Video Demos Performance Differences Between 8GB and 16GB Apple M1 MacBook Pro

[kyleh22]

In Brazil, this $700 translates to $1400 after taxes and "Apple Brazil profit margin". So, yes, future proof is mandatory.

Oi! Brazil has an outrageous luxury Import tax. I vaguely remember it being like 30% or something. Add that to the high cost of doing business in Brazil plus the currency exchange fees to go from $BRL to $USD...

In short...it's very expensive to be a Brasileiro.

 

[twintin]

Not in my experience, when the system has a lot of swap and memory is full things start to get laggy. Animations are jerky as apps are pulled from swap, it destroys the buttery smooth feel. Pop in as apps are pulled from swap can be quite jarring.

Yeh, it entirely depends on how frequently the swap is used and how much amount of data that needs to be shuffled around. That's what the memory pressure metric is about. As long as it is green (or maybe even orange), you won't notice much of the swapping. But as soon as it become red, I can imagine you will notice a performance drop. I guess your memory pressure is red or maybe close to red (with just 8GB, mine has always been green since 2012 as far as I can tell).

 

[LiE_]

Yeh, it entirely depends on how frequently the swap is used and how much amount of data that needs to be shuffled around. That's what the memory pressure metric is about. As long as it is green (or maybe even orange), you won't notice much of the swapping. But as soon as it become red, I can imagine you will notice a performance drop. I guess your memory pressure is red or maybe close to red (with just 8GB, mine has always been green since 2012 as far as I can tell).

Mine will happily sit in the green but still I'll have those issues.

Pressure looks good, but it was definitely noticeable that the system was struggling.

 

[twintin]

Mine will happily sit in the green but still I'll have those issues.

Pressure looks good, but it was definitely noticeable that the system was struggling.

View attachment 1678491

I believe you, still your issue may not necessary has anything to do with the swapping per se although that's the only visible thing you see (there may be other bottlenecks you don't se). Although the swap is big, the memory pressure does not indicate there are any crazy amount of data exchanged. Something could possibly be wrong with your SSD or the controller to it, which may manifest itself as a "swap" issue. Hard to tell.

 

[LiE_]

I believe you, still your issue may not necessary has anything to do with the swapping per se although that's the only visible thing you see (there may be other bottlenecks you don't se). Although the swap is big, the memory pressure does not indicate there are any crazy amount of data exchanged. Something could possibly be wrong with your SSD or the controller to it, which may manifest itself as a "swap" issue. Hard to tell.

It's very consistent, when I'm running some heavy web apps and have some apps open things start to slow down even though memory pressure is fine. I think it's easy to say "your Mac is broken" but I think it's more likely a limitation of 8GB. All my past Macs have had 16GB+ RAM and I've never had these slow downs.

 

[SWAON]

No, no and NO! Stop repeating that nonsense!

8 GB M1 = 8 GB Intel.
16 GB M1 = 16 GB Intel.

The M1 might have better performance and you might feel swapping slightly less, but swapping is still to be avoided. Swapping will ALWAYS be slower than a workload that has ram enough. Swapping is the last resort to ensure the computer doesn't have to run close down apps to stay running. Most tests of the 8 GB shows a fairly heavy use of swapping even in moderate workloads. So unless your workload is just a few tabs in a browser, some regular office stuff and watching Youtube, then you need to get the 16 GB version. And those of us which have a much heavier workload should really be hoping for a 32 GB and 64 GB option in future versions.

The M1 is impressive but you are not get a free launch. Your data and apps still require the same amount of ram - No ifs, ands or buts!

Sorry, no. 8GB of unified RAM = 8GB of standard RAM, if you have a workload that actually needs lots of data loaded into RAM. Plus "4k workflow" is a piece of string: how many sources, effects etc? Which formats?

What we're seeing in these tests is that for many single benchmarks, the combination of a faster CPU, faster GPU, other new gizmos like the Neural Engine and hardware codecs, significantly faster SSD, faster RAM access (on-package RAM and no copying between system RAM and VRAM) makes the 8GB model capable of things you previously wouldn't have even tried on a low-end 13" MBP. Many of the tests shown on that video probably wouldn't have stressed the RAM on an 8GB Intel Mac - they'd have been limited by CPU, GPU or SSD speed instead - and unfortunately the tester didn't know to look at the "Memory pressure" - rather than the almost meaningless "Memory used" - which would have shown which, if any, tasks were being limited by RAM.

Or, to put it another way, the old Intel 2-port, 13" MBP would have probably choked badly on the 8K video test even if it could have had 32GB of RAM.

