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

[EugW]

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.

What are the issues? Is it just RAM related and does the number of monitors matter? Or is there something else specific to the GPU?

My old Penryn laptops from 2008/2009 which had 4 GB had a dedicated GPU with GeForce 9400M. That had its own 256 MB RAM, sufficient for the internal display (and the occasional projector as a secondary display). However, they've since been updated to 8 GB anyway, since 4 GB RAM is limiting in High Sierra even with a dGPU.

 

[Hater]

One of the Metal2 processes hanging and presenting lots of beachballs.

Only affects Sandy Bridge systems with 4GB of ram. Doesn't matter how many monitors - I'm unsure if it's specific to IHD3000 graphics or not, I have an Ivy Bridge system.

 

[EugW]

One of the Metal2 processes hanging and presenting lots of beachballs.

Only affects Sandy Bridge systems with 4GB of ram. Doesn't matter how many monitors - I'm unsure if it's specific to IHD3000 graphics or not, I have an Ivy Bridge system.

Strange, considering Metal 2 doesn't even support 2011 Macs.

 

[ahmedouvix]

i have 16gb on my laptop but i barley use them and pressure never exceeds 20%. i also never used the dGPU. kinda sad i got the 15". 13" would fit better. i never done stressful work on it tho. just browsing, office and movies. i have boot camp installed and i use many engineering apps like cad, revit and primavera but think it will work well on 8gb.

 

[throAU]

perhaps you are assigning too mich memory for VMs.

Perhaps you’re assuming you know better than he/she does about the workload in question.

One of the things I do for example is test out new versions of VMware ESXi + vSphere in workstation.

To do proper testing i need 2x ESXi hosts and a vCenter.

The requirements for that are 2x 4GB of RAM for the virtual hosts plus 8 GB of RAM for vCenter or they will not install.

That’s 16 GB of memory before i even spin up any VMs on the nested environment or include any for the host machine.


Some people actually do work that requires RAM. Just because plenty of you run a web browser with a music player and little else, doesn’t mean people with actual work to do can get by with similar spec.

 

[Ethosik]

Perhaps you’re assuming you know better than he/she does about the workload in question.

One of the things I do for example is test out new versions of VMware ESXi + vSphere in workstation.

To do proper testing i need 2x ESXi hosts and a vCenter.

The requirements for that are 2x 4GB of RAM for the virtual hosts plus 8 GB of RAM for vCenter or they will not install.

That’s 16 GB of memory before i even spin up any VMs on the nested environment or include any for the host machine.


Some people actually do work that requires RAM. Just because plenty of you run a web browser with a music player and little else, doesn’t mean people with actual work to do can get by with similar spec.

And why MUST you do this on a portable system? Is there a reason why you cannot have a powerful desktop and a cheapo laptop for if you need to demo something on the road?

My job requires me to spin up a lot of VMs too. But guess what? I use my desktop with 128GB of RAM for this and just use my laptop for light uses on the go. 32GB of RAM would not be enough for me on a laptop if I tried to move my entire job on one device.

 

[throAU]

And why MUST you do this on a portable system? Is there a reason why you cannot have a powerful desktop and a cheapo laptop for if you need to demo something on the road?

My job requires me to spin up a lot of VMs too. But guess what? I use my desktop with 128GB of RAM for this and just use my laptop for light uses on the go. 32GB of RAM would not be enough for me on a laptop if I tried to move my entire job on one device.

So i can do it on the move and not buy 2 machines?

i dont currently do it on a portable system, however there are those who wish to be able to do this and currently if this is something you want to do, you need to buy a PC.

The point was that there are people who need/want more than 8 GB of RAM. Be it in a portable or desktop or whatever, and there are those who can’t understand how anyone could possibly need more, because their limited usage pattern doesn’t require it.

If we’re talking only “light uses” on the go, my iPad Pro does that... without the ability to do heavier workloads on the Macbook Pro, it is losing its relevance.

