Question about M1 RAM usage

[Seanm87]

I originally used the 2019 MacBook Air with 8gb of ram. I would frequently get a warning message about YouTube using significant memory and it close it to keep responsiveness. This was very annoying but I dealt with it.

I now have an M1 MacBook Air with the same 8gb memory but I never get this problem anymore. I use my laptop in the same way but I even have a few more tabs open now.

How is this possible if the ram is the same? Does the M1 have some kind of invisible memory from the M1 that it utilises.

Has anyone else had better ram management with M1?

 

[pldelisle]

56 pages of degenerated discussion about it there https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-am-really-torn-between-8gb-vs-16gb-ram.2270446/

 

[Rck1984]

Without going too technical..

Unlike Intel (or AMD) on Windows/MacOS, Apple runs their own OS on their own SOC now. So both software and hardware are specifically designed for one another. Also, all the computing parts that were separate across a mainboard before are now on the same chip (or very close to it).

Lastly, swapping led to slowdowns on machines with slower hard drives, on the Nvme drives in the M1 its barely noticable, if at all..

All this results in better optimisation, efficiency and performance.

 

[Quackers]

I originally used the 2019 MacBook Air with 8gb of ram. I would frequently get a warning message about YouTube using significant memory and it close it to keep responsiveness. This was very annoying but I dealt with it.

I now have an M1 MacBook Air with the same 8gb memory but I never get this problem anymore. I use my laptop in the same way but I even have a few more tabs open now.

How is this possible if the ram is the same? Does the M1 have some kind of invisible memory from the M1 that it utilises.

Has anyone else had better ram management with M1?

Have you used any swap? Just out of interest.