What is the big difference if any [8gb vs. 16]

[brdeveloper]

I went for 8GB for my MBP. I was heavily considering 16GB, if only for bragging rights, but decided against it. I have 16GB in my desktop PC, which I do far more intensive tasks on than my MBP, and even on that I very rarely go over 8GB of usage (and even then, it's usually because of a memory leak).

For the usage you've described, 8GB should be fine.

Well, truth is, 16GB is practically as small as 8GB. Mavericks does RAM compression, so if your RAM is filled with strings, numbers and mostly non-compressed stuff, 8GB can became something like 10-11GB and 16GB probably turns into 20-22GB at best.

In other words, 16GB is better, but you won't note too much improvement like a 8x size increase as would be in a jump from 8GB to 64GB or 16GB to 128GB. With 64GB or 128GB in a rMBP you could do extreme data processing without swapping, so it would be a real scientific/professional workhorse, but this is not the case with 8 or 16GB...

 

[Meister]

Well, truth is, 16GB is practically as small as 8GB. Mavericks does RAM compression, so if your RAM is filled with strings, numbers and mostly non-compressed stuff, 8GB can became something like 10-11GB and 16GB probably turns into 20-22GB at best.

In other words, 16GB is better, but you won't note too much improvement like a 8x size increase as would be in a jump from 8GB to 64GB or 16GB to 128GB. With 64GB or 128GB in a rMBP you could do extreme data processing without swapping, so it would be a real scientific/professional workhorse, but this is not the case with 8 or 16GB...

I agree. Thats y i have been looking at the new macpro myself.
Maxing out macbooks makes only sense to a people with special needs.
If you really need to do heavy stuff the macpro is the only really option.
And its upgradeable, too.

 

[zipa]

I agree. Thats y i have been looking at the new macpro myself.

The new Mac Pro is perhaps the most ridiculoustest computer that one can buy. Unless one does some crazy ass 5D real-time-rendering or something else that justifies the video cards...

 

[brdeveloper]

The new Mac Pro is perhaps the most ridiculoustest computer that one can buy. Unless one does some crazy ass 5D real-time-rendering or something else that justifies the video cards...

OpenCL, nice to meet you. It's like a CPU, but has thousands of cores.

The only thing we can complain about Mac Pro's performance is that its gpu ram is not ECC, so it's not suitable for, let's say, a couple of days or maybe a couple of weeks of intensive math processing.

 

[akdj]

... And this is y the ram threads never end.

OP narrows down his options to a sensible conclusion.
--> someone suggests to blow some money on a senseless ram upgrade, because you never know ...
Really keeps me entertained on my way to work.

If you get addicted to adobe premier or fcp by god! get a macpro. No laptop is gonna cut it for you.
(Or wait for the new macmini with quadcore)

With those savings i would get an ipad mini and see how it changes your life.

'Senseless RAM upgrade'? Says you....the one that chose 8GB of RAM on 'your' rig. OP can't change, increase or add to his Or her RAM in the future. The OP is looking to get 5 or 6 years from their computer. If simply showing a way to save the cost of the 'upgrade' is keeping you entertained you need a life.

 

[Meister]

'Senseless RAM upgrade'? Says you....the one that chose 8GB of RAM on 'your' rig. OP can't change, increase or add to his Or her RAM in the future. The OP is looking to get 5 or 6 years from their computer. If simply showing a way to save the cost of the 'upgrade' is keeping you entertained you need a life.

... Writes the the one who spends time replying to my posts.
You have somehwhat of a point though.
I have a 5 hour commute and its very boring on the train.
I am obviously not the only one who likes ram threads.

I shouldve chosen 4gb on 'my' ( why the quotation marks ??) rig.
Im a more heavy user than OP and everything I do still runs perfectly on 4gigs.

You are still not giving any reason y Op should blow 200 bucks on huge amounts of ram...
And I make a very good point.

 

[Commy1]

16GB in my new 13" rMBP, loving it so far. For regular processes and every day stuff OSX can flex and stretch out nicely with A LOT more room to go. When I boot up Lightroom/Photoshop/Aperture and the like there is always that extra room which its much needed when editing photos in large quantities.
I believe I would have gone with 8GB if it were possible to upgrade later on. For that reason alone did I opt into upgrading. Go with your gut.

 

[IronManFanatic]

People need to step two steps backwards and have a real deep think of what their actual uses are NOW, not in 5, 10 or 15 years time.

ffs, reading this thread makes me feel so stupid for sitting on the fence since November; between getting 8 v 16 and 256 v 512.

I'm just going to return the 512GB (sealed) and get the 256GB (again) which I originally had sealed as well. The 2.4/8/256 offers the best bang-for-buck. Anything over that is astronomically overpriced for hardware you probably don't even have enough balls to efficiently use.

