Will 4GB be enough for next 3 years of OS X updates?

[MSlaw]

4GB is not really enough now, 10.10 needs 8GB to run without resorting to swap. if you plan to keep the device for anytime, 8GB all the way.

From what I hear, with newer machines equipped with an SSD they will use more swap since the storage is fast so that's irrelevant. (I had a friend that showed me his retina MBP with 16 gigs of ram using 2 gigs of swap and as you see i'm using 21)

What is killing me is my CPU and GPU. I have a hybrid drive so what I use most goes into NAND, and this is the only reason this computer is still usable. OS X is terrible with spinning drives, but runs decent with 4 gigs of ram. Unless you are running VMs or using apps like Final Cut, upgrade to an SSD before you worry about ram.

Will 4GB be enough for next 3 years of OSX updates?

Most Likely.

 

[~~Hello~~]

So you're not running anything memory intensive, and to solve the slowness you're recommending extra memory?

How does that make any sense?

If my car's transmission broke, would you tell me to fix it by putting more gas in the tank?

No because that would make absolutely no sense. It makes perfect sense to me that my laptop needs more RAM. I run a lot of memory intensive apps. It's needed extra RAM for ages now. I recently upped the RAM to 8GB in my thinkpad and I really do notice a difference.

My recent issue with Yosemite may be down to something else, because it does seem to be a lot slower when I'm not doing an awful lot of things. So maybe there is a buggy app, or an issue with the OS that will be fixed in a security patch. But it seems sensible to me, to suggest maxing out on RAM,especially if the macbook air is going to be used for the next 3 years. It won't be long before you need 4GB of RAM as standard.

I'm sure I read here that 4GB is the minimum for Yosemite, so I suppose that's why I was thinking because I had the minimum amount of RAM that might be the reason why it's been more sluggish for me. But now in this thread people are saying it's 2GB.

 

[motrek]

No because that would make absolutely no sense. It makes perfect sense to me that my laptop needs more RAM. I run a lot of memory intensive apps. It's needed extra RAM for ages now. I recently upped the RAM to 8GB in my thinkpad and I really do notice a difference.

Here's a quote from your previous post:

"I'm not even running anything memory intensive."

It's going to be hard to have a conversation if you can't get this stuff straight.

My recent issue with Yosemite may be down to something else, because it does seem to be a lot slower when I'm not doing an awful lot of things. So maybe there is a buggy app, or an issue with the OS that will be fixed in a security patch. But it seems sensible to me, to suggest maxing out on RAM,especially if the macbook air is going to be used for the next 3 years. It won't be long before you need 4GB of RAM as standard.

How about you open Activity Monitor and actually see what the problem is rather than speculating about how much memory you use or why your computer is slow?

I'm sure I read here that 4GB is the minimum for Yosemite, so I suppose that's why I was thinking because I had the minimum amount of RAM that might be the reason why it's been more sluggish for me. But now in this thread people are saying it's 2GB.

It's not like MacRumors forum posts are the authority on the system requirements of Yosemite. You can find Apple's official page with their official system requirements after 3 seconds of googling:

https://www.apple.com/osx/how-to-upgrade/

 

[Serban]

it's no longer about the RAM in the near future 4/8 gb ram should be fine...BUT it's about the gpu because this tending to go retina all the way. so if you want to buy a macbook air now, 4 gb ram is fine, but if you wait the retina model this year...make sure that will still works fine because HD6000 handle the OS
so now day or back days the OS has lags because of the first retina macbook pro and theirs HD4000

 

[motrek]

...
From what I hear, with newer machines equipped with an SSD they will use more swap since the storage is fast so that's irrelevant. (I had a friend that showed me his retina MBP with 16 gigs of ram using 2 gigs of swap and as you see i'm using 21) ...

21 megs, that is.

I agree with your post.

FYI, just because Activity Monitor shows you (or anyone) that you're using some swap, that doesn't mean you're in a bad state. It just means that at some point you ran out of RAM, the system had to swap some data out, and there hasn't been a reason to swap it back in yet. So you might have been in an unusual low-memory state temporarily at some point, that's fine. But this is why you can't just look at the "Swap Used" section of Activity Monitor and say that you "need" more memory if the number is non-zero.

That being said, of course some people really would/do benefit hugely from having more memory, depending on what they use their computers for.

 

[~~Hello~~]

At this present point in time in time I'm not running anything memory intensive. I have run memory intensive apps in the past, which is why I need to upgrade my RAM in the longterm. So I've got nothing wrong.Just been using my thinkpad and ipad more in the past few months.

I've used top to see if I can see anything, and i can't. Looks like google chrome helper is using 588mb of ram, and there are 4 more google helper processes using lower amounts of RAM.

