PCIe SSD = Very Fast Swap / Page File ?

[ammophobia]

Is it true that due to the blazing fast read/write speeds of the PCIe SSD, that when page out happens, it would not noticeably slow the system down, thus 4 GB RAM on the new MBA is sufficient?

I wouldn't mind paying an extra $100 for 8 GB RAM, but where I live, there is no Apple Store (neither brick&mortar nor online shipping), and the local authorized resellers usually only have the regular (4 GB) models in stock, so getting my hands on the 8 GB model might be a hassle.

 

[mentaluproar]

Order online. There is no substitute for more RAM.

 

[ammophobia]

Order online. There is no substitute for more RAM.

Like I said, Apple Store doesn't ship to my country, so getting the 8 GB model is going to be a hassle (I might need to look for a third-party forwarder, which is riskier).

I asked this because I read this in a review:
"This not only means faster disk access but has an impact on overall performance including speedier memory caching if the system runs low on standard random access memory and needs to offload to the disk. That process can be painfully slow on standard disk drives but extremely quick on the new MacBook’s Air’s solid state drive."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/larrymagid/2013/06/12/review-new-macbook-air-is-a-winner/

 

[mentaluproar]

Sorry, I didn't see that. What will the computer be used for?

 

[ammophobia]

Sorry, I didn't see that. What will the computer be used for?

I'm a PHP web developer, so mostly I'm going to run photoshop, some web development IDE, local Apache/MySQL/PHP package, FTP client, and 3 browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox) to check CSS compatibility. I might need to install Windows on a VM to check IE compatibility, but I wouldn't need to keep it running all the time.

I also plan to do some iOS app development (just small apps related to the websites I built, not fancy apps with a lot of large graphical elements).

 

[mentaluproar]

VM & photoshop=RAM. Unless you want to try putting IE in a wrapper, you will want the ram. Fine a way.

It will work, of course, but not as nicely as having a full 8 gigs.

 

[ammophobia]

VM & photoshop=RAM. Unless you want to try putting IE in a wrapper, you will want the ram. Fine a way.

It will work, of course, but not as nicely as having a full 8 gigs.

So when I run all the apps I mentioned without the VM, I'd be fine? Because I only use the VM for IE, and I can easily drop it by only checking the IE compatibility occasionally (closing photoshop and unecessary resource hogs beforehand).

What about iOS app development for small apps like I mentioned earlier?

Sorry if I sound insistent on getting the 4 GB model, because if the purchase of a 4 GB model can be justified, I wouldn't need to go through the difficulties to obtain the 8 GB one. I really appreciate all your inputs though, thanks mentaluproar.

 

[mentaluproar]

I can't give a firm answer. If you can only get 4, get a 4.

With Mavericks memory compression, this might not be that big an issue.

 

[ammophobia]

I can't give a firm answer. If you can only get 4, get a 4.

With Mavericks memory compression, this might not be that big an issue.

All right, thanks a lot for your advice. I will wait for some more MBA reviews before making the decision .

 

[Jedi Master]

More RAM

Order online. There is no substitute for more RAM.

 

[pickaxe]

For the record, RAM is orders of magnitude faster than even PCIe flash memory but obviously swap will be less noticeable.

 

[Bear]

8GB would be preferable. If you can only get a 4GB model, do make sure you have RAM and VRAM settings for the VM as low as you can reasonably make them so you cause as little swapping as possible when you start the VM.