratio because it all depends upon how you use your software combination plus what is your tolerance for speed and time delays, because everyone have very differing experiences of what is tolerable, what is the best performance etc... What is universal is memory; there's nothing wrong with having more memory if you plan to keep the laptop longer as you clearly have now with your current 2012 MBP, because memory on the M1 is unified, which means that you can't upgrade it further if you need more. Also since we can't predict what the requirements it be for the future OS and the internet, even 16Gb may not be enough and then you have to rely on your storage space for memory swapping and if your storage today is already pretty tight, consider what happens 3-5 years down the road when you need more HD space for memory swapping because the size of the future OS is more bloated, unless you plan to keep upgrading your Mac often. I just recently upgraded my 2014 MacBook Air's stock 128Gb SSD to the newer faster blade 512Gb SSD drive and I got amazing performance enhancements out of it. No longer starving for more disk space and the new blade drive is 3x faster than the stock apple drive. Even memory swapping out to this blade SSD drive is fast, but I could see the memory swap size bloats up to like 20Gb, because my Air only has 8Gb RAM which is not upgradable (I wish I can).

Hope this helps.

 

[Fishrrman]

The different sized SSD's in the m-series Macs probably run roughly equal in speed, which is to say "very fast". Even if the 1tb and 2tb drives are a little "faster", the smaller sized 256/512gb drives are STILL going to be very fast.

I've come to the conclusion that "8gb isn't enough any more" considering how much the Mac OS "hits the RAM" these days with VM disk swapping and other reads/writes.
16gb is now "the new minimum", in my estimation.

So.. if it's one or the other, get 16gb of RAM.
Or... 16gb and a larger drive if you feel like it.

And don't let any Mac fanbois tell you that "8gb on an m1 is the same as 16gb on Intel".
There is no magic fairy dust being sprinkled on these motherboards by Apple.
As Ayn Rand wrote in Atlas Shrugged, "A=A"
As Fishrrman wrote in this post, "RAM=RAM".

 

[KaliYoni]

Trading using Trading software...

Let's look at your actual needs. If you use your machine to establish, track, and liquidate positions throughout the day, every day, I would max out your RAM. You need to do everything you can to ensure your computer does not create any bottlenecks in your trading workflows. When thousands of dollars are at stake over and over, a one time savings of a few hundred bucks doesn't really matter that much...especially when your ability to be profitable depends on quickly finding edge and rapidly structuring and executing trades.

Plus, as others have said, it's easy to add external storage later. You only get one shot, on the other hand, at RAM selection.

 

[pmiles]

So, if the machine you have is just fine... why replace it?

And if you are going to replace it, why squabble over its configuration? You held on to the last one for nearly 10 years (assuming you bought it new).

If you are a coupon-clipper and got it second-hand... wait until next year and these models will be selling for much less than they are now because everyone will be selling them to buy the new models.

 

[nothingtoseehere]

my 2012 mbpr is performing fine for my requirements

In that case, the base model MBA with 8/256 should be enough for you.

But of course, sometimes, one would like to have more than enough As others wrote, RAM is only upgradeable at the moment of purchase while you can always attach an external SSD.

 

[MarkC426]

Unless your starting fresh with the M1, you definitely need more storage.
With 40gb free, you are already below recommended min.

Adding additional external storage would not be ideal for a portable mac.
It's a different matter for a desktop.

 

[HDFan]

256GB HD (still 40GB free)

With 40gb free, you are already below recommended min.

You need somewhere between 20% and 30% free so you need the 512 unless you are going to remove at a minimum 11 GB. That would leave you no room for additional files.