Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Why do you need more than 8 GB RAM in a MacBook Pro?

Basically only if you’re heavily multitasking with memory hungry apps, which the vast majority of people will not be doing - you’ll probably get a larger sample of people who are, and the finicky sorts who think having 16gb will ‘future proof’ their purchase on forums like these, but honestly 8gb is easily enough for most casual users. 4gb is even sufficient for flicking between a handful of safari tabs, with a YouTube or iTunes song on in the background and writing a document in pages without even getting into ‘memory stress’ territory.
 
On my work machine (2012 15" rMBP), I might be able to get by with 8GB, but I run virtual machines. I currently have 16GB, and even then I end up shutting down VMs I'm not using to prevent my machine from getting sluggish. Even with my main Windows 10 VM (which I've given 4GB of RAM) running, it gets noticeably slower, though it's possible it's not necessarily the RAM that's slowing things down.

If I had a personal non-work laptop, I could get by fine with 8GB, but I have an iMac (w/ 48GB RAM) to do the heavy lifting (video editing in FCP X is the heaviest thing I currently do). If I needed VMs for personal use, I'd probably run them on my iMac and remotely connect to them from the laptop when I need to.
 
  • Like
Reactions: throAU and TheAppleFairy
boppin said:
perhaps you are assigning too mich memory for VMs.
Click to expand...

Maybe. I'm running Visual Studio in the Windows 10 VM, so I think 4GB is appropriate as it matches Microsoft's recommendation, though could probably run ok with a little less. The other VMs are 1GB or less.
 
Ries said:
My Macbook Pro uses currently 9.2GB RAM with photos, 4 tabs in safari (the youtube tab alone is using 512MB) and some of the standard mac osx apps open (mail, iMessage, notes, ...). That is only counting the app and wired memory, not the additional 6GB in use by the file cache.
Click to expand...
Doesn't matter about the ram used, it matters the compression of the ram you have.

I have 16gig available, it routinely uses 10-11, but compression is nothing. I'd be just fine with 8 gigs tbh.
 
Falhófnir said:
Basically only if you’re heavily multitasking with memory hungry apps, which the vast majority of people will not be doing - you’ll probably get a larger sample of people who are, and the finicky sorts who think having 16gb will ‘future proof’ their purchase on forums like these, but honestly 8gb is easily enough for most casual users. 4gb is even sufficient for flicking between a handful of safari tabs, with a YouTube or iTunes song on in the background and writing a document in pages without even getting into ‘memory stress’ territory.
Click to expand...
I've posted about 4 GB being occasionally problematic in High Sierra even for light usage.

I have two almost identical machines, one with 8 GB and one with 4 GB.

One is a 13" mid-2009 MacBookPro5,5 2.26 GHz. I was using it was 4 GB in El Capitan for light usage and it was OK. When I more heavily multitasked it started to bog down, but with basic usage as you describe it was fine. I then upgraded it to 8 GB and it now has High Sierra on it.

The other is a 13" late 2009 aluminum MacBook5,1 2.0 GHz. Like the MBP, it has SSD and High Sierra, but it only has 4 GB. Besides the slightly slower CPU, the main difference between these two machines is that it has no Firewire. Otherwise the internals are near identical. (Basically Apple built this machine and marketed it as an upscale MacBook, for $300 more than the base MacBook. They must have had bad sales, because less than a year later, they discontinued it and re-classified it as a MacBook Pro, just adding Firewire and slightly faster CPU.)

What I've noticed in High Sierra is that even for very light usage, occasionally, the memory use can really spike so that 4 GB becomes problematic, and I start hitting the yellow for memory compression or also the swap. This happened much less often in El Capitan for the same usage. I suspect it is a combination of somewhat higher memory usage in High Sierra, along with possibly some increased memory usage by software such as Safari, plus or minus memory leaks.

What this means is that these days I would say that I would recommend 4 GB as a bare minimum, and 8 GB as a more reasonable minimum. Sure, stuff like memory leaks could get corrected over the year, but that's assuming it's actually memory leaks that are causing some of the increased memory usage.

What I've also noticed is that sometimes with heavy multitasking, even with just business apps and Safari tabs and iTunes and light Photoshop with Photos 3.0 etc. (not hardcore content creation) even 8 GB can be a bit limiting. I start again to get into significant memory compression which on an older machine like that MacBook Pro can cause enough overhead to be noticeable. In contrast, I don't notice this ever happening in this context when using a 16 GB machine.
 
Last edited:
EugW said:
What I've noticed in High Sierra is that even for very light usage, occasionally, the memory use can really spike so that 4 GB becomes problematic, and I start hitting the yellow for memory compression or also the swap.
Click to expand...

I notice this with 4 GB RAM with El Capitan just after startup.
 
i think the best advice I have seen in this thread is to always go 16GB and don't max out the CPU. Even IF 8GB is fine now, next year or two OsX whatever may choke on 8GB. A lot of Memory combined with a fast SSD = a fast system.

Right now I am converting a .mov to 4K HEVC with 3 hours to go. I can use my system without noticing all the crunching going on. I definitely would experience hiccups with 8GB.
 
