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Ok - why isn't there a 32GB RAM option?

T

TinaBelcher

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 23, 2017
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I know the air is supposed to be "light" in every term; the specs, the design ect.
However, as someone who abuses the safari browsers I'm unsettled by max 24 GB RAM.
I also play emulator games, stream movies and lights edit pics.
 
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It’s an M2 chip limitation. Same as the regular M1 was limited to 16 GB. Unless they put an M2 Pro chip in it (or above), which probably wouldn’t work due to thermal restraints, they can’t go higher than 24 GB on the Air.

The M3 generation may improve this, however. Your options at the moment are either to wait for the M3 and see if RAM capabilities are increased, or look to the 14-inch MacBook Pro or higher if you want more RAM in a portable.
 
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TinaBelcher said:
I know the air is supposed to be "light" in every term; the specs, the design ect.
However, as someone who abuses the safari browsers I'm unsettled by max 24 GB RAM.
Click to expand...
The M2 in the MacBook Air has 2 memory chips. Those are LPDDR5 which currently has a max size of 12 GB (96 Gbits). Micron has a listing on their website for a 16 GB (128 Gbit) LPDDR5 chip but it doesn’t appear in their catalog last time I checked. So it may be coming or we might have to wait for LPDDR5X.
 
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As mentioned, it's due to lack of high bit density LPDDR5. Not an issue with the memory controller on M2.

M2 only has two memory chips on the package, which means Apple needs high density LPDDR5. M2 Pro has four chips surrounding it.
 
Thanks for all the responses!
If anyone, who purchased the air with 24gb RAM, please let me know how it perform up against a 32GB RAM on an intel Mac
 
jdb8167 said:
The M2 in the MacBook Air has 2 memory chips. Those are LPDDR5 which currently has a max size of 12 GB (96 Gbits). Micron has a listing on their website for a 16 GB (128 Gbit) LPDDR5 chip but it doesn’t appear in their catalog last time I checked. So it may be coming or we might have to wait for LPDDR5X.
Click to expand...
^^This.
RAM chip density will improve and we do t know who Apples supplier for the actual RAM is.
It is not going to change for M2.

OP: if you don’t think 24GB is enough for you, you’ll have to wait for the next gen
 
TinaBelcher said:
Thanks for all the responses!
If anyone, who purchased the air with 24gb RAM, please let me know how it perform up against a 32GB RAM on an intel Mac
Click to expand...
I have an M2 Mac mini with 24 GB RAM and out of the three months I’ve owned it I’ve never hit swap memory. That’s despite playing games, emulating, and doing some heavy digital art 🖼️ That being said I’ve never had a 32 GB machine, only ever a 16 GB (before the M2 mini). Hope that helps though!
 
TinaBelcher said:
Thanks for all the responses!
If anyone, who purchased the air with 24gb RAM, please let me know how it perform up against a 32GB RAM on an intel Mac
Click to expand...
Any 2022 M2 will outperform any non-Xeon or non-i9 Intel Mac even though there's a RAM gap of 8GB.

Apple use one standard DRAM for all iPhones, Macs, iPads, etc per generation for the purpose of economies of scale. That translates to over 320 million Apple devices annually that are all using the same LPDDR5 RAM.

Starting 3 months from now with the iPhone 16's A17 Bionic chip then with M3/Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme chips will be using LPDDR5X RAM

LPDDR5X pros and cons:

- Low-power consumption
- High-performance levels
- Industry's fastest speed for DRAM

If you are willing to wait the M3 will be out 6-9 months from today.
 
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Longplays said:
Any 2022 M2 will outperform any non-Xeon or non-i9 Intel Mac even though there's a RAM gap of 8GB.

Apple use one standard DRAM for all iPhones, Macs, iPads, etc per generation for the purpose of economies of scale. That translates to over 320 million Apple devices annually that are all using the same LPDDR5 RAM.

Starting 3 months from now with the iPhone 16's A17 Bionic chip then with M3/Pro/Max/Ultra/Extreme chips will be using LPDDR5X RAM

LPDDR5X pros and cons:

- Low-power consumption
- High-performance levels
- Industry's fastest speed for DRAM

If you are willing to wait the M3 will be out 6-9 months from today.
Click to expand...
So, let's say my iMac from late 2020, with 32GB RAM and 500GB storage. Will the MacBook Air with 24GB RAM outperform it and handle more tabs in safari?
 
