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Just found out that the SSD in the M5 MBA is as fast as the DDR3-800 memory chips! These RAM chips were sold in new computers until 2010. So the swapping to SSD is as fast as DDR3-800 RAM!

That might let people think twice before upgrading the standard 16 GB of RAM in the M5 MBA...
While bandwidth might be similar RAM would still outperform the SSD due to the characteristics of SSDs. Specifically RAM is able to instantly update its contents as it is byte addressable whereas an SSD typically requires a read-modify-write cycle due to its significantly larger block size (I think a block for an SSD is 4KB in size).

For example if you need to update a single byte within an SSD block the contents of that block need to be read into memory, the specific byte updated, and then the entire block written back to the SSD. Thus to update a single byte 4KB of data has to be read and then written back to the SSD. RAM, OTOH, can update the specific byte directly without the need to read other bytes. This is not unique to SSDs, traditional magnetic hard disks also had to perform the same read-modify-write cycle as well however the block size is typically 512 bytes instead of 4K.

Furthermore an update to an SSD, unlike a traditional magnetic HD, block typically involves writing to a new location on the SSD. An SSD cannot update an existing location. That location has to be erased first, which consumes time (thus the reason blocks tend to be written to a new location instead of updated in place, it avoids the erase time). If an SSD is nearing capacity there are fewer blocks ready for immediate use thus possibly incurring an erase penalty. SSDs attempt to minimize this by utilizing garbage collection to erase blocks marked as free but not yet erased. However if free capacity is low and write activity is high the SSD may not be able to perform sufficient garbage collection to keep up with the write requests.

That's a 10,000 foot description. While bandwidth might be similar RAM continues to be much faster. But it's interesting to see the bandwidth is similar.
 
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Everyone's usage will vary, but I've found 16GB RAM on my M5 to be just fine and indistinguishable from a 24GB version (I also had for a bit).

The key?

Stop looking at the memory pressure graph and just use your machine.

If you don't know you need a lot of RAM, you don't.
 
I think it's better to spend money on something you need and invest the rest. No one has ever complained about a portfolio that is too large.
At age 82 I have only recently (2 Y) discovered this wisdom. Proper investing allows me to NOT be bashful about getting stuff I need/want (including an array of Apple stuff, by the way...) I have enough, my kids/grandkids will get enough, and if the rest home thing comes up, I'm ready for that too. That is if they have enough bandwidth. Writing this on my M4 MBA.
 
While bandwidth might be similar RAM would still outperform the SSD due to the characteristics of SSDs. Specifically RAM is able to instantly update its contents as it is byte addressable whereas an SSD typically requires a read-modify-write cycle due to its significantly larger block size (I think a block for an SSD is 4KB in size).

For example if you need to update a single byte within an SSD block the contents of that block need to be read into memory, the specific byte updated, and then the entire block written back to the SSD. Thus to update a single byte 4KB of data has to be read and then written back to the SSD. RAM, OTOH, can update the specific byte directly without the need to read other bytes. This is not unique to SSDs, traditional magnetic hard disks also had to perform the same read-modify-write cycle as well however the block size is typically 512 bytes instead of 4K.

Furthermore an update to an SSD, unlike a traditional magnetic HD, block typically involves writing to a new location on the SSD. An SSD cannot update an existing location. That location has to be erased first, which consumes time (thus the reason blocks tend to be written to a new location instead of updated in place, it avoids the erase time). If an SSD is nearing capacity there are fewer blocks ready for immediate use thus possibly incurring an erase penalty. SSDs attempt to minimize this by utilizing garbage collection to erase blocks marked as free but not yet erased. However if free capacity is low and write activity is high the SSD may not be able to perform sufficient garbage collection to keep up with the write requests.

That's a 10,000 foot description. While bandwidth might be similar RAM continues to be much faster. But it's interesting to see the bandwidth is similar.
WOW! THX
 
I know but I still find it impressive that swapping is as fast DDR3 RAM was before. I always had the impression that swapping is terribly slow compared to "real" RAM...
It is terribly slower compared the “real old” RAM… lol 😉

But yeah I know what you mean, it is impressive. When I ran Parallels virtual machines of Windows 7 on a 2010 MacBook Pro it was cool but slow. Today I’m running Win11ARM on my M5 Pro and it’s faster than the Win11 Dell from work.
 
I hope I'm not too off topic. A few days ago I was lucky enough to come across two offers that I think are excellent: one for a MacBook Air 13 M4 10c/10c with 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD for 749 francs and a second offer for a MacBook Air 13, 512GB SSD, 24GB of RAM, 10 Core CPU, 10-core GPU for 799. Both new. I couldn't resist for another 50. The Air is slightly more expensive as a MacBook Neo and the performance... While a MacBook Air 13 M5, 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, 10 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores I find it at 979. And it should also be considered that in Switzerland the M4 is still supplied with a charger, while the M5 is not. All this to say that, in my case when I was looking for a good computer for mobile work, I preferred the M4, which cost even less, compared to the M5 which had "only" 16GB RAM. Raw performance better the M5, of course. But in terms of future software updates, I preferred 24Gb. I'm looking for fluidity, not necessarily brutal performance. Finally, the price has affected. 799 against almost a thousand for the M5 (with charger) is 20% less. And the difference in perceived performance is not at the same level (also because the base M5 has 8 GPU cores). This is to say, ultimately, that I recommend preferring more RAM, in general, than SSD or other.
 
