MBA 8gb swapping so quickly

[ignatius345]

So is it your opinion that 8gb should be enough for a casual use person

100% yes, at this point. I have a friend who runs her therapy practice off a base model M1 Air and is on it all day long doing the basics of Zoom meetings, calendar, email, web etc, and the machine handles it all beautifully four years into her owning it. (And trust me, she couldn't care less about "memory pressure" even if she knew what it was. The machine works smoothly and reliably, so that's literally all she needs to know.)

The caveat here is future proofing. Maybe running Sequoia and leaning into all those AI features, things start to feel a little slower with 8GB. Maybe in another year or two after that, it's worse. Fact is, the OS always gets more demanding with each upgrade, and over-spec'ing now might buy you another year or two of speedy running on the back end. At least that's been my experience.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Don't look at your memory pressure then. For the vast majority of people obsessing about what color their memory pressure is hypocondria.

When I upgraded to an M1 MBP Pro, I intentionally only got the 16GB model. I just needed to see for myself if being constantly in yellow memory pressure was as much of a disaster as everyone said it was.

I've been living in yellow pressure almost constantly for 3 years compiling software, running VMs, loading dev utilities, viewing in multiple browsers at the same time, and using professional photo programs. I rarely notice anything amiss.

You completely missed my point. Just because you don't see that you're running low on RAM doesn't mean you're not running low on RAM. For a computer whose RAM you CANNOT upgrade, it seems silly not to just buy enough RAM up-front. Kudos to you for buying a lower-spec machine just to see whether or not you won't need to then later buy a more expensive machine down the road. Many of us do not have the financial luxury to experiment like that..

 

[ignatius345]

Your memory pressure will still be yellow at best even if you don't have Activity Monitor open...

Only relevant if you're a computer hobbyist. Normal people don't need to care about this obscure data point.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Memory pressure may seem related to swap but having swap doesn’t mean you will have memory pressure at yellow. In fact, I did an experiment with swap disabled. My memory pressure was more consistently red on my 64GB M1 Max with swap disabled, than enabled. Swap in activity monitor doesn’t mean active memory paging. It just means OS proactively frees up memory that isn’t used often. It avoids dumping memory pages to swap under load, when OS has more important things to do.

OP: Rebooting will clean up the swap. It is unecessary unless you have OCD.

Swap is there for when you run out of RAM. It's one of those "there if you need it, but it's better if you don't need it" kind of things. So, yes, you will have less memory pressure with that safeguard in place. But, again, it's better if you're just operating in the green all the time.

Plus, we're talking about tacking on $200-400 to the cost of a computer that costs, AT MINIMUM $1100. Are we really going to pinch pennies when we're talking about a MacBook?

 

[smirking]

Many of us do not have the financial luxury to experiment like that..

I didn't miss your point. That's exactly why I experimented on myself so people who can't afford risking a mistake wouldn't be the ones to suffer if I was wrong.

 

[Yebubbleman]

Only relevant if you're a computer hobbyist. Normal people don't need to care about this obscure data point.

They will care when they get the spinning beach ball or when they get "out of memory" alerts. Something I've had happen REGULARLY on 8GB of RAM M1 Macs. And mind you, I'm only running 10-20 tabs in Safari, Mail, Messages, and Facebook Messenger. Hardly the kind of stuff that SHOULD prompt those things.

Yes, some (I anticipate many) may get lucky and not experience these things. I don't know about you; but the cost of a base model Air is a bit much to gamble having my rather basic use cases incur such errors and such experiences. But hey, you do you.

 

[smirking]

They will care when they get the spinning beach ball or when they get "out of memory" alerts. Something I've had happen REGULARLY on 8GB of RAM M1 Macs. And mind you, I'm only running 10-20 tabs in Safari, Mail, Messages, and Facebook Messenger. Hardly the kind of stuff that SHOULD prompt those things.

If your system is stalling on that workload, something else is wrong because other people regularly run far heavier workloads without any issue.

 

[Torty]

Ugh, thanks for the reply. I'm torn on what to do. I am not sure if I should spend the $400 extra for the 16/512. Both that and the base model are on sale, but only through the end of today, so I only have a couple hours til Best Buy closes. $1049 for the base and $1449 for the 16/512. Im guessing after today the 16/512 will go back up to $1699

You will get with 16GB swap too. So if you are so concerned about swapping maybe even 36GB is not enough, go for 64GB.

 

[Ries]

If your system is stalling on that workload, something else is wrong because other people regularly run far heavier workloads without any issue.

When you only have one active task, you'll be fine. The second you have 2 task running processing stuff, that actively needs and uses memory, you'll be ****ed. Swapping won't fix that and the machine slows to a crawl.