EugW said:
I've posted about 4 GB being occasionally problematic in High Sierra even for light usage.

I have two almost identical machines, one with 8 GB and one with 4 GB.

One is a 13" mid-2009 MacBookPro5,5 2.26 GHz. I was using it was 4 GB in El Capitan for light usage and it was OK. When I more heavily multitasked it started to bog down, but with basic usage as you describe it was fine. I then upgraded it to 8 GB and it now has High Sierra on it.

The other is a 13" late 2009 aluminum MacBook5,1 2.0 GHz. Like the MBP, it has SSD and High Sierra, but it only has 4 GB. Besides the slightly slower CPU, the main difference between these two machines is that it has no Firewire. Otherwise the internals are near identical. (Basically Apple built this machine and marketed it as an upscale MacBook, for $300 more than the base MacBook. They must have had bad sales, because less than a year later, they discontinued it and re-classified it as a MacBook Pro, just adding Firewire and slightly faster CPU.)

What I've noticed in High Sierra is that even for very light usage, occasionally, the memory use can really spike so that 4 GB becomes problematic, and I start hitting the yellow for memory compression or also the swap. This happened much less often in El Capitan for the same usage. I suspect it is a combination of somewhat higher memory usage in High Sierra, along with possibly some increased memory usage by software such as Safari, plus or minus memory leaks.

What this means is that these days I would say that I would recommend 4 GB as a bare minimum, and 8 GB as a more reasonable minimum. Sure, stuff like memory leaks could get corrected over the year, but that's assuming it's actually memory leaks that are causing some of the increased memory usage.

What I've also noticed is that sometimes with heavy multitasking, even with just business apps and Safari tabs and iTunes and light Photoshop with Photos 3.0 etc. (not hardcore content creation) even 8 GB can be a bit limiting. I start again to get into significant memory compression which on an older machine like that MacBook Pro can cause enough overhead to be noticeable. In contrast, I don't notice this ever happening in this context when using a 16 GB machine.
Click to expand...
Well that’s interesting, I haven’t experienced that myself (though I only have a flash based MBA with 4) I don’t think flash over hdd should make a difference to the memory swap though, the graph should still go yellow if it’s having to swap whether it’s faster or not? Granted I’ve not upgraded that model to high sierra yet, but I was assuming HS would actually be more optimised than regular sierra? I would be astonished if the sort of usage I described above (say 6 safari tabs, one of which YouTube playing in the background, and editing even a fairly hefty pages document) wouldn’t still be handled with aplomb... could it be that HS isn’t well optimised for your older machines (at this point in its release) so it’s more resource hungry than it would necessarily need to be? I will have to look into this for myself and see if things do change after an update...
 
Falhófnir said:
Well that’s interesting, I haven’t experienced that myself (though I only have a flash based MBA with 4) I don’t think flash over hdd should make a difference to the memory swap though, the graph should still go yellow if it’s having to swap whether it’s faster or not? Granted I’ve not upgraded that model to high sierra yet, but I was assuming HS would actually be more optimised than regular sierra? I would be astonished if the sort of usage I described above (say 6 safari tabs, one of which YouTube playing in the background, and editing even a fairly hefty pages document) wouldn’t still be handled with aplomb... could it be that HS isn’t well optimised for your older machines (at this point in its release) so it’s more resource hungry than it would necessarily need to be? I will have to look into this for myself and see if things do change after an update...
Click to expand...
I ended up just upgrading the MacBook5,1 to 8 GB. There was a flash sale on 8 GB at Amazon for CAD$45 / US$36 so I couldn’t pass that up.
 
Falhófnir said:
say 6 safari tabs, one of which YouTube playing in the background, and editing even a fairly hefty pages document
Click to expand...

Screen Shot 56.png


safari is working hard delivering an episode of the wire in 1080p to my eyes.

It's no skin off my nose, but some of you might be wondering why safari needs all that RAM.

youtube may be similarly profligate.
 
erasr said:
I think I've made a mistake. I have just taken delivery of a MBP 8GB.

Since this I've had a couple of friends say I should have got the 16GB. Reading the forums I see other people saying the same.

I'm in the 14 day window but have used this MBP a little.

I can send it back easily right? Plus, can someone with knowledge just please say if you really think I should buy the 16GB one. I need this for a few years and may do some gaming, web development work, image editing and music production.
Click to expand...

Take it back if you can. 16gb is the new 8gb IMO. Get the max every time!
 
Since your return window is running slowly out of time, here are a few thoughts on use cases which may or may not be helpful for you.

I'm working as a graphic designer in an ad agency, and at work, I'm using a high-end 5k iMac with 32 GB of RAM. At home, I'm using a quad-core Mac Mini with 16 GB RAM und a MacBook Pro with 8 GB RAM.

Let's start with the iMac: I actually had to upgrade the RAM to 32 GB, since Photoshop CC would sometimes run out of memory when working with huge (10 GB+) .psb-files. That's actually the only use case I encounter where 16 GB is not enough. Having said that, I'm talking about gigantic projects including incredibly high resolution coupled with hundreds of layers and tons of smart objects, usually for creating visuals for ad campaigns which need to be high res and flexible, so flattening is not possible. If you don't work on projects this huge, you probably won't need 32 GB RAM now.