I hope I'm not too off topic. A few days ago I was lucky enough to come across two offers that I think are excellent: one for a MacBook Air 13 M4 10c/10c with 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD for 749 francs and a second offer for a MacBook Air 13, 512GB SSD, 24GB of RAM, 10 Core CPU, 10-core GPU for 799. Both new. I couldn't resist for another 50. The Air is slightly more expensive as a MacBook Neo and the performance... While a MacBook Air 13 M5, 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, 10 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores I find it at 979. And it should also be considered that in Switzerland the M4 is still supplied with a charger, while the M5 is not. All this to say that, in my case when I was looking for a good computer for mobile work, I preferred the M4, which cost even less, compared to the M5 which had "only" 16GB RAM. Raw performance better the M5, of course. But in terms of future software updates, I preferred 24Gb. I'm looking for fluidity, not necessarily brutal performance. Finally, the price has affected. 799 against almost a thousand for the M5 (with charger) is 20% less. And the difference in perceived performance is not at the same level (also because the base M5 has 8 GPU cores). This is to say, ultimately, that I recommend preferring more RAM, in general, than SSD or other.

What are you going to be doing with it?

Just having more RAM above 16GB isn't going to do anything for "fluidity".
 
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So far so good. Everything’s snappier and a big lexicon file that brought Word to a virtual standstill (3-5 seconds for a character to appear after being typed) on my 16GB M1 Mini doesn’t faze the MacBook in the slightest.

Excellent choice of system. Even so, I'm surprised by the Word example above. That must be an absolutely ginormous lexicon file, and, there must be some interesting edge case with the data structures and algorithms Word uses for lexicon file data. You have an example of an everyday app use that has "creative, professional" processing requirements. An existence proof. You must be editing a Graduate Text in something. Law? Biology?
 
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I hope I'm not too off topic. A few days ago I was lucky enough to come across two offers that I think are excellent: one for a MacBook Air 13 M4 10c/10c with 16 GB RAM and 512GB SSD for 749 francs and a second offer for a MacBook Air 13, 512GB SSD, 24GB of RAM, 10 Core CPU, 10-core GPU for 799. Both new. I couldn't resist for another 50. The Air is slightly more expensive as a MacBook Neo and the performance... While a MacBook Air 13 M5, 512GB SSD, 16GB of RAM, 10 CPU cores and 8 GPU cores I find it at 979. And it should also be considered that in Switzerland the M4 is still supplied with a charger, while the M5 is not. All this to say that, in my case when I was looking for a good computer for mobile work, I preferred the M4, which cost even less, compared to the M5 which had "only" 16GB RAM. Raw performance better the M5, of course. But in terms of future software updates, I preferred 24Gb. I'm looking for fluidity, not necessarily brutal performance. Finally, the price has affected. 799 against almost a thousand for the M5 (with charger) is 20% less. And the difference in perceived performance is not at the same level (also because the base M5 has 8 GPU cores). This is to say, ultimately, that I recommend preferring more RAM, in general, than SSD or other.
The M5 8-core GPU is clocked higher and includes new neural accelerators. It will be comparable to the M4 10-core GPU and outperform it substantially on AI tasks. (for reference, the M5 10-core GPU is about 15% faster than the M4 10-core GPU, so the M5 8-core GPU will likely be right around the same graphics performance as the M4 10-core GPU, based on Geekbench 6 tests).

If you're looking for "fluidity" then the M5 should be your choice. The single core speed of the M5 10-core CPU is about 15% faster than the M4 10-core CPU. That will do more for responsiveness than more memory. Lastly, the M5 SSD is roughly 2X the speed of the M4 SSD. So bottom line: if you are looking for a more responsive and "fluid" experience, the M5 is the choice. Having said that, my wife has an M4 MBA with 16GB and 1TB SSD, and for day-to-day tasks, it feels no different than my M5 Pro MBP with 64GB RAM. If you're looking to balance budget and "fluidity," then the MBA 13 24GB RAM plus charger is the best choice.
 
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What are you going to be doing with it?

Just having more RAM above 16GB isn't going to do anything for "fluidity".
Word, Adobe InDesign, Photoshop, Lightroom + normal tasks such as mail (Apple Mail and Outlook always open), web browsing, WhatsApp, etc. also in this case with programs always open. Given the 20% savings, I therefore preferred RAM so as to have less pressure on memory and less swaps. Then it is clear that 16GB is still excellent and that M5 is more performing in the absolute sense. But on the scale of 20% less...
 
