Need advice - cancel 16GB unified memory order for 32GB?

[macphoto861]

Struggling a bit with this too. When I bought my 2019 i9, I initially went for 16gb, then reversed myself and sent it back for a 32gb. But I get the impression that I never even come close to fully utilizing that RAM. Here's a chart of my past 30 days of RAM usage:



Most of the time active memory is averaging a bit under 50% utilization when doing my typical stuff (Lightroom, some Safari tabs open, several other apps not actively being used but open in the background, etc.)... so I assume that if I only had 16gb right now, perhaps there would be a bit of a performance hit on occasion, but probably would be mostly unnoticeable.

Even trying to do what for me amounts to a torture test (simultaneously exporting images out of Lightroom, exporting a video out of FCPX, applying a lens blur filter to a huge image in Photoshop, etc.) only bumped up the utilization to about the 55% mark.

 

[drygioni]

Mostly light photoshop work, odd editing imovie videos iMovie and doing documents and flyers for a museum I go to mostly in pages.

I use it for watching films etc so the audio and screen updates will be great.

at the mo I’m on a MBP mid 2012 2.3GHz 16gb 256ssd I’m just about filling the drive! But I offload a lot of stuff to externals.

I didn’t want something to overkill but neither did I want to sell myself short!

£3000 M1 Pro 32gb 1TB from Apple and wait along time

£2400 M1 pro 16gb 1TB and 2 year warranty from costco and it saves me in total £600!


Dunno what to do….

I second the 32GB. I went for 1TB SSD, but I reckon with some discipline I could have stuck with 512GB and still made the laptop last the intended 5 years.

 

[tdbrown75]

@aibo82 I’d go with the 32GB RAM unless you will do less than 2-3 years with it.

Agree, and that fact that you are here having to ask about it at all, says you probably need to be in the 32GB camp.

Tim

 

[tdbrown75]

Struggling a bit with this too. When I bought my 2019 i9, I initially went for 16gb, then reversed myself and sent it back for a 32gb. But I get the impression that I never even come close to fully utilizing that RAM. Here's a chart of my past 30 days of RAM usage:

View attachment 1873682

Most of the time active memory is averaging a bit under 50% utilization when doing my typical stuff (Lightroom, some Safari tabs open, several other apps not actively being used but open in the background, etc.)... so I assume that if I only had 16gb right now, perhaps there would be a bit of a performance hit on occasion, but probably would be mostly unnoticeable.

Even trying to do what for me amounts to a torture test (simultaneously exporting images out of Lightroom, exporting a video out of FCPX, applying a lens blur filter to a huge image in Photoshop, etc.) only bumped up the utilization to about the 55% mark.


View attachment 1873681

But what will it look like after 2-3 more MacOS updates and with advancements in software? I’ll take the “no hit” to performance option (32GB).

Tim

 

[aibo82]

Toke the advice keeping my order with the 32gb, it’s probably why I feel the 2012 struggles at times it’s only 16gb!

Won’t arrive till the 29th of November? still gives me time to save up!

 

[tdbrown75]

I changed my mind too. I saw a 5% discount and will get back 21% VAT. So I decided to go for 16” MBP M1 Max 10C CPU / 32C GPU / 32GB RAM with 1 TB SSD.

I cancelled my second order, after cancelling the first one, and walked out of the Apple store today with that exact configuration. Great minds, Sir!

Tim

 

[nbjustforfun]

Hi all,

I ordered the higher end 14” MBP (10,16,16 / 16GB / 1TB) on launch day, but now I’m thinking I should have opted for 32GB. I’m coming from a Late 2013 15” MBP with 16GB RAM.

I typically use Photoshop, Illustrator, UCSF Chimera and PyMol weekly - nothing too crazy.

Should I have gone with 32GB? Is it worth cancelling my order and reordering?

It’s worth noting that 5 out of the 6 MBP configurations have 16GB of unified memory, so I’m thinking that Apple expects this will be enough for the vast majority of users, which is what swayed me in the end to save $540 AUD and stick with 16GB.

What do you think?

 

[cababah]

I think Monterey has some memory management issues to sort out before really making a clear conclusion...