What does one have to do to get physical memory used close to 32GB?

[MakeTheMostOfLife]

New 2018 MacBook Pro 15 inch full spec.

Been mucking around checking Activity Monitor and physical memory used. It seems mostly to sit under 16, around 14-15GB no matter what it do. Normal use never pushes it past 16, so I tried something silly:

I ran Handbrake encoding, whilst copying 700Gbs files whilst using final cut editing 4K video and everything else open from the dock switching around open apps. The most I could get was it to just touch 18GB

It does seem to make the point that many make here, that 32 is pretty much a waste of money.

Can anyone with 32gb ram get physical memory used close to 32?

What does it take and is therefore useful for?

 

[CrashTestWalrus]

Run lots of VMs that are allocated a lot of memory. That will do it. Running lots of VMs is why I wanted 32GB of RAM personally. I started to become memory constrained.

 

[keysofanxiety]

The trouble (I use the word "trouble" lightly) is that macOS's memory management is so good. It's seriously optimised.

As stated above, running lots of VMs which have a high amount of RAM allocated is the best way to clock up memory usage.

I can't see myself using 32GB RAM that often, albeit if I was to upgrade my laptop I would go for it for future-proofing. I've had Safari tabs running, Logic Pro X with 20+ AU (plugin was Symphonic Choirs on each with the word builder), and Final Cut Pro X simultaneously without the system paging to disk.

That said: the fans were running like crazy and CPU/graphics usage was through the roof. RAM wasn't though.

TL;DR: 16GB RAM goes a lot further on macOS than it does on Windows. You'll be approaching other bottlenecks with heavy use before the system pages to disk to make a noticeable performance deficit. The main exception to this would be memory-hungry applications (typically VMs). Most Pro Apps benefit far more from a better CPU & GPU than 32GB RAM vs 16GB RAM. 16GB is enough in most instances.

 

[CreeptoLoser]

8K Red videos in Redcine_X Pro with max ram allocated. That is too processor intensive for ANY notebook though. Your fans will go crazy. It makes water cooled desktops become noisy.

 

[dukebound85]

dealing with data

I could use 100s of GB of ram if possible

 

[aevan]

It does seem to make the point that many make here, that 32 is pretty much a waste of money.

For some people it is really important due to their workflows. For the vast majority, it is a waste of money. Even “futureproofing” is a bad argument as the rest of the computer will be outdated far sooner than the amount of RAM (16Gb).

If you know you need more than 16, you probably do. If you don’t, you probably don’t.