The M5 8-core GPU is clocked higher and includes new neural accelerators. It will be comparable to the M4 10-core GPU and outperform it substantially on AI tasks. (for reference, the M5 10-core GPU is about 15% faster than the M4 10-core GPU, so the M5 8-core GPU will likely be right around the same graphics performance as the M4 10-core GPU, based on Geekbench 6 tests).

If you're looking for "fluidity" then the M5 should be your choice. The single core speed of the M5 10-core CPU is about 15% faster than the M4 10-core CPU. That will do more for responsiveness than more memory. Lastly, the M5 SSD is roughly 2X the speed of the M4 SSD. So bottom line: if you are looking for a more responsive and "fluid" experience, the M5 is the choice. Having said that, my wife has an M4 MBA with 16GB and 1TB SSD, and for day-to-day tasks, it feels no different than my M5 Pro MBP with 64GB RAM. If you're looking to balance budget and "fluidity," then the MBA 13 24GB RAM plus charger is the best choice.
Exactly. Considering that it is not the primary computer, but the one to be "ruined" on mobility, I put on the cost budget, performance to future updates (24GB ensure more longevity than M4 10c/10c against M5 base 10c/8c). And in my opinion this computer for 799 was an excellent offer if we think that a Neo costs 679 in Switzerland.
 
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I know but I still find it impressive that swapping is as fast DDR3 RAM was before. I always had the impression that swapping is terribly slow compared to "real" RAM...
I think you're seeing a peak (for writing large single files) and conflating that with how fast VM can page, which tends to be tens of thousands of tiny touches, not just a single file written sequentially (like the disk benchmark you are quoting).

In some cases it can be as bad as the random IO SSD bench that you see on that disk test.
 
Last year I purchased a 24GB M4 model due to fear of 16GB not being enough.
I run lots of Firefox tabs with multiple containers for different users, Thunderbird for emails, average of 20 very big (thousands of pages, Preview is eating almost 2GB of RAM) PDFs, computational software (Wolfram and such), a text and a LaTeX editors and sometimes Teams over everything, but the machine never goes into yellow memory pressure territory. I definitely overspent, 16GB is more than enough for me and thus for the average user.
 
Last year I purchased a 24GB M4 model due to fear of 16GB not being enough.
I run lots of Firefox tabs with multiple containers for different users, Thunderbird for emails,
I hear you. And, a few months ago I would have agreed 100%. But now, with FireFox 160 and MacOS 26.5, my 16GBM2Pro feels "slow", I look at activity monitor and background CPU is higher, and, it shows yellow memory pressure. I can't find any one guilty process or even web page tab, but, overall, there seems to be higher per-process overhead or something. It probably has to do with the hundreds of security-related bugs that have been patched in both MacOS and apps like FireFox. So, honestly, buying today, I would go with 24GB.
 
I hear you. And, a few months ago I would have agreed 100%. But now, with FireFox 160 and MacOS 26.5, my 16GBM2Pro feels "slow", I look at activity monitor and background CPU is higher, and, it shows yellow memory pressure. I can't find any one guilty process or even web page tab, but, overall, there seems to be higher per-process overhead or something. It probably has to do with the hundreds of security-related bugs that have been patched in both MacOS and apps like FireFox. So, honestly, buying today, I would go with 24GB.
Fair points. With AI growing and local models engraved into the OS, 16GB might start to become limiting in the near future.
I actually should have mentioned I'm still on Sequoia and that Apple Intelligence/Siri is disabled on my machine; that might play a role.
I haven't updated to Tahoe yet as I dislike the glass look and I feel it would make my reading experience worse; I already struggle with reflections, I don't need more glass. xD
 
Just found out that the SSD in the M5 MBA is as fast as the DDR3-800 memory chips! These RAM chips were sold in new computers until 2010. So the swapping to SSD is as fast as DDR3-800 RAM!

That might let people think twice before upgrading the standard 16 GB of RAM in the M5 MBA...
Core Latency Comparison
  • DDR3-800 RAM Latency: Around 15 to 20 nanoseconds.
  • M5 MacBook Air SSD Latency: Around 10 to 30 microseconds.
  • The Gap: The SSD is 500 to 1,500 times slower than DDR3 RAM at responding to individual data requests.

Performance Summary
  • Bandwidth: The SSD and DDR3-800 RAM both transfer data at roughly 6.4 GB/s.
  • Random Tasks: RAM fetches scattered files significantly faster than the SSD.
  • Sequential Tasks: The SSD excels at loading large, continuous files like video.
  • Swap Impact: Using the SSD as emergency memory creates performance stutters due to high latency.
 
It's not only RAM for local AI you also need a powerful processor. It goes hand in hand.
Yes. However I don't think that any implementation of Siri/AI will require a super strong CPU. Any local model shipped with the OS will still probably be "partial" and require some sort of online interaction with servers to work on the user's machine, therefore any M-series chip the OS/AI feature is shipped to will suffice.
 
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