This is why I don't think Apple will do anything to RAM configurations until at least M3. It'll be 2024 when M3 drops (assuming 2 year cadence like we're expecting now). By 2024, raising the minimum to 16GB wouldn't hurt Apple's profits that much because people will demand more RAM.
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What's the likelihood of M2 supporting more ram?
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And it's not just about the profits but also the availability of components. LPDDR5 is still premium goods, I doubt that Apple would be able to deliver millions and millions of 16GB configs just like that. I mean, they still ship LPDDR4X in the iPhones, which suggests that shortages are real.
I agree that, when it comes to RAM, the way in which Apple's entry-level differs from Dell, etc., is not with the bottom configs. Rather, it's at the top. While the M1 MBP is limited to a max of 16 GB of LPDDR4x, the Dell XPS 13 Plus, which is in the same price class, can be configured with 32 GB LPDDR5.
Not so fast. Comparing the M1 MBP with the XPS 13 Plus/17-1280p on GB, the XPS is is 37% faster MT, and the M1 is 7% faster ST. So I think we can say the XPS wins on CPU speed.
According to notebookcheck.net, the XPS's 96 EU Iris Xe graphics offer about the same performance as an NVIDIA MX450, which has an Open CL score on GB 60% higher than the M1's. Now I don't know how legit this GPU comparison is, but the XPS does support 2 external displays vs. the MBP's one, which is significant. So I'd give the graphics to the XPS.
Now we have price. I spec'd them both out with the config's I'd get (I need a 2 TB SSD):
A 13" M1 with 16 GB LPDDR4x RAM, 2 TB SSD, and 2560-by-1600 LCD is $2,300.
An XPS 13 Plus with 17-1280p, 16 GB LPDDR5 RAM, 2 TB SSD, and 1920 x 1080 LCD is $1,949. Upgrading the display to a 3546 x 2160 OLED touchscreen puts it at $2,249.
[Instead going with 8 GB RAM reduces the Dell's price by $100 and the Apple's by $200, so not that much of a relative change.]
So I'd say the Dell XPS 13 Plus is less expensive and faster, not more expensive and slower. Where the Mac has an advantage is in usability, because of much longer battery life and much less noise. And the Mac may be faster than the Dell on battery.
I suspect Dell sells a lot of XPS 13's, and with just a $100 upcharge to go from 8 GB to 16 GB LPDDR5, I expect they sell a lot of those in the 16 GB config.
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The 1280p-equipped XPS competes with the 14” M1 Pro, not the base M1. I was talking about the entry-level machines. Not even the 13” Pro, but the Air. I’d agree that the 13” Pro should probably have 16GB as standard.
XPS is Dells premium line. Dell ships a lot of laptops but most of those are the cheaper Inspirons or Lattitudes. I’m fairly certain that Apple ships more Airs than Dell and Microsoft ship of their premium line combined.
Actually, for some reason, most reviewer only compare Cinebench results. I’m not saying M1 CPU is faster than i7-1280P as I am yet to make a detailed comparison between the two, but I wouldn’t say it would be %37 faster especially considering how power hungry it is inside an 13” XPS chassis (I have been using Dell XPS laptops at work for years). I think we need more data and comparisons for different scenarios before stating 12th P series is faster.
As for the Iris Xe with 96 EU, as someone who has a laptop with that GPU, I can safely say that it’s way slower than M1 GPU except for maybe Handbrake encoding speed (mostly due to Quicksync and even than they are really close) and obviously games. One could say Iris Xe is faster simply by using MX450’s GB compute score (and Iris Xe is definetely not MX450 equal as a lot of Windows ultrabooks with Iris XE also comes equipped with MX450 like my laptop I mention above) while other could easily say M1 is much faster by showing photo/video editing results as it is comparable to RTX3050, if not faster.
Reviewers make two big blunders here. First, they compare the most expensive BTO XPS model with the base M1, where it actually should be compared with the 14" M1 Pro. Second, they take the benchmark which is a known ideal case for Intel, under ideal circumstances. When you look at GB5 for example, 1280P is getting around 8000-9000 points, not that far off M1's 7700 median score. And that is still burst workload, where Intel has an advantage. In sustained operation you can expect around 10-20% drop, even more if we are talking about performance on battery.
I’m not gonna shout “bias!” because Cinebench is commonly used to compare PC to PC, but it’s known that Cinebench is where Macs score the lowest in any benchmarks.
Nope. The closest sibling to Dell XPS 13 Plus, based on weight, size, performance, and class, is the 13" M1 MBP. The 14" M1 Pro is a compact mobile workstation, and is thus in an entirely different class.
In fact, at 2.7 lbs, the XPS 13 Plus is lighter than both the M1 MBP (3.0 lbs) and the M1 Air (2.8 lbs).
More to the point, you said that if you got a Dell instead of an Apple M1 laptop you'd pay $200 more and it would be slower. I didn't think that was likely, particularly with Alder Lake, so I looked into it, and presented the evidence to show it's indeed not the case.
If you'd like to present countervailing evidence using Dell's latest machines (those using 12th gen Intel), feel free to do so.
Of course, you could use Dells still sold with older tech (11th gen Intel), but then the comparison is no longer legit (it would be like assessing Apple's price/performance using the Intel Mac mini).
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Size and weight, sure. Performance and price, not so much. The 1280P model with a good display is $1950 on the Dell store.
But I digress. There are valid reasons to look at it from many angles I suppose.
More to the point, you said that if you got a Dell instead of an Apple M1 laptop you'd pay $200 more and it would be slower. I didn't think that was likely, particularly with Alder Lake, so I looked into it, and presented the evidence to show it's indeed not the case.