 

[Meister]

I'm sure I read here that 4GB is the minimum for Yosemite, so I suppose that's why I was thinking because I had the minimum amount of RAM that might be the reason why it's been more sluggish for me. But now in this thread people are saying it's 2GB.

The minimum, as mentioned by motrek is 2gb.

 

[AFEPPL]

Image
Image

From what I hear, with newer machines equipped with an SSD they will use more swap since the storage is fast so that's irrelevant. (I had a friend that showed me his retina MBP with 16 gigs of ram using 2 gigs of swap and as you see i'm using 21)

The virtual address space is 1.15GB bigger than the physical memory within your device, but yes, you are only using 21MB right now. But something has used it previously, and its been emptied out.

Mine with 16GB after reboot and just a browser open. No dev apps running,


This will run and run forever, OP toss a coin if you are not sure

 

[redheeler]

The virtual address space is 1.15GB bigger than the physical memory within your device, but yes, you are only using 21MB right now. But something has used it previously, and its been emptied out.

Mine with 16GB after reboot and just a browser open. No dev apps running,
[url=http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i66/TToshiba/ScreenShot2015-01-15at225557_zpscd2c89a4.png]Image[/URL]

This will run and run forever, OP toss a coin if you are not sure

This has been explained to you before on this thread. Unused memory is wasted memory so OS X will try to use as much as possible, even if it is not needed. I have a few tabs in Safari, Mail, and a text edit program open on my 24 GB iMac right now and 13.64 GB is being used. It doesn't mean that much is required, it can easily flush out what it doesn't need and make more free.

 

[Yebubbleman]

I know there was and is a bunch of threads of 8GB vs 4GB. And I read a couple of them. Still nodbody seems to answear the most basic question:

Will 4GB Ram be enough for next 3 years of OSX updates?

I don't want to save $100 on my initial purchase only to find my OSX being slow after updating the operating system. I don't really do anything more intensive than web browsing, multimedia playback but still, I hate to have slower OS than what I initial bought the computer with. I understand that after 5 years laptops just simply can't support newer operating systems but IMO 3 years should be snappy and fast as after initial purchase.

There's no reason not to just add the additional RAM. You may not tax your RAM supply initially, but it will definitely help age your Mac more gracefully, and for $100 you might as well.

Mac OS X 10.10 is a tick operating system, the tock operating systems like 10.6, 10.8, and 10.9 tend to be faster than tick ones as they are more refined and optimized.

First off, if anything, 10.10 is a tock operating system as all of the big under-the-hood changes started in 10.9.

Secondly, Apple doesn't work on the Tick-Tock schedule that Intel does with its OSes where every other OS is a tick OS and every other OS is a tock. 10.9 was a tick OS, as was 10.7, 10.5, and 10.4. Even within 10.4, you could split it further as Tiger on Intel was way smoother than Tiger on PowerPC.

Exactly. So I guess to make it more precise question....
The last time that apple sold macbook airs with standard 2GBs ram, how long did those last until becoming slow on the Yosemite or any other OS that put a major dent in the snapiness.

2GB of RAM was fine for Snow Leopard, it was sluggish with Lion or anything newer. They sold MacBook Airs with 2GB standard well into Lion's release (entry level Mid 2011 11" MacBook Airs). Just because Apple will sell you a machine with a minimum amount of RAM doesn't mean that it will run well into the future. Given that you cannot max out or even upgrade the RAM, I see no reason to not do so.

 

[AFEPPL]

Maybe we should all go with 4GB as that way nothing is every wasted..
Maybe we should run CPUs at 100% too as anything less is simply wasted cycles..
Maybe storage should be at 100% too, we can always delete and clean up first if we need to store something..

The memory footprint is based on whats been used, we've covered this. The more you do, the more you will need or consume. The more (within limits) you have the better your performance will be because you don't need to page out data to a device thats much slower than RAM. App memory is whats "currently" being swallowed by programs or related process, filecache is what can be cleaned up or used by other programs if needed. It is used to speed up program by caching that dataset should you run them again. Wired is memory that can never get compressed or swapped out.

If you are interested about or concerned about performance paging is bad and ultimately means beachball.
No one can answer what will be needed in 3 years time, looking at the history of computing in general, requirement never really go down...

 

[Meister]

The virtual address space is 1.15GB bigger than the physical memory within your device, but yes, you are only using 21MB right now. But something has used it previously, and its been emptied out.

Mine with 16GB after reboot and just a browser open. No dev apps running,
[url=http://i69.photobucket.com/albums/i66/TToshiba/ScreenShot2015-01-15at225557_zpscd2c89a4.png]Image[/URL]

This will run and run forever, OP toss a coin if you are not sure

What is the point of this post?

 

[AFEPPL]

What is the point of this post?

what the point of your post?
you clearly think you know something, where as you fail to grasp the simple working of ram. It shows this basic macs memory consumption.. just under 8GB without swap. 4.27GB of actual apps - hmmm, seems to be more than 4GB... strange that!