For what its worth, I’d agree that 32 GB on a Macbook Pro would currently be “enough”. But 16 just isn’t.

 

[boppin]

The biggest mistake Apple had done was that they soldered the RAM and the SSD into the logic board.
Completely stupid.

 

[Super Xander]

Hello!

Just a question.

I have seen the discussions about "why does the MacBook Pro does not have more than 16 GB RAM" but I just why do you need more than 8 GB RAM in a MacBook Pro?

Not really, if you are a normal user it will not bother you at all, even if you do heavy tasking some times. The money is better gave out for higher storages capacity.

MacOS is good at RAM management and it's even improved on High Sierra. Also you should notice, that the new MacBook Pro's has faster RAMs and SSD than 2015 and older ones, it means that if you have many tabs, programs etc. open and get over the 8GB of RAMs, the system will be fast to catch up due to the speed of SSD and RAM.

 

[lcs101]

The biggest mistake Apple had done was that they soldered the RAM and the SSD into the logic board.
Completely stupid.

Business-wise, I'm not so sure it was a mistake. That being said, I do hate it. As somebody who keeps my computer for 5 years minimum, I'd much prefer to have the choice of upgrading it in the future.

 

[jsnuff1]

Because safari is the most horrible written browser program in existence. Currently hogging 13GB of ram...13GB is probably enough space for like 1,000 websites...what the hell is it doing with all that ram???

oh and these forums are using 700MBs of that right now...yea I'm sure rending plain text with some CSS and 5 images requires 700MB of ram

 

[Mortis360]

For the most of my use I manage just fine with 8GB of ram, but when I fire up photo editing and processing software I quickly need more than 8GB of ram. Also the 15" MacBook Pro I got as my main workhorse comes with no other options than 16GB.

 

[boppin]

oh and these forums are using 700MBs of that right now...yea I'm sure rending plain text with some CSS and 5 images requires 700MB of ram

I know someone who was involved in the W3C specification process. We agreed that there are a lot of websites who need to optimized.

e.g. less HTML, CSS and JavaScript.

 

[boppin]

Everything works fine ...

 

[whitedragon101]

Because safari is the most horrible written browser program in existence. Currently hogging 13GB of ram...13GB is probably enough space for like 1,000 websites...what the hell is it doing with all that ram???

oh and these forums are using 700MBs of that right now...yea I'm sure rending plain text with some CSS and 5 images requires 700MB of ram

Chrome eats more or even horror of horrors Firefox the eater of ram and destroyer of worlds.

I use all three for web development testing but safari is definitely the lowest ram impact. That’s not to say impact is low, web browsers just seem to eat RAM but it is the lowest of the three.
[doublepost=1507597085][/doublepost]I definitely need at least 16GB as my system was absolutely choking on 8GB. I do software development with apps and web stuff mostly. You end up with an IDE or 2 open with a few web browser and photoshop and your pushing 16GB very fast.

 

[TonyK]

Some of the memory is consumed by internal caching of websites, form data, etc. It amazes what browsers feel is absolutely needed for the modern browsing experience.

 

[boppin]

I could upgrade to 16 GB of RAM but I don't see any advantages and I also don't want to run it out of specifications.

 

[lambertjohn]

Hello!

Just a question.

I have seen the discussions about "why does the MacBook Pro does not have more than 16 GB RAM" but I just why do you need more than 8 GB RAM in a MacBook Pro?

It all depends on what you're going to do with it. But I will tell you this, I have an old 2010 MBP 15" with 8GB RAM and 256 SSD, and it works fine for Photoshop, Office, web browsing, pretty much anything I can throw at it. It's very snappy with Sierra as its operating system. That's a seven-year-old computer, folks. I keep the computer around because it's got the old anti-glare screen on it that Apple no longer offers, which I absolutely love. And because it still runs great...on 8 GB of RAM!