...and none of those tests looked into the issue of typical "messy" workflows with multiple applications open, VMs running, multiple browser tabs etc.

It is clear that the 8GB M1 will be more than enough for most people. ...but then it is probably enough for most people with lower-end Intel machines which will run out of CPU/GPU grunt before they run out of RAM. Non-upgradeable machines force people to get extra RAM for "future proofing".

As for 32GB or more - people shouldn't be upgrading to 32GB anyway unless (a) it's a user-upgradeable machine and there's no inflated Apple RAM prices to make you skimp or (b) they know they have specific workloads that require lots of data loaded into RAM. If you've got that sort or workload, you should also be wondering how the Apple Silicon 16" MBP and iMac replacements are going to perform with (maybe) 12 cores and a better GPU, as well as other considerations like better multiple monitor support, more ports/I/O bandwidth...

I based my assumption off the video in the post, where the video is about performance difference between 8GB & 16GB RAM. No where is mentioned the factor SWAP or even SSD and how those are interconnected. Most people will be under the impression that 8GB will do the job for the most part, but as other owners of Mac Mini with 8GB point out, it's not exactly the full story. How optimized the software is for the M1 chip is also part of the same story, so many factors play their role. At least some of you took the time to explain why and how RAM works. The general public is not tech savvy enough so we need to be educated more. Thank you

Not in my experience, when the system has a lot of swap and memory is full things start to get laggy. Animations are jerky as apps are pulled from swap, it destroys the buttery smooth feel. Pop in as apps are pulled from swap can be quite jarring.

point proven:

 

[twintin]

It's very consistent, when I'm running some heavy web apps and have some apps open things start to slow down even though memory pressure is fine. I think it's easy to say "your Mac is broken" but I think it's more likely a limitation of 8GB. All my past Macs have had 16GB+ RAM and I've never had these slow downs.

Don't think I have ever had a swap bigger than 1-2 GB for the last 8 years or so, so the memory compression thing may not work as I thought and hence not tell the whole truth. I can however notice that your memory pressure graph is more bumpy than mine, which is pretty much flat. So I guess there is more swap activity in your system than in mine.

Out of curiosity, can you check the Disk tab as well (it may take a few seconds before all fields are filled with data) ?
Also, what is the top process occupying around 3 GB of memory ?

EDIT: The Apple support dokumentation says, if the memory pressure is red, orange or contains lot of bumps, you may need more memory, so your observation may be correct since your memory pressure is bumpy as far as I can tell.

 

[ValueArb]

Beware of the swap disk space!

In most of the benchmarks performed on 8GB M1 machines, if Activity Monitor is shown, the swap space usage is always between 2,5GB and 4GB or even more. In my 10 years of being a mac user, I’ve never seen such big swap space being used unless I’m stressing my machine heavily, and that usage may be aging your SSD.

I have my choice clear, 16GB, even if it’s just for future-proofing my purchase.

I do development on a 16Gb M1 Air. Swapping is pretty much unnoticeable until the swap reaches around 8-9 Gb. Then I get weird behavior from Safari pages for some reason, they get unresponsive, requiring multiple clicks for buttons or links to work.

 

[Populus]

I do development on a 16Gb M1 Air. Swapping is pretty much unnoticeable until the swap reaches around 8-9 Gb. Then I get weird behavior from Safari pages for some reason, they get unresponsive, requiring multiple clicks for buttons or links to work.

Yeah, I guess with this fast SSDs swapping is fast and unnoticeable, my concerns are more focused on the health and lifespan of the SSD.

 

[Frixos]

I based my assumption off the video in the post, where the video is about performance difference between 8GB & 16GB RAM. No where is mentioned the factor SWAP or even SSD and how those are interconnected. Most people will be under the impression that 8GB will do the job for the most part, but as other owners of Mac Mini with 8GB point out, it's not exactly the full story. How optimized the software is for the M1 chip is also part of the same story, so many factors play their role. At least some of you took the time to explain why and how RAM works. The general public is not tech savvy enough so we need to be educated more. Thank you



point proven:

The problem with this video is that he's worried about 800MB of swap file usage. I'm currently sitting on a 2013 MBP 16GB, where 11GB is being "used," (so I have 5GB left) but I have 1.5GB swap used.

This doesn't mean that I should have gotten 32GB. It simply means that the OS works in such a way that it'll utilize swap even if you have several GB of RAM unused. It won't destroy your SSD (I mean, this one is still working well 7 years later!)