It's a laptop; you're not going to be storing the entire production of Speilburgs latest movie. 256GB is actually more than you can chew already. Why would you want yo pay $350 more for an extra 256GBs of PCI-e Flash and a negligible 200MHz faster clock on the CPU and 100MHz faster GPU max clock? Go feed your family instead, buy external storage or NAS or you know, SAVE it. Look on the brightside, you get slightly more battety life with slightly lower max clock speeds and less NAND flash to power and less RAM to keep active.

As for the RAM issue, read this post of a guy who stress tested 8GB and tell me if you still need to sht out of a golden toilet bowl. (https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18251897/) PS: My desktop has 8GBs and I've been fine with that for 2+ years (The only time I maxed out 8GBs was when I had tonnes of junk tabs open from days or the previous week and had tonnes of junk programs open [including old Photoshop files] and tried to open a really hi-res 13MP image in Paint. After opening 2-3 hi-res images, I closed some junk and it worked!) I'm an IT Student who was waiting for a good Win 8 ultrabook (Yoga 2 Pro) that never appeared on the market here in Australia.

I've been using my 128GB SSD + 1TB HDD w/ 8GB DDR3 @ 1066MHz w/ GTX 570 (1280MB GDDR5) and a core i7 2600K @ 3.4-3.7GHz quad-core Desktop (built it myself) for two years + 2GB DDR3 RAM Chromebook w/ 1.66GHz dual-core Atom processor on a 1280 * 800 display and 16GB SSD for around 6 months. It flies for casual web browsing. I make the most of what I have. I was given the Chromebook for free; from Google.

 

[fskywalker]

It's a laptop; you're not going to be storing the entire production of Speilburgs latest movie. 256GB is actually more than you can chew already.

Well, that may be true for some, but i'm using 545GB of my 1TB, so go figured...

 

[Meister]

Well, that may be true for some, but i'm using 545GB of my 1TB, so go figured...

What are you doing on your mac?
I shoot raw with file sizes of 25-30mb. I could easily use 1tb ssd, too but i didn't want to spend so much.
with a bit of reasonable file management you can move files to an external drive.
While this partly defeats the point of a laptop it saves a lot of money!

I think the OP will never use 256gb.

 

[RoboWarriorSr]

Usually if you're asking that question, you won't benefit from 16 GB of RAM.

 

[vmflapem]

For me, I watch movies, and do other casual stuff and no matter how hard I tried, it was impossible to go over 5.5GB so I decided to get a larger SSD than get a 16GB RAM

 

[IronManFanatic]

What are you doing on your mac?
I shoot raw with file sizes of 25-30mb. I could easily use 1tb ssd, too but i didn't want to spend so much.
with a bit of reasonable file management you can move files to an external drive.
While this partly defeats the point of a laptop it saves a lot of money!

I think the OP will never use 256gb.

Usually if you're asking that question, you won't benefit from 16 GB of RAM.

Yes! Exactly right, if you have to ask about whether more is better, than your needs are probably like the other vast majority of people who could easily get away with the 2.4/8/256 model or even the 128GB base one will be more than sufficient for some.

Some/vast majority of people are just looking for something affordable yet capable, to carry around when they're out and about, not a warhorse of machine to defeat Skynet at any given moment.

A lot of people are also just giving into Apple's 'genius' marketing tactics/pressures and opting for the higher spec'd models for no real gain/need - it's Human nature to want more; whenever we are presented with the choice. Ofc, if you know you need the higher spec'd hardware, than you wouldn't be reading this as we speak, you'd be modelling something for Pixar by now or something powerfully related.

Fight your Human instincts and go with your gut feeling instead, you know yourself (and your computing habits) more than anyone else right now. Don't look into the reasonings of things so much, you'll just go around in circles, a bit like an endless loop of on and off (1s and 0s) which computers run off at their very core.

And for all you Futurists saying 'get more, it's soldered in' many average consumers don't even think about upgrading their laptops or even desktops! They just go out and buy a new computer from a retailer every 3-5 years or if they're more informed, they'll pay to have it custom built as far as PC desktops go. My Brother still uses my old 2.5k HP Paviliom dv5 1010tx laptop. That came with 4GB DDR2 RAM, 2.53GHz Centrino 2, 320GB 5400RPM HDD, 9600M GT w/ 512MB of VRAM from Oct 2008. That is still going strong 6 years later! (Although the thermal paste on the CPU and heat sink is starting to wear out (This laptop has endured a lot of gaming over the years and still does), so the laptop safely powers down to prevent heat damage. (I have to reapply some new thermal paste soon). He games and does heavy web browsing on it. The point here is, your laptop will probably need some maintenance done to it, before your hardware needs ever dramatically change (if they ever do).

 

[fskywalker]

What are you doing on your mac?

Lots of music and pictures, plus graduate course (DBA and JD) materials / papers