 

[G5isAlive]

I didn't miss your point. That's exactly why I experimented on myself so people who can't afford risking a mistake wouldn't be the ones to suffer if I was wrong.

thanks for actually collecting data, I love all the experts from the peanut gallery telling people how to spend their money who haven't put their money where there mouth is for years.

 

[bradman83]

You'd be surprised how much memory just one website can use up, especially if she's watching a streaming video via browser.

That being said swapping is entirely normal and 8GB is fine. I have a 16GB model and even with every foreground app except Activity Monitor closed I still had some swap usage.

The key is the memory pressure, which you can see is nowhere near the upper limit. Even heavy swap usage won't have a huge impact on SSD lifespan. You'll likely be ready for a new device for other reasons long before the SSD wears out.

 

[bellflyer14]

Some very good arguments on both sides. I certainly do appreciate everyones input

 

[Love-hate 🍏 relationship]

Nothing to worry about, you've got a deceny at least before you start seeing issues . However speed...not fantastic

 

[bellflyer14]

Nothing to worry about, you've got a deceny at least before you start seeing issues . However speed...not fantastic

speed regarding what?

 

[Queen6]

Nothing to worry about, you've got a deceny at least before you start seeing issues . However speed...not fantastic

LOL do you even own a Mac... Even my ancient relics dont slow down with just a few hundred MB of Swap. To stall an Mx series Mac takes conscious effort as the system swaps so fast. While Apple has issues the speed of it's base model Mac's isn't one of them...

Q-6

 

[topcat001]

Don't look at your memory pressure then. For the vast majority of people obsessing about what color their memory pressure is hypocondria.

When I upgraded to an M1 MBP Pro, I intentionally only got the 16GB model. I just needed to see for myself if being constantly in yellow memory pressure was as much of a disaster as everyone said it was.

I've now been living in constant yellow pressure for almost 3 years compiling software, running VMs, loading dev utilities, viewing in multiple browsers at the same time, and using professional photo programs. I rarely notice anything amiss.

Could you please post your smartctl -a output?

 

[TechnoMonk]

Swap is there for when you run out of RAM. It's one of those "there if you need it, but it's better if you don't need it" kind of things. So, yes, you will have less memory pressure with that safeguard in place. But, again, it's better if you're just operating in the green all the time.

Plus, we're talking about tacking on $200-400 to the cost of a computer that costs, AT MINIMUM $1100. Are we really going to pinch pennies when we're talking about a MacBook?

Not really true. You need to brush up on swap if you still think swap is when you run out of memory. Linux and Mac OSX have evolved a lot from the good ole days of swap is when you run out of memory. Cough cough!

 

[smirking]

Could you please post your smartctl -a output?

I have DriveDX so here's my DriveDX health check. After 2.6 years, I'm at 3% of rated life capacity used (2TB Drive) and a bit shy of 200TB of writes to disk. So doing the math, if I had a more pedestrian 512GB drive, I'd be looking at around 12% of rated lifespan.

 

[Jumpthesnark]

Even if you buy this configuration, you're going to have swap. That's just how the OS works. It's normal.

Exactly. I have 16GB in my machine, I'm using far less than that now and activity monitor shows 575MB of swap.

It's swapping, and yet memory pressure is entirely green, and low or the graph. It's simply how the OS works and nothing to be afraid of.

 

[Queen6]

I have DriveDX so here's my DriveDX health check. After 2.6 years, I'm at 3% of rated life capacity used and a bit shy of 200TB of writes to disk.

3% used already 🥸 at that rate your going to be in trouble around 2109...LOL

Q-6

 

[TechnoMonk]

3% used already 🥸 at that rate your going to be in trouble around 2109...LOL

Q-6

Tim Apple wont be around, you need to deal with Jim Apple in 2109.

 

[TechnoMonk]

I sometimes wish Apple to provide a env variable in config to control the swapiness. Linux has swapiness, default value is 60, which means Linux will be slightly aggressive in dumping the unused memory proactively to swap. You can disable it with 0, and it will use swap only if it is running out of memory. I guess Apple doesn’t want to complicate and feed in to OCD.

 

[Queen6]

Tim Apple wont be around, you need to deal with Jim Apple in 2109.

That'll be his Apple Intelligence alter ego...LOL

Q-6

 

[smirking]

3% used already 🥸 at that rate your going to be in trouble around 2109...LOL

Q-6

NooooOoOoOoOooooo!

 

[TracerAnalog]

Ugh, thanks for the reply. I'm torn on what to do. I am not sure if I should spend the $400 extra for the 16/512. Both that and the base model are on sale, but only through the end of today, so I only have a couple hours til Best Buy closes. $1049 for the base and $1449 for the 16/512. Im guessing after today the 16/512 will go back up to $1699

Whatever you choose, the OS will swap! Don’t worry about it.