 

[joshlalonde]

So much wrong with that, its hard to know where to start...
Don't buy ram, use swap on SSD :

So you understand the program has to write data to a device (this is not an SLC or EFD device, its a 20nm MLC device) that is in order of magnitudes slower than DDR RAM? Besides having a slower response time to read and write requests for data (lets say 500MB/s for 20nm MLC vs 12.5GB/s for DDR3 1600), the method in which SSDs are written to imposes a significant time penalty vs RAM. An SSD cannot simply overwrite a single bit of memory in virtual storage, it has to write the entire block. So to write one bit (thats correct a single BIT), the SSD must Copy everything from the block where that bit resides into a memory buffer, Change the bit in the buffer Write the entire block back to the Flash memory...oh and then it needs to perform an error check cycle against the block. While the sentiment of what you are saying when taken in the context of traditional spinning platters is kinda correct, but it's no where near the performance of RAM.

The memory compression function runs off a dictionary base WKdm algorithm that is multithread - the idea is to reduce impact on the CPU load, but the fact is you lose cycles to the compression/uncompression routines. that said, I've not seen any known issues around performance.

Following your logic, the fact apple don't sell machine (macs) with 2GB speaks volumes then does it not? Things move forward. Its 2 years since apple made the jump from 2GB to 4GB as the base memory.

Does a mac with 4GB work, yes.

Okay, what? Who said anything about running swap instead of SSD?
It won't be swapping constantly just because there's 4GB. I'm just saying that the swap isn't hugely noticeable for short periods of time...

The reason they ship with 4GB means nothing more than that 4GB is the sweet spot for comfortable performance.

What benefit is there to upgrading RAM when you still have only 128GB of SSD space. That's not even comfortable. Forget RAM, drive space is more beneficial.

----------

what the point of your post?
you clearly think you know something, where as you fail to grasp the simple working of ram. It shows this basic macs memory consumption.. just under 8GB without swap. 4.27GB of actual apps - hmmm, seems to be more than 4GB... strange that!

Also, you don't seem to know anything about how Macs use RAM. You've just embarrassed yourself. Macs use more RAM than they need. It doesn't prove anything that you're consuming "more than 4GB".

Pay attention to Memory Pressure.

I thought you said you were done with the thread?

 

[motrek]

what the point of your post?
you clearly think you know something, where as you fail to grasp the simple working of ram. It shows this basic macs memory consumption.. just under 8GB without swap. 4.27GB of actual apps - hmmm, seems to be more than 4GB... strange that!

I have 4GB of RAM. Just checked Activity Monitor.

Memory used: 3.91 GB
Swap used: 0 bytes
App Memory: 1.74 GB

Hmmm, seems to be less than 4GB... strange that!

Please help me grasp the simple working of ram.

 

[joshlalonde]

While we're sharing, how's this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yer06zjnvk90s7/Screenshot 2015-01-15 21.44.21.png?dl=0

 

[motrek]

While we're sharing, how's this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/6yer06zjnvk90s7/Screenshot 2015-01-15 21.44.21.png?dl=0

Your screen shot does not grasp the simple working of ram.

 

[joshlalonde]

Your screen shot does not grasp the simple working of ram.

lol, I was about to be like WTF are you talking about and then I realized you were being sarcastic.

Please append the /s tag for dull-witted people like me XD

But, ya, I don't really understand what he's talking about. I don't know all the details about RAM on the hardware side, but after all, as an Assembly programmer, I know enough about it. Store temporary data and instructions.

But that really doesn't help anyone.. Nobody cares how much someone knows about RAM. It's more important to answer OPs question.

The answer to OP's question, in my opinion, is that buying more RAM is a waste of money. A better investment is more SSD space.
I disagree that 8GB RAM is necessary for multiple reasons. It's not even plausible that Apple would render a significant portion of its user base unable to use its software based on RAM specifications.

Unfortunately, the trend is to increase demands of software rather than optimize and reduce said demands of resource allocation.

That being said, I don't see 8GB RAM becoming necessary at anytime in the near future.

And think about it, your device isn't going to change at all. If it runs fine now, it should run fine in 3 years. I would say 6 years, it would last you fairly well. Just maintain your machine (clean the screen, keyboard keys, shoot some compressed air in between the hinge, etc) and be happy with what you have.

As a programmer, college student, gamer, etc my 4GB RAM MacBook Air has suited me well and exceeded my expectations.

 

[Meister]

The answer to OP's question, in my opinion, is that buying more RAM is a waste of money. A better investment is more SSD space.
I disagree that 8GB RAM is necessary for multiple reasons. It's not even plausible that Apple would render a significant portion of its user base unable to use its software based on RAM specifications.