If you'd like to present countervailing evidence using Dell's latest machines (those using 12th gen Intel), feel free to do so.
Sure
The XPS plus with 1240P and high-res display is $1599. An Air with same 512GB SSD is $1249. CPU-wise, they are comparable (and on battery m1 is faster), the M1 has a faster GPU and more battery life. Or the 13” Pro with much better battery life for 1,499Ah, I see why you wanted to limit it to entry-level. That way you make the Mac a better value by avoiding Apple's significant upcharges for added RAM and SSD seen with the midrange and upper level models. But that's artificial. Seems one should perhaps split the difference and look at the midrange.Sure
Plus you've taken a rock-bottom XPS configuration and paired it with a very expensive 4k OLED touchscreen—more expensive and higher-res than that on the Mac. Seems it would be better to split the difference between the cost of that screen and the base screen, since the Mac's screen is somewhere in the middle.
Finally, you should be comparing to the 13" MBP instead of the Air, for feature comparability. The XPS 13 plus has a row of capacative function keys. The Air is more bare-bones.
So:
13" M1 MBP, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, $1700
XPS 13 plus, i5-1240P, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, HD screen: $1400
XPS 13 plus, i5-1240P, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, 4k OLED screen: $1700
XPS 13 plus, i5-1240P, 16 GB RAM, 512 GB SSD, average screen pricing: $1550
Upgrading the Dell to the i7-1260P adds $150, giving us the same price as the Mac: $1700.
Topping the Dell out with the i7-1280P adds another $100, giving us $1800.
The above seems to me to be the most reasonable, middle-ground approach to comparing the two.
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I am focusing at the entry-level because the discussion was about whether 8GB is acceptable in a premium computer in 2022. So I just wanted to point out that 8GB is still a standard configuration for pretty much every premium brand out there, at higher prices than Apple's entry-level. Of course the pricing situation scales differently from brand to brand, and is especially unfavourable for Apple with their above average upgrade prices. But still, if you have a limited budget and are ok with an entry-level config, the 2020 Air still more than holds its ground agains more expensive 2022 models. That was the entire point.
The base Mac comes with a wide gamut HiDPI display, the base XPS doesn't. You need to spend extra $300 to get HiDPI and wide gamut, either for the OLED or the LCD version. I mean, you either have these features or don't
And sure, the MBA has a lower PPI, one can put it at the contra list Just a quick note about the GPU situation. We know that Geekbench Compute does not give representative performance estimates for M1 GPUs because the workflows are too short to warm them up. Intel Xe 96EU Xe (1280P) offers 2.2TFLOPS, M1 has 2.6TFLOPS. But M1 has TBDR to help it out, and I am not quite sure about the cache situation (Intel suggests that 1280P has more LLC cache than M1 but I have no idea how they count). I have little doubt that in the real world M1 GPU is faster and more efficient.
Anyway, all of this is simply to illustrate that Intel is still struggling to catch up to Apple's almost two year tech at this point (first-gen tech with known flaws and limitations at that). Their GPU is not there yet, in the CPU performance they did manage to close the gap, but at the expense of power consumption. The Air still has is an excellent value proposition for a lot of users who just want a nice everyday laptop.
I'm not so sure if the supply of LPDDR5 would be an issue. Highend Android phones now use LPDDR5 and they probably sell much more than Macs each year.
Heck, maybe the upcoming iPhone uses LPDDR5 too.
At this point, it's basically just profit margins. The 8GB to 16GB upgrade is probably very popular and very profitable for Apple today.
Unsure on this. Some people tend to keep 10+ tabs open and at least 5 apps open. 8GB for that won't cut it, you'll start Swapping.
I believe that Apple designed the base 14 inch MBP + 16gb upgrade just for you. Killing off not used processes (apps and tabs) is an old fashioned and mostly forgotten method to free up RAM. A reboot once in a while is good too reduce apps allocating more RAM over time.
Are you having issues with poor performing compny issued computers? You are not the only one, at my technical university they give the PhD students computers that fits secretarial work to do simulation, modelling and other computational work.
I wonder how much LPDDR5x RAM NVIDIA uses in their Grace CPU chip (yes, this is a low-production item). They say the bandwidth is 1 TB/s, but don't give the RAM.
Unfortunately, we’ll likely have to wait a year for that info. ECC is interesting on LPDDR, though they don’t give much in the way of details. I wonder what RAM manufacturer NVIDIA usually uses or if it’s random.I wonder how much LPDDR5x RAM NVIDIA uses in their Grace CPU chip (yes, this is a low-production item). They say the bandwidth is 1 TB/s, but don't give the RAM.
Edit: From the Wikipedia entry on LPDDR5X, we can roughly estimate (1 TB/s / 8533 Mb/s) * 2 GB = 1875 GB. ECC overhead will add to that, but back of the envelope calculations indicate that a heck of a lot of RAM (for consumers) would be necessary for that kind of throughput. Of course, for enterprise that’s a modest figure.
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Good article here about ECC on LPDDR:
What Designers Need to Know About Error Correction Code (ECC) In DDR Memories
How side-band, inline, on-die, and link error correcting schemes work and the applications to which they are best suited.
semiengineering.com
No pun intended?
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Apple M2 - Max 32 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Pro & M2 Max - Max 128 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Ultra . Max 256 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Extreme Max 512 GB Unified Memory
Apple Mac Pro 2x Apple M2 Extreme . Total of Max 1TB = 1024 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Pro & M2 Max - Max 128 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Ultra . Max 256 GB Unified Memory
Apple M2 Extreme Max 512 GB Unified Memory
Apple Mac Pro 2x Apple M2 Extreme . Total of Max 1TB = 1024 GB Unified Memory