Should I Cancel my MacBook Pro Retina 8GB RAM and switch to 16GB?

[inhalexhale1]

Thank you to both of you! i think I made the right choice and your responses solidified that.

Despite owning IOS devices for 3 years now it still was unchartered territory for me switching from PC to Mac computers. Which also made me ignorant of another factor which is resale.

I never owned a computer that I was able to resell for a new upgrade. I've run my computers to the death 5-7 years.

Now, I understand that perhaps in 2 or 3 years if I wish I can now sell this one and use the money to upgrade to a stronger model and not shell out all the money now plus I'd get the upgraded processors not just larger SSd or RAM.

Coming from a PC minded background people ask me what the hell you paying 2K+ for a computer when you can get one for $600 well i think my statement above and your comments is the answer why.

A Ford can't be resold like a Mercedes can.

So yes i will be saving all the boxes etc. And also maybe I should think the same for my iOS devices as well.

That is a great point. The resale value of Apple laptops, especially the retina Macbook Pro, is very high. If you ran into a situation where the 8GB wasn't cutting it, you could sell it and upgrade for a minimal loss. But I suspect you'll be more than happy with 8GB for a long while.

I liked the Ford vs. Mercedes references, haha.

 

[iRobby]

That is a great point. The resale value of Apple laptops, especially the retina Macbook Pro, is very high. If you ran into a situation where the 8GB wasn't cutting it, you could sell it and upgrade for a minimal loss. But I suspect you'll be more than happy with 8GB for a long while.

I liked the Ford vs. Mercedes references, haha.

Thanks! and it's great to see someone else in Jersey!

 

[Stack]

I opted for the 16GB because it was only a $100 upgrade from the educational store. That is cheap enough to say "why not"

I do all my work on a computer, with about 3 browser and 20 tabs open at any one time. I have Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Mail, Excel and other programs open at the same time as well.

I currently have a 2010 MBP with 8GB ram at the moment and based on the info I see in my RAM reporting is the following.

1.41 GB Wired
3.84 GB Active
2.12 GB Inactive
656 MB Free

 

[thekev]

When I have some database (hashing) code running on 15-20 million strings, the free RAM occasionally dwindles down to 2.5-3 gigs but quickly frees up as the write operation to save the data to the SSD is lightning fast.

When I'm doing anything in CS6, the worst case I've had was about 1.6 gigs free (and this is still with those 10-15 apps open).

People need to stop quoting CS6 unless they're actively tuning their memory settings. Adobe applications won't go above the amount of ram you set for their use. Beyond that they use scratch disks.

 

[zackkmac]

I think for the Retina model it ultimately depends on how long you plan on keeping it. Honestly, 8GB is more than enough for quite a while, but if you want to run the latest software in the next 4-5 years or so, it will do best to be future-proofed and have 16GB RAM.

With cMBPs you can up the RAM at any time, so it is usually a wise choice to save on Apple RAM pricing and get the minimum and upgrade later. For the Retina model you are stuck with what you buy. So 16GB might be a smarter choice if you keep it long term. However, some people only keep their computers for 1-3 years and if you're that type of consumer then 8GB is plenty and you made a great choice.

Enjoy your Mac either way.

 

[dartox]

Thank you to both of you! i think I made the right choice and your responses solidified that.

Despite owning IOS devices for 3 years now it still was unchartered territory for me switching from PC to Mac computers. Which also made me ignorant of another factor which is resale.

I never owned a computer that I was able to resell for a new upgrade. I've run my computers to the death 5-7 years.

Now, I understand that perhaps in 2 or 3 years if I wish I can now sell this one and use the money to upgrade to a stronger model and not shell out all the money now plus I'd get the upgraded processors not just larger SSd or RAM.

Coming from a PC minded background people ask me what the hell you paying 2K+ for a computer when you can get one for $600 well i think my statement above and your comments is the answer why.

A Ford can't be resold like a Mercedes can.

So yes i will be saving all the boxes etc. And also maybe I should think the same for my iOS devices as well.

Here's a screenshot of my dock with about 20 apps open if that also helps:

http://i.imgur.com/UxF2H.png

Like you can see in the Activity Monitor icon, I have about 4.13 GB free right now. Safari + Webcontent is using close to a gig, followed by Eclipse and XCode which are using about 600mb each. Everything else uses about 50-100mb.

Like I said, in this generation, it's really difficult to fully use up that 8 gigs of RAM. I would save that $200 and use it for something you really need (possibly a future upgrade?)

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People need to stop quoting CS6 unless they're actively tuning their memory settings. Adobe applications won't go above the amount of ram you set for their use. Beyond that they use scratch disks.

Please calm down, I did not know that. Thanks for the information! I'm not a graphic designer, I only use the CS6 applications to design images for my iOS apps.

 

[tinkori]

I have a 2011 cMBP from work with 16GB RAM + SSD (self upgraded) and I routinely see only 6-8GB free with the following open: safari (10 odd tabs), outlook, powerpoint, emacs, word, eclipse. When I run VMs, I need to do tests with 2-3 VMs and then I thank my 16GB upgrade

Also have a personal MBP13 (2011) with 8GB RAM and while running eclipse, picasa etc, I routinely see around 1GB free. Dont run VMs on my personal

My Opinion:
- 8GB is just about ok for now and will be ok for 1-2 yrs.
- RAM becomes a bottleneck much before the CPU does. Less RAM leads to more writes to SSD which reduces the life of the SSD! Thats one more reason I prefer to max my RAM.
- If you max your RAM, you might not even need a SSD since a lot stuff will run from RAM ...