Of course they won't.
Ram threading is just a tradition on this forum.
This has been going on for years and the Mods are not making a sticky.

I tried to make a wiki-thread, that everyone can edit here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1756865/, but people prefere individual bickering.

So get ready for the next "Is 4/8/16/32/64/128 enough?" or "4 vs 8" thread soon.

 

[motrek]

...
The reason they ship with 4GB means nothing more than that 4GB is the sweet spot for comfortable performance.
...

Just noticed this.

I assume the reason 4GB of RAM is standard is:

1) It's probably hard to source anything else now. All the factories that were producing the chips for 2GB have probably switched to higher densities. It's possibly more expensive to put 2GB in a laptop than 4GB these days.

2) Apple isn't completely ignorant of its PC competition. The cheapest possible PC laptops ($250-$300) are coming standard with 4GB RAM. Anything more expensive will have 6 to 8GB. If Apple puts anything less than 4GB RAM in a laptop they'll have some major explaining to do to the customer who's just comparing specifications.

And of course it's nicer to have 4GB vs. 2GB. But we should all remember that 4GB of RAM is a tremendous amount of memory in absolute terms. Apparently it's 120 feet worth of books on a shelf. So really, nobody should be thinking that it's only barely adequate for doing anything useful since it's the minimum configuration that Apple sells.

 

[motrek]

... But that really doesn't help anyone.. Nobody cares how much someone knows about RAM. It's more important to answer OPs question. ...

Yes, definitely. Although the more you know about programming and RAM, the more you understand how much memory different OS/application features might require. And personally, I don't see what features Apple could add to the OS that would bump up memory requirements past 4GB.

As a programmer, college student, gamer, etc my 4GB RAM MacBook Air has suited me well and exceeded my expectations.

Yeah, I was running XCode and Photoshop simultaneously on my 2010 MBA and it was okay. The bottleneck there was the CPU much more than the amount of RAM I had (2GB). It's somewhat depressing to me that the activities that require the most skill with computers (programming, etc.) require less CPU time and memory than stuff like watching a streaming video via Flash in a web browser.

 

[joshlalonde]

Yes, definitely. Although the more you know about programming and RAM, the more you understand how much memory different OS/application features might require. And personally, I don't see what features Apple could add to the OS that would bump up memory requirements past 4GB.



Yeah, I was running XCode and Photoshop simultaneously on my 2010 MBA and it was okay. The bottleneck there was the CPU much more than the amount of RAM I had (2GB). It's somewhat depressing to me that the activities that require the most skill with computers (programming, etc.) require less CPU time and memory than stuff like watching a streaming video via Flash in a web browser.

Yeah, the fact that Flash eats my RAM. No, devours! It's good thing I have memory cleaner. It uses all the RAM and Battery up. Suddenly 12 hours goes to 4 while I'm watching flash videos.

But that's another problem.

 

[Bah-Bah]

I can only post based on my own experience, and I'm not hugely technical when it comes to RAM architecture and management. But I have a 4GB Macbook air 2013 model and it's like the little engine that could.

I do quite a lot of 3d rendering on a Workstation and routinely work on scenes that eat up 10+ GBs of RAM, sometimes up to 18GB or so. Occasionally just out of curiosity I fire up these scenes on the Air and render them, whilst having a look at the Activity monitor.

Memory wise, there are patches of red on scenes where the 3D program is using say 12GB of RAM (10 GB Compressed typically) and obviously the system is paging but keeping that in mind, the air will chug through a scene at a speed not too far from what you'd expect the processor to handle if there was more than sufficient RAM. There is a hit, but it's nothing like the endless clicking and whirring you get on systems with Mechanical Hard Disks.

Anyway, quite a specific use case but even so I'm really quite impressed with what a 4GB Air can do.

 

[phrehdd]

Sure its enough if you want to just get by. Reality is that Yosemite does far better with at least 8 gigs. Given that Apple chooses to solder in RAM on many of its offerings, I would certainly try to get as much RAM as I could afford on such models. Remember it is not just the OS but also various apps that exploit RAM.

And just short of flaming - anyone that honestly believes that 4 gigs is a good choice really hasn't done their homework as there is enough info out there to discount the 4 gig option as being worthwhile.

 

[motrek]

Sure its enough if you want to just get by. Reality is that Yosemite does far better with at least 8 gigs. Given that Apple chooses to solder in RAM on many of its offerings, I would certainly try to get as much RAM as I could afford on such models. Remember it is not just the OS but also various apps that exploit RAM.

And just short of flaming - anyone that honestly believes that 4 gigs is a good choice really hasn't done their homework as there is enough info out there to discount the 4 gig option as being worthwhile.

Depends entirely on what you use the computer for.

Do you have a lot of experience using Yosemite on both 4 and 8GB Macs?