Get the 8GB and be happy. Unless you really need 16GB. If you see not just a couple GB in Swap Used but you see several/a dozen GB in Swap Used, then get the 16GB.

 

[twintin]

Yeah, I guess with this fast SSDs swapping is fast and unnoticeable, my concerns are more focused on the health and lifespan of the SSD.

The life span of the SSD probably exceeds the time you will keep you computer, even if you write 1 TB per day (just google it). I mean, this is not a new problem, is it (how many complains have been made about broken SSDs because of too much swapping) ? The manufacturers of SSDs usually give you like 5 years warranty anyway and that's probably what you should expect regardless how much the swap is used.

 

[laptech]

All this issue about RAM could have been avoided if Apple would just build machines that allowed for RAM and SSD upgrades.

 

[mike...]

The life span of the SSD probably exceeds the time you will keep you computer, even if you write 1 TB per day (just google it). I mean, this is not a new problem, is it (how many complains have been made about broken SSDs because of too much swapping) ? The manufacturers of SSDs usually give you like 5 years warranty anyway and that's probably what you should expect regardless how much the swap is used.

I've written less than 1TB a day and killed an SSD through swap. Samsung's 250GB Evo has a warranty of 150TBW. If you're writing 1TB a day that's your warranty gone in less than half a year.

Also quoting these manufacturers' warranties is pointless, as your warranty is with Apple. One year. Three if you took out Apple Care+. If you kill your SSD out of warranty you will pay over the odds for a complete logic board replacement.

 

[collin_]

Beware of the swap disk space!

In most of the benchmarks performed on 8GB M1 machines, if Activity Monitor is shown, the swap space usage is always between 2,5GB and 4GB or even more. In my 10 years of being a mac user, I’ve never seen such big swap space being used unless I’m stressing my machine heavily, and that usage may be aging your SSD.

I have my choice clear, 16GB, even if it’s just for future-proofing my purchase.

Uh... I have a 64GB 16 inch and that's normal. It always does that even when I'm not stressing the RAM. The TBW of the SSD is way too high for that to meaningfully shorten the lifespan.

 

[laptech]

The life span of the SSD probably exceeds the time you will keep you computer, even if you write 1 TB per day (just google it). I mean, this is not a new problem, is it (how many complains have been made about broken SSDs because of too much swapping) ? The manufacturers of SSDs usually give you like 5 years warranty anyway and that's probably what you should expect regardless how much the swap is used.

SSD's are soldered onto the motherboard therefore there is no warranty on the SSD because it cannot be removed. It does not matter if the actuall SSD chip is given a 5 year warranty because the complete machine is out of warranty after 1 yeazr (unless you take out extended warranty) and Apple will say because the machine is out of warranty, it will cost the owner mega $$$ to replace the motherboard because the SSD is soldered onto the motherboard and it would require a complete motherboard change.

 

[SWAON]

The problem with this video is that he's worried about 800MB of swap file usage. I'm currently sitting on a 2013 MBP 16GB, where 11GB is being "used," (so I have 5GB left) but I have 1.5GB swap used.

This doesn't mean that I should have gotten 32GB. It simply means that the OS works in such a way that it'll utilize swap even if you have several GB of RAM unused. It won't destroy your SSD (I mean, this one is still working well 7 years later!)

Get the 8GB and be happy. Unless you really need 16GB. If you see not just a couple GB in Swap Used but you see several/a dozen GB in Swap Used, then get the 16GB.

funny enough, I also use 16GB RAM MBP machine, one of the obsolete ones and SWAP doesn't reach high, nor i have had any issues with my Samsung 850 Pro SSD for all these years. For what i do, 8GB will be enough, but I agree if I want better epxerience, 16GB will be better choice, but it's not that cheap here.. upgrades cost much much more than USA, people say easily buy 16G/1TB but those are very expensive options in EU. Anyway..

 

[laptech]

funny enough, I also use 16GB RAM MBP machine, one of the obsolete ones and SWAP doesn't reach high, nor i have had any issues with my Samsung 850 Pro SSD for all these years. For what i do, 8GB will be enough, but I agree if I want better epxerience, 16GB will be better choice, but it's not that cheap here.. upgrades cost much much more than USA, people say easily buy 16G/1TB but those are very expensive options in EU. Anyway..

What is written in the post above is important. All those in the US, the MR team and many many of the forum members seem to forget that when it comes to Apple, outside of the US Apple machines are very expensive. This is not taken into consideration when there are discussions about the ease of changing stuff or replacing stuff because whilst it maybe easy in the US to acomplish those things, it is a lot lot harder to achieve in countries outside the US.

