If I am sticking to 16GB? Absolutely!
Again, why pay double the price?
I am curious what compute tasks you are running. Can you name a few?
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Unified Memory 16GB is shared You need 32GB
- Thread starter TheRealAlex
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Again, why pay double the price?
Just my 2¢: I owned a 2013 Mac Pro that had 64 gb of RAM. I do a lot of HD video editing, but that 64 gb was never fully utilized. Then I had a 2018 i7 mini with 32 gb of RAM and an eGPU. Again, the RAM never seemed to be fully utilized. Now I have an M1 mini with 16 gb of RAM. It's much faster at tasks than any of my previous Macs. I have no trouble crunching 4k videos. And once again, the RAM is never fully utilized. Apple seems to be really good at making everything work together -- software and hardware -- so that it's difficult to compare how the M1 operates with how Intel chips operate. I assume there might be software not optimized for the M1, and then things could slow down and more memory might be useful. But I haven't run into that yet.
TensorFlow, PyTorch, and Dask loves more cores, so moving from the M1 to M1 Pro/Max drastically increase performance. 16GB of RAM is a joke for large dataset. Just to name a few.
That’s certainly true, but even if Activity Monitor Memory tab is always in the green, if it shows any significant value for compressed memory, then you would be using more than 16gb if you had 32gb. Right now I’m at 3.44 GB compressed, for instance, in my 2015 16gb MBP.
The Dell XPS 15 with 1 TB SSD/32 GB RAM is $2,149. Includes a 1650Ti with 4 GB RAM. You get a UHD+ display as well. They don't have a 64 GB option but it might be user-upgradable.
While I agree with the users on this thread, when I was doing an intensive task for 2-3 hours. My memory pressure was in the red and used 14/16gb of ram. But I do tasks like these in short bursts. Normal use is 10/16gb of ram. 32gb might be next laptop for me but I’m good with 16gb for 3 years.
I keep my laptops for a decade (unless they die but my MacBook Pros have been going the distance) and who knows how much RAM we'll need in five years? I also plan to run Virtual Machines. I want to test out Windows on ARM and like to allocate 8-32 GB on Virtual Machines.
This is one of the most bizarre posts I’ve seen in a while.
If you didn’t know what “unified” meant, this laptop is probably not for you to begin with.
If you didn’t know what “unified” meant, this laptop is probably not for you to begin with.
I may be wrong, but I beleive with a dedicated GPU all the data used by the GPU is actualy duplicated in system meory anyway. E.g., the gfx driver loads all the assets requested by the software and copies them to the GPU. The GPU might not have sufficient memory, so will swap out and get data from the system memory (cuaing horrific hitching in a game, but OK for compute tasks). Certainy for games this is the case.
Saying that, I am still on the fence on going for 32GB. 16GB just sounds a little too 2018-2020. I wan my new Macbook to last 5-7 years. I used to edit a lot ofphotos which was fine on 16 GB but I want to get in to some video editing. Nothing pro, but some GoPro footage of my kids skiing or my ultramarathons. I have yet to even buy a gopro, let alone edit - it will be an xmas present. so I have no idea of my personal memory usage going forwards, let alone prediticting what things will be like in 4-5 years.
Sure, saving $400 now and upgrading sooner makes sense. But the loss in value of the macbook then shelling out another $3K in 3 years because you are memory limited would really suck.
What sucks about memory is you rarely see any advnate at all, until the time that you absolutely need it, and then it is hard to work around. A slower CPU you feel up-front but you can live with it, e.g. export in Lightroom is slower but you go drink a ta and come back.
Saying that, I am still on the fence on going for 32GB. 16GB just sounds a little too 2018-2020. I wan my new Macbook to last 5-7 years. I used to edit a lot ofphotos which was fine on 16 GB but I want to get in to some video editing. Nothing pro, but some GoPro footage of my kids skiing or my ultramarathons. I have yet to even buy a gopro, let alone edit - it will be an xmas present. so I have no idea of my personal memory usage going forwards, let alone prediticting what things will be like in 4-5 years.
Sure, saving $400 now and upgrading sooner makes sense. But the loss in value of the macbook then shelling out another $3K in 3 years because you are memory limited would really suck.
What sucks about memory is you rarely see any advnate at all, until the time that you absolutely need it, and then it is hard to work around. A slower CPU you feel up-front but you can live with it, e.g. export in Lightroom is slower but you go drink a ta and come back.
Another unseen advantage of more RAM is that you don't have to swap as much. This extends the life of your SSD.
The elements to generate BMPs are stored in system RAM but I'm not sure that the bmp screen graphics have to be and they can always get rebuilt. When I'm running with integrated graphics on Windows, I can select the amount of RAM to allocate to integrated graphics. When I'm running a virtual machine, same thing - you choose how much ram to allocate for virtual graphics. I suppose that the best test would be to test with two identical machines excepting for discrete graphics.