Hence I tend to get cMBPs and do my upgrades (especially when a 16GB kit costs 100 bucks!).

My $0.02: If you dont do heavy computations, save your 200 bucks but I would always max out the RAM if I were to spend 2000+ on a non upgradable laptop.

 

[dartox]

I have a 2011 cMBP from work with 16GB RAM + SSD (self upgraded) and I routinely see only 6-8GB free with the following open: safari (10 odd tabs), outlook, powerpoint, emacs, word, eclipse. When I run VMs, I need to do tests with 2-3 VMs and then I thank my 16GB upgrade

Also have a personal MBP13 (2011) with 8GB RAM and while running eclipse, picasa etc, I routinely see around 1GB free. Dont run VMs on my personal

My Opinion:
- 8GB is just about ok for now and will be ok for 1-2 yrs.
- RAM becomes a bottleneck much before the CPU does. Less RAM leads to more writes to SSD which reduces the life of the SSD! Thats one more reason I prefer to max my RAM.
- If you max your RAM, you might not even need a SSD since a lot stuff will run from RAM ...

Hence I tend to get cMBPs and do my upgrades (especially when a 16GB kit costs 100 bucks!).

My $0.02: If you dont do heavy computations, save your 200 bucks but I would always max out the RAM if I were to spend 2000+ on a non upgradable laptop.

Anandtech wrote a good paragraph on this (this changed my decision actually):

"The question of whether or not you should opt for the 16GB memory upgrade really depends on what you do with the system and how long you expect to use it.

Without any form of socketed memory expansion, you’re stuck with the amount of memory you order on the system. Thankfully 8GB is healthy by today’s standards and likely will continue to be so for the next couple of years.

If your present day workloads require 8GB of memory, then the 16GB option is a must have. If you’re looking at 16GB purely as future-proofing, chances are you’ll run into processor (or storage) limitations before you feel held back by memory."

 

[MrNewVegas]

I was patiently waiting for the 13" Retina for a long time but was disappointed that they didn't include a dedicated GPU so i just ordered a 15" retina. I to was debating between either getting the extra ram or bumping the SSD up to 512Gb. I chose to go with the 16Gb ram to future proof myself and i couldn't justify spending AUS$600 on an extra 256Gb. I am planning on having all my music, movies and photos on an external HDD

Cant wait to get my 15" retina!

BTW im a graphic designer so having that extra bit of ram will definitely help out in the future with the Adobe suite

 

[fskywalker]

It's either now or never, go for it! I did....

Francisco
15 rMBP 16GB RAM 2.3GHz 512GB SDD (manually upgraded from 256GB)

 

[lixuelai]

8GB should be fine. TBH if you needed 16GB you would know it. Modern OSes try to use as much ram as possible. So just because someone has a couple GBs left or even 1GB left it doesn't mean the OS is limited by the memory. Anyway if you run multiple VMs frequently or work with huge datasets then it would be worthwhile. But then again if you do those workloads you would know your RAM requirements...

 

[shansoft]

I opted for the 16GB because it was only a $100 upgrade from the educational store. That is cheap enough to say "why not"

I do all my work on a computer, with about 3 browser and 20 tabs open at any one time. I have Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Mail, Excel and other programs open at the same time as well.

I currently have a 2010 MBP with 8GB ram at the moment and based on the info I see in my RAM reporting is the following.

1.41 GB Wired
3.84 GB Active
2.12 GB Inactive
656 MB Free

Retina 16GB is $180 in the Apple Store for educational.

 

[yanksrock100]

I don't think you need 16 gigs unless you are planning on some heavy use

 

[locoboi187]

You guys do realize that there is no such thing as future-proofing? Especially if it's just RAM...lol

 

[RMSko]

You guys do realize that there is no such thing as future-proofing? Especially if it's just RAM...lol

I completely agree. Here's the thing, while you may think you are "future proofing" the RAM, you are probably missing the forest for the trees. At any point you end up needing the 16GB of RAM, it will be extremely likely that the other specs of the rMBP will also be outdated, and so IMO it doesn't make sense to just protect now against only one of the many things that would need to be upgraded b/c you will probably never take advantage of it.

 

[MCAsan]

I think the extra cost of 16GB is good insurance for not have low memory during the next 3+ years of ownership and, will max the resale value then.

The big bucks are in jacking up the SSD size to 768GB.

 

[dndandrea]

If you use up to 16GB of ram (non job related) you deserve a trophy.

Actually even if you use up to 8gb of ram you must be doing some heavy editing with tons of programs opened up in the background. First figure out how ram works before you decide to upgrade to 16GB, unless you're using it then you're wasting it. It's not like if you have more of it the faster your computer will run. RAM has little to do with speed, if anything. If you're not using 8GB+ of ram you will see NO EFFECTS of having 16GB of ram.

 

[newdeal]

Don't forget as i recall 16gb of ram will take up 16GB of your drive for a sleep image so on a 128gb drive that may cause a problem

 

[dblissmn]

I notice at Other World Computing that their suite of Photoshop benchmarks shows a huge gain for going from 4GB to 6GB of RAM and very modest gains thereafter. While I can't see any harm in 16GB, I can't see a whole lot of upside either, especially at Apple's exorbitant upgrade price which is comparable to buying 32GB of Tier I RAM in SODIMMs. I'll probably order it myself though simply because of multilayered Photoshop images that go beyond the OWC test suite. But if it wasn't built-in, I'd be ordering 8GB given Apple's pricing.