 

[SWAON]

What is written in the post above is important. All those in the US, the MR team and many many of the forum members seem to forget that when it comes to Apple, outside of the US Apple machines are very expensive. This is not taken into consideration when there are discussions about the ease of changing stuff or replacing stuff because whilst it maybe easy in the US to acomplish those things, it is a lot lot harder to achieve in countries outside the US.

somone mentioned in prior comments that in Brazil the Mac Mini is actually double the price, here is 950$ for the entry level only and 16GB version with 512GB SSD would cost 1522$, whereas US is 1100$, for the difference we pay in EU, in US they make best value upgrades.. it's so unfair.. (off topic rant).

 

[sofakng]

Is it possible to get more information on the SSD from Apple regarding lifetime read/writes?

 

[Justanotherfanboy]

Any M1 8GB users are welcome to challenge me if your swap memory is 0 byte.

My challenge to you is this:
Show us that your setup, with its fancy zero swapping, is SIGNIFICANTLY faster than the M1, because of it.
Everything I’m hearing is saying that the swap is occurring not out of necessity, per se, but rather because of the speed of new storage controller, the soc essentially uses the swap as a bit of extra ram... for no other reason than that it is a simpler data handling scheme & doesn’t really detract from performance much.

You guys getting all twisted up about “m0ar ramZ is neeeeed3d for me!!” remind me of the people that used to think that you could immediately judge the quality of a camera by the number of megapixels.
I think we’re entering a slightly new paradigm, folks!

 

[hans1972]

Beware of the swap disk space!

In most of the benchmarks performed on 8GB M1 machines, if Activity Monitor is shown, the swap space usage is always between 2,5GB and 4GB or even more.

Nothing wrong in using swap disk space. It is there for a reason.
A lot people would rather save $200 + taxes to get 8Gb of RAM and use some more swap, even if that reduces the life of the SSD from 20 years to 17 years.

 

[hans1972]

I think nearly everyone missed the point of the referenced video - it is not the speed of SSD swapping but how often the swapping occurs and the size of the swapped memory.

"An electric effect results from the fact that data can only be written on a storage cell inside the chips between approximately 3,000 and 100,000 times during its lifetime." - How long do SSDs last? For a given TBW larger actual RAM means less swapping and, therefore, a longer life for the SSD.

Yes but if the more use of swap causes the SSD in Macs to be reduced from 15 years to 10 years, it doesn't really matter.

One of the SSDs allowed 9000 terabytes to be written to it. If you write 100Gb per day, it will last for 246 years.

 

[hans1972]

Thanks for the tag @IG88, I typically don’t read comments on news stories. As MacATDBB said, just looking at the free memory is not indicative of how much memory is available to the applications. There are several points in the video where the presenter points out that the free memory is low, but then he shows that there are several gigabytes of cache memory available. As far as I can tell, only in the very last test was the available memory truly exhausted on the 8GB system. These processors aren’t magic. If the system exhausts available memory it WILL have to resort to swap space, which WILL result in reduced performance. In 7 out of 8 tests the available memory was not fully exhausted on either machine. To me this means that the testing methodology here was flawed, and some of the conclusions that he reaches, such as “The memory is not acting as a bottleneck,” are not supported by these tests.

Using swap till not necessarily cause performance degradation which a user cares about or even notice.

The questions are will you notice this performance degrations, how often, do you care and are you willing to pay $200 to avoid it.

If a task takes 25s with 16Gb and 35s with 8Gb, it is still takes too long to sit and wait there and I would not care.
If it only happens to a task I do 5 times a year, I would not care.
etc.

 

[hans1972]

Try to take an 8 GB M1, open 30 tabs in Chrome and then check the amount of swap written at the end of the day. I absolutely guarantee that it will be way above 5 GB.

The best SSDs can handle thousands of terabytes written to them. The best Samsung SSD can handle up to 9000 terabytes written. So if you write 1Tb a day, it would take 24 years to ruin the SSD.

 

[v3rlon]

Epyc servers have an entirely different purpose and usually run with 1TB+ of memory. They're designed for massive scientific simulations and feature film vfx and nobody cares what they cost or how much power they use.

And my car drives way faster than the Epyc. The Ford F150 has WAY more towing capacity. Why, I bet the Epyc couldn't even tow a jet ski.

And how is that relevant you ask? Well, it isn't. An $8000 chip that draws 225 Watts and needs 1TB of RAM has absolutely nothing to do with how fast a car goes, how much a truck tows, or a CPU designed for a laptop/ entry level PC.