Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Why is everybody so obsessed with RAM?
- Thread starter iHorseHead
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
This is the Internet. People incorrectly read data all the time. Thanks for clarifying though. That’s not a lot.
There have been lots of discussions about Mac SSD's wearing out. I have never seen a single post here about that actually happening.
This is a RAM (APPLE Unified Memory) thread, and all the usual observations of; How the MACOS/APPLE-Silicon handles memory so much better, The need for more than 8GB for intensive APPS and ‘the future,’ swap degrading and lifespan of the SSD… So, if you had to choose 16gb RAM or 512GB SSD, what’s the best way to go? And, if just a 256gb SSD, how easy is it to use an external SSD, and are the APPLE 256gb internal SSD slower than the 512gb (thinking of MBA M2 with one or the other upgrade, not both)
You could have gone about it in a more polite way lol, just saying.
Can you summarize? Given the slow information transfer rate per minute of videos vs text that gives one an idea as to whether it is worth the time investment in watching it.
I have used 2 models of M1 MacBook Air, one with 8GB and one with 16GB RAM. Both were used for development. Now a colleague is using the 8GB while I use the 16.
I can tell you the difference is clear, especially when swap enters into play. The system is designed to use RAM to speed up several operations, so having some readily free memory makes everything go smoother. The machine with more RAM surely seems a big improvement.
This happens because most apps are not perfectly optimised (see PHP storm, docker, illustrator, or simply browser tabs with js apps), and they often use more ram than what you'd expect to be necessary. Swap is fast, but still when it happens you feel some lagginess, which shouldn't happen on a M1, and surely doesn't happen with my current 16GB configuration. Also you lose the RAM cached files, which is helping.
What I learned is: spend the extra, get the 16, it's definitely future-proofing and you actually feel the improvement.
I can tell you the difference is clear, especially when swap enters into play. The system is designed to use RAM to speed up several operations, so having some readily free memory makes everything go smoother. The machine with more RAM surely seems a big improvement.
This happens because most apps are not perfectly optimised (see PHP storm, docker, illustrator, or simply browser tabs with js apps), and they often use more ram than what you'd expect to be necessary. Swap is fast, but still when it happens you feel some lagginess, which shouldn't happen on a M1, and surely doesn't happen with my current 16GB configuration. Also you lose the RAM cached files, which is helping.
What I learned is: spend the extra, get the 16, it's definitely future-proofing and you actually feel the improvement.
Another reason to never use google Chrome, then.
In this world, only the most determined, loyal and steel-like Apple fans can say such golden words of love as "memory is actually enough". The fact that there are such unfailing fans is a testament to the greatness of Apple.
"I'm not cold at all, so why do you feel cold? "Witness of the Month motto.Tim's yacht fund is a great honor for fans.
"I'm not cold at all, so why do you feel cold? "Witness of the Month motto.Tim's yacht fund is a great honor for fans.
No! You can't say that! OP has made it very clear and he thinks it's good enough. "He feels" is more important than "your colleague feels".
Your statement is hypocritical to him. He will veto it and then challenge you: please give me a site that eats xG of memory.
This is what pushed me to 32. Have been using 16GB for last 5 years...had bottlenecking issues specially when I have too many tabs, Figma, PS, AE running at the same time. 16GB again would have been but knowing I cannot upgrade once I buy pushed me towards 32GB RAM.
My iMac from 2015 with a super slow Intel i5 can open all of its apps at once no problem! But, it has 16gb ram. And even when all the apps are open, I can still use one of the apps.
Same here only I used mine for only 5 years and upgraded to something with a better graphics card for running Mari. Unity, Maya, ZBrush, Xcode, all ran fine on my 8 gigs.
Except website works best with google chrome and offer best compatibility for my work site.
Safari is awful in terms of website support compared to chrome and Firefox.
i use chrome and safari, and have no issues with safari (which i generally prefer).
firefox is too ugly to be on my mac 🤣
It's not a "fad", nor is it even a theory that isn't grounded in reality.
When your PC does not have enough (fast, very high speed) RAM the operating system begins paging RAM contents out to (slower) SSD media. Before SSDs were commonplace, the paging happened to (brutally slow) hard drives.
Thus inadequate RAM leads to paging and slowness. Try bringing up an app that's been paged out to a slow hard drive. The computer will feel like someone clocked the CPU down to like 1% of its speed.
Admittedly, the issue is less prevalent now with fast SSDs (even though SSDs are a fraction of the speed of RAM) but ask anyone who used a computer that had a spinning HDD and not enough RAM what happened to the PC when the RAM was increased.
I’ve never actually witnessed an SSD wearing out in general, Mac or PC, and I’ve worked on hundreds of computers with them over the years. I know they’re supposed to wear out eventually, but I’ve yet to see it happen in the real world. Regardless, always keep a backup.
I've literally never had a problem with this, and I don't burn through my RAM just browsing the internet, and I'm not essentially installing spyware masquerading as a browser.
Delete Chrome.
That cause people think the rated TBW is a hard limit when in reality that's a sort of soft limit. Testing by several sites has found current SSDs reach 3x their rated TBW and still work fine. I believe Anandtech did an article.
Bingo.
Can anyone make an argument "I run 512MB RAM machine, all works smoothly. Why do we need 8GB RAM? It's insane" Absolutely.
I recently tested 32GB RAM Mac Studio editing a few streams of 4K at once. And guess what? Once it's out of RAM, it's out of RAM. Then it slows down significantly.
I secretly hope Apple can offer more than 64GB RAM in M2 MAX MacBook...Maybe an odd number similar to 24GB with new macbooks. Unlikely, but who knows.
So we have wildly different personal experiences, and for me, uninstalling Chrome is not an option.