So how about 16? My Mac Mini is still blazing fast, even after five years of use. At home, I don't need to work on huge client projects, and for personal projects, 16 GB RAM is more than enough. Why did I go for 16 instead of 8? The answer is Capture One Pro. CO uses insane amounts of RAM, consuming more the longer you work on your library. Having multiple libraries with tens of thousands of RAW images in them, I really can't afford to run out of memory while working on a bunch of photos. So if you do any RAW processing, go for 16 GB. But note, you do NOT need more than 8 GB if you just want to process a single photo at a time using Photoshop or similar software - 8 GB is more than sufficient for that.

Now, what about my 8 GB MacBook Pro? It's a 2009 model, so yeah, the memory certainly isn't the bottleneck here. Having said that, I never run out of memory on this machine, usually using two different browsers with something like 40 tabs, having a few less taxing apps running in the background (Mail, Slack, etc.) and doing a few simple photo edits every now and then.

The bottom line is, if you are a light user, you do not need more than 8 GB of RAM, and you probably won't in the next few years. Using web browsers (even with a LOT of tabs), office software, some light gaming and some less taxing apps coupled with sometimes a single heavier app should be fine. If you're doing any kind of photo or video editing on a regular basis, maybe even with RAW material or high resolution material (like 4k video or 50 MP photos), get 16 GB.
 
8GB is fine for my professional use

Very heavy Lightroom workflow + light photoshop + 3 safari tabs + mail + music + something extra ( all at the same time )
 
16GB of RAM, even nowadays, is only needed when you work with large Photoshop files, do high-end video editing or work with virtual machines (or using Windows with Parallels f.i.). I have a 2015 MB Pro with 256GB SSD and 8Gb of RAM, running High Sierra. With lots op apps open (App Store, Messages, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Safari with 6 tabs open, iTunes, Photos and Activity Monitor) I'm still only using 5.7Gb. Adding Pages, Numbers and Keynote to that lot, bumps it up to 5.99GB, while compressed memory increased from 1Gb to 1.5 Gb.
Mac OS scales memory usage dynamically (or that's how I understand it, anyway, I'm not a techie). So unless you're doing some really high end stuff, you'll be just fine with 8Gb of RAM...

At work, we use 2015 27 inch iMacs, i5, with 8Gb of RAM, using Creative Suite 6 (Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator) and I can't say the amount of RAM is a problem, even if we don't really do any high-end stuff.
 
Last edited:
Dr. McKay said:
16GB of RAM, even nowadays, is only needed when you work with large Photoshop files, do high-end video editing or work with virtual machines (or using Windows with Parallels f.i.). I have a 2015 MB Pro with 256GB SSD and 8Gb of RAM, running High Sierra. With lots op apps open (App Store, Messages, Mail, Calendar, Contacts, Notes, Safari with 6 tabs open, iTunes, Photos and Activity Monitor) I'm still only using 5.7Gb. Adding Pages, Numbers and Keynote to that lot, bumps it up to 5.99GB, while compressed memory increased from 1Gb to 1.5 Gb.
Mac OS scales memory usage dynamically (or that's how I understand it, anyway, I'm not a techie). So unless you're doing some really high end stuff, you'll be just fine with 8Gb of RAM...

At work, we use 2015 27 inch iMacs, i5, with 8Gb of RAM, using Creative Suite 6 (Indesign, Photoshop and Illustrator) and I can't say the amount of RAM is a problem, even if we don't really do any high-end stuff.
Click to expand...

Yep. These are not the old days. More RAM in your system means more RAM being used. Bottom line. You cannot base your laptop’s needs based on your iMac or Mac Pro usage if it has 32GB of RAM or more.

I only have Safari open one tab on High Sierra on my 2017 iMac with 40GB of RAM. I have 9GB of RAM used. Does that mean 16GB is required for High Sierra? No.

On my 2026 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, with the same test, only has 4GB used.

One of my workstations with 128GB of RAM running After Effects. Guess what? 120GB of RAM is used when working on my projects. That does not mean I cannot work on my projects on my 16GB RAM MacBook Pro because I can.
 
xWhiplash said:
On my 2026 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM, with the same test, only has 4GB used.
Click to expand...

Are you telling me even in 2026 there STILL is no 32 GB option?!?!??!!?

OH.

MY.

GAWD.

:tsst:

Well I'm going to post a thread about this now out of spite!

(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
 
ZapNZs said:
Are you telling me even in 2026 there STILL is no 32 GB option?!?!??!!?

OH.

MY.

GAWD.

:tsst:

Well I'm going to post a thread about this now out of spite!

(sorry, I couldn't help myself)
Click to expand...

Ahh dumb typo! :D
 
Authoring in Final Cut but I'm getting hard limits and crashes sometimes, so I may have to upgrade and go 32GB. I'm not even a Pro final Cut user.
 
Machines running Sandy Bridge processors have issues running High Sierra when they only have 4GB of RAM, upgrading to 8GB fixed said issues - It's GPU related. Less RAM means less RAM available for the internal graphics, etc.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back