I bought an M1 mini back in July and it can go into swap. It has 667 MB swap right now and I have Firefox, Notes, Calendar, Reminders, Mail, emacs, messages, TV, Terminal and VLC open. That is just all office stuff. So I currently run my production stuff on a Windows system with 128 GB of RAM. I have not integrated my 32 GB 2021 MacBook Pro on to my desktop because I'm not sure how to split things up. I have one program that I can't get to run on the new MacBook Pro. I'm running one more test before doing a direct with tech support. I was getting support via Reddit but they've suggested I call them. The program, of course, runs fine on Windows.
I get that, I should have gotten 32gb and probably would have if the displays were actually brighter. I kept my 2018 15” for 3 years and got rid of it because no warranty and speakers are failing. I plan to keep the M1 16” for 5 years, got 1tb storage as my future proofing.
You cache frequently used files which also extends the life of your SSD; though I suspect that the usable life of an SSD is on the order of a decade these days. I do a lot of stuff on the cloud but it's still nice to have things cached.
If you're a software developer and knows how RAM works, why make a confusing post like this? To me, you make it sound like the machine needs a lot of memory because Chrome, YouTube, Photos and an empty Docker use up 38GB of the available 64GB of RAM. Even an 8GB MacBook would be totally fine in this exact situation.
You seem to know your use case pretty well, you use Docker and run several containers at times, which all eat from that pool of RAM. Then yes, by all means get the RAM you need.
All this RAM talk is aimed at the people that don't know how it works, what they need and certainly don't need.
I see MacRumors is still having the same arguments, pretty much in the same words, as when the M1 was introduced, only it was about 8GB then. The OP knows this, he was disingenuously creating threads like this back then too, a forum pyromaniac.
I avoided the 2016-2019 models because of all of the stuff that I read here. My previous new MacBook Pro was 2014 and it's my backup now. My 2015 (I bought it used as a backup when my 2007 died) looks like it is going to go to my wife. 2016-2019 was just a bad time for the line and I can see the frustrations of owners. It was frustrating for those of us with laptops getting older and older too - fearful of buying the Intel models.
Ive commented on this before, but Im a pro video editor. I edit tv shows for streaming and cable. Since covid I've been using a 16gb iMac to do my work. I was waiting for this laptop to have a more proper setup, and I went with 32gb of ram. Money isn't an issue since its for work, but I haven't run into a situation with editing that I need 64 gb of ram. Even at post houses the ram always ranged from 24-32 almost all the time. For me I need ram more for running other things while I work. I usually have a word doc open and lots of tabs in the background as I procrastinate my day away. Those things tend to slow down because 16 wasn't enough. So far with 32gb Davinci is running perfectly, and all my other background ******** is instant and lightning quick. I think 64 would be real nice for people doing VM and heavy graphic work. After Effects in particular chew up ram. For me all I ever open are templates in there. I think 16 is fine for most people, unless you are going to run a ton of programs at once, and then 32 will give you some nice headroom.
The average person can STILL work fine with 8GB RAM. All they do is email, finance tracking and web. It's only those that do any home photo, audio or video editing that would really make use of 16. You can have multiple browser tabs, a few Office docs, and be streaming a video or music and be just fine with 8GB. Buying 16 is just adding overhead for future workflows and app bloat. To think that the average person will be making use of 32 or 64 GB RAM ANY time soon is well... lack of actual understanding of how much RAM people actually use or how it WORKS.
Also, 8GB was not "okay" 13 years ago. The AMD64 hadn't come out till late-2003 and Intel's 64-bit didn't release till almost 2006. So in 2008 8GB was a LOT of memory for the average person then. In fact, until very recently 8GB had been a maxed-out machine 13yrs ago.
My Late 2009 iMac 27 has 16 GB of RAM. Had I bought the Core i5 or i7 CPUs, the limit would have been 32 GB of RAM. Those are consumer-grade systems.
I have a 2008 Dell XPS Studio and it has 48 GB of RAM - it's still quite usable because of all of that RAM. It's seen a lot of use over the years including as a Development machine running Oracle Enterprise Linux. Yes, that old consumer-grade system could be used as a server.
Exactly, plus if you wanna save 500€ on the RAM you can always offload your heavy apps to a remote desktop if you already have one or cloud if you work at a company who has it.
You make solid points.
Most of the time, I have the RAM mapped out on my mind and know approx. how much each program will need.
I buy RAM based on the software usage and my workload, but now everyone can anticipate that.
What does that at all have to do with what I said? The average person in 2008/2009 did not then need 32GB, and rarely needed 8. Nor does the average person NOW need 32.
The fact a consumer grade system supports it has ZERO connection to if the average person NEEDS it. The average desktop right now can supoprt 128GB of RAM. Does that in someway mean that the average person NEEDS 128? No. The average person is still fine with 8. We are only recently(last 2-3 years) getting to the point that heavy Business/Office document users are making use of 16GB. And they are using MUCH larger documents than your typical home user.