[M4 Pro] Is 24GB enough for your Pro workflow?

[Populus]

Hey!

Now that the first M4 Pro Mac mini are arriving, I’d like to ask you if during the following days you find 24GB of RAM on your M4 Pro to be plenty for your professional workflow or you start entering into the yellow or red memory pressure zone.

Obviously I don’t expect replies now because the new Mac minis are still arriving, but I wanted to open this thread to discuss this topic and share our experiences.

 

[Andrey84]

I'm sure the memory size requirements are not dependent on which Apple Silicon chip it is; and it hasn't changed much from the Intel days either. It depends on the applications you're using and how much memory they consume.

So, if you had yellow memory pressure with your workflow on an M1 MacBook Pro with 24GB of unified memory, you'll have the same with an M4 Pro Mac mini with 24GB.

Maybe you can elaborate more on what specific problem are you trying to solve? Or, if there is no problem, why are you interested in memory pressure? If you're in doubt about your future purchase, just get some extra unified memory to be on the safe side.

 

[Populus]

I'm sure the memory size requirements are not dependent on which Apple Silicon chip it is; and it hasn't changed much from the Intel days either. It depends on the applications you're using and how much memory they consume.

So, if you had yellow memory pressure with your workflow on an M1 MacBook Pro with 24GB of unified memory, you'll have the same with an M4 Pro Mac mini with 24GB.

Maybe you can elaborate more on what specific problem are you trying to solve? Or, if there is no problem, why are you interested in memory pressure? If you're in doubt about your future purchase, just get some extra unified memory to be on the safe side.

Yep, I got 24GB and I will see how it behaves, but as you said, I wanted to have a bit of headroom just in case future releases such as macOS 18 or macOS 20 require more RAM.

 

[Sully]

Off topic, but are the non standard RAM amounts specifically manufactured for the order or do they keep a stock of these somewhere?

 

[phrehdd]

I use an M1 Studio Max with 1 TB drive / 64 G RAM. I tend to have a few apps open and use photo/graphics software daily. For me, I would want a similar build for the Mini M4 Pro or 48 G RAM.

If there was no photo/graphics apps involved, I would opt for 24 or 48 G RAM and 512 G drive.

I would imagine for those doing music, the 1 TB drive with at least 48 G RAM would be useful.

 

[zedsdead]

I currently bring my M1 Max 32GB MacBook Pro to work to hook up to two monitors....but I am trying a standard M4 Mac min with 24GB of RAM to see if it suffices. For most of my work I know it will be fine, but for the video editing I do I am not sure. I know the 16gb M1 Mac mini hit RAM blocks but this may be enough. 32GB has always been fine. We shall see!

 

[Andrey84]

Off topic, but are the non standard RAM amounts specifically manufactured for the order or do they keep a stock of these somewhere?

Non-standard sizes are just a combination of standard ones, for example 24 = 16 + 8, etc.

 

[UnifiedMelody]

Off topic, but are the non standard RAM amounts specifically manufactured for the order or do they keep a stock of these somewhere?

They may have three chips instead of the typical four. Eg
6x6x6 = 18GB RAM [M3 Pro with horrible bandwidth]
12x12x12 = 36GB RAM [M3 Max] - binned, and worse bandwidth over unbinned M3 Max

M4 Pro most likely running 4x chips config [hence the higher bandwidth this time for memory despite either chip]
24GB = 6x6x6x6 Ram
48GB = 12x12x12x12 Ram
64GB = 16x16x16x16 Ram [M4 Pro Mini Mac]

M4 Max most likely running a 4x chips config [esp unbinned 16/40] [hence the higher bandwidth this time for memory]
48GB - 12x12x12x12
64GB - 16x16x16x16
128GB - 32x32x32x32
binned M4 Max 36GB - 9x9x9x9

and Base M4 10/10 is most likely running 4x chips.
1. 16gb - 4x4x4x4 [4x]
2. 24gb - 6x6x6x6 [4x]
3. 32gb - 8x8x8x8 [4x]

i might be wrong but that probably explains how the bandwidth went up so much esp with M4 Pro/Max this year
Not sure why M4 only went up 20Gbps in terms of memory bandwidth [100 to 120]