TinaBelcher said:
So, let's say my iMac from late 2020, with 32GB RAM and 500GB storage. Will the MacBook Air with 24GB RAM outperform it and handle more tabs in safari?
Click to expand...

That should be easy. We still have an iMac with that specification at home and even the M1 Air that I bought for my sister-in-law last year outperformed it handily.

In general, RAM is not your issue when it comes to "how fast" or "how many tabs" here. It's more just how fast the processor can handle having to swap out memory when it's all out.

For my own use, I went with 24GB in my Air because I need all of it for my coding tasks. 24GB definitely is not enough for me and I may have to eventually bite the bullet and buy a machine with 32GB, but I have not found performance to be an issue even when I hit swap with 24GB.
 
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Analog Kid said:
What are you looking at that makes you think you need 32GB of RAM to handle Safari?!
Click to expand...
Because my old mbp from 2018 with 16 gb couldn’t handle more than 12 tabs before it started heating up, espec If I streamed a movie or watched YouTube while doing so. Also, if I started playing emulated dolphin games.
 
It’s not the number of tabs that matters. It’s what’s running in them. If you’re running multiple CPU intensive tasks, the computer will generate more heat. I don’t think it’s influenced much by the amount of RAM.
 
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For what it's worth, I have a 13" M2 Air with 24GB and a 15" M2 Air with 16GB and there is no discernible difference between the two and neither have used swap so far (other than an anomaly with my 13" Air that used low swap one time with plenty of available memory left, hasn't happened since).

This is basic MS Office suite usage, remote desktop into work, Teams, Apple Music, YouTube, Chrome, pod casts, etc., so not a whole lot of heavy lifting, but I still run many apps and have many documents open with no swapping. But I am also not a person who has 47 Chrome tabs open. ;)

The only reason why I opted for 24GB on my 13" Air is because I use Parallels with Windows 11 that has 8GB of memory dedicated to it. I don't use it often, but when I do, it's nice not to dig into my Mac's memory as I've found that 16GB is the sweet spot for me. But, you can never have too much RAM!
 
TinaBelcher said:
Thanks for all the responses!
If anyone, who purchased the air with 24gb RAM, please let me know how it perform up against a 32GB RAM on an intel Mac
Click to expand...
its worse, on a intel mac i was averaging 10gb 0 swap on 16gb overall, once i upgraded to m1 with 16gb, suddenly i was facing with 2-3gb memory swapped. one topic i think alot of ppl aren't aware of is the 16gb on the apple silicon is unified meaning both cpu and gpu uses the same memory pool, where on intel macs the gpu has its own ram.
 
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Sowelu said:
For what it's worth, I have a 13" M2 Air with 24GB and a 15" M2 Air with 16GB and there is no discernible difference between the two and neither have used swap so far (other than an anomaly with my 13" Air that used low swap one time with plenty of available memory left, hasn't happened since).

This is basic MS Office suite usage, remote desktop into work, Teams, Apple Music, YouTube, Chrome, pod casts, etc., so not a whole lot of heavy lifting, but I still run many apps and have many documents open with no swapping. But I am also not a person who has 47 Chrome tabs open. ;)

The only reason why I opted for 24GB on my 13" Air is because I use Parallels with Windows 11 that has 8GB of memory dedicated to it. I don't use it often, but when I do, it's nice not to dig into my Mac's memory as I've found that 16GB is the sweet spot for me. But, you can never have too much RAM!
Click to expand...
Thank you for mentioning Parallels!
Once in a while I use it, too. Maybe once or twice a year, when I suddenly have the urge to do something that a Mac cannot do. Maybe I wanna play a game or something that isn't possible on MacOS. So I'm glad you included that.
 
TinaBelcher said:
Because my old mbp from 2018 with 16 gb couldn’t handle more than 12 tabs before it started heating up, espec If I streamed a movie or watched YouTube while doing so. Also, if I started playing emulated dolphin games.
Click to expand...
The Apple Silicon Macs are massively better than the Intel ones. Trust me, you're not going to be running into any issues with a full 24 GB of RAM, and I really doubt you're going to be overheating. Frankly I think even 24 GB is probably overkill for the usage you're talking about.
 
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