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Will 4GB be enough for next 3 years of OS X updates?
- Thread starter mattdocs12345
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I have with 4, 8 and 16. Depending on if you plan to have more than one app open can make a world of difference which was not included in previous posts (of mine). I think bottom should be 8 gigs. Presently, I have Itunes open, mail, stickies and browser open with nothing actually "running" and I show 6.39 gigs being used in RAM. Imagine having iTunes running, perhaps converting a CD to AAC along with some other intense app running. On 4 gigs you risk slowness while 8 gigs should somewhat suffice. FYI, my computer has 16 gigs of RAM.
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I am not trying to be rude here but you can do as I do, look up specific apps and their overhead, consider the overhead alone of the OS and do the math when adding typical applications.
What I will say is if you are absolutely in the mix for 4 gigs, then by all means get it. I promise I wont do an "I told you so" down the line (no sarcasm here).
Now it's my turn to try to not be rude. But it has been discussed time and again (in this thread, even) that OS X will allocate as much memory as possible to the apps you have open. That doesn't mean the apps are actually using the memory, or need that memory, or even benefit from that memory.
It is expected that, if you have 8GB of RAM, you will see that almost 8GB are being "used" even if you are doing almost nothing. The OS tries to use as much as possible because otherwise, your physical memory is literally worthless.
Right now I am sitting at a Mac with 4GB of RAM and I have Chrome open with a bunch of tabs, I have XCode open with a couple of large-ish projects, I have Photoshop open with a few images I'm working with, and I'm running all the other "normal" apps you might expect, like iTunes, Mail, Messages, Skype, etc.
And, with all this running, I'm using 3.98GB, basically no swap (46MB), and I have enough memory left over to have a 350MB file cache.
So as you can see, 4GB is more than enough memory to run a bunch of stuff, do all the multitasking you want, etc.
BTW, this is on a Mac Mini, which I could have easily upgraded to 8GB of RAM for only $60 at any time in the last 2 years I've owned the machine, but I haven't bothered simply because there would be literally no benefit to me with my workload.
Really a specious argument if you will. Certainly allocations take place as does overhead when memory is at a premium. This overhead is often what causes slow down as memory is juggled. I am sure you can agree. Then again, as someone who also works with Photoshop on a regular basis, you most probably know that this app functions best with more processors (6-8 core being the ideal target) and more memory. Can it run on less, sure. Does it run best on less (4 gigs) NO. I am also sure you can check various sites that support my statement including DigiLloyd.
What also might be considered is not all apps are kind enough to release memory in an appropriate fashion and the OS is not always capable of determining what is what and a "when" to handle said memory in question.
I am truly unsure why you or anyone would advocate 4 gigs other than perhaps having gotten a 2014 Mac with soldered in 4 gigs of RAM and trying to justify such a purchase with a post rationalization. As for a computer lasting 3 years with soldered RAM, you don't know what new considerations will be needed for future OS, apps, upgrade to present apps etc. Logic should suggest to be prepared.
We are talking about 3 years here, gents !!
Do not go with less RAM then 8GB!
In computer world terms, 3 years is very very looooooooong. !!!
If you go with only 4 gig, you will eat yourself in 2016 for sure, plus you can't sell your old machine at all...
Do not go with less RAM then 8GB!
In computer world terms, 3 years is very very looooooooong. !!!
If you go with only 4 gig, you will eat yourself in 2016 for sure, plus you can't sell your old machine at all...
For basic use, 4GB is okay, but with 8GB, you'll be on the much safer side.
*cough* iphone 4 *cough*
It depends on what you use it for. My mother has the first gen aluminum iMac from 2007 (I think). She uses it everyday for basic stuff, and it's still going strong, with a new hard drive. You are totally right about the resell value, though.
*cough* iphone 4 *cough*
It depends on what you use it for. My mother has the first gen aluminum iMac from 2007 (I think). She uses it everyday for basic stuff, and it's still going strong, with a new hard drive. You are totally right about the resell value, though.
4gb ram here
10 safari tabs open. None refresh.
iMessages open
notes
reminders
itunes
ibooks author
calendar
mail
iPhoto
I can play 3 videos streaming at the same time and no stutter, i.e. youtube, iTunes HD podcast, vimeo HD 4K .Thats all 3 playing at once. Yes its a mess but all 1080p and 4K
Apple would seriously have to mess things up to make 4gb not enough.
10 safari tabs open. None refresh.
iMessages open
notes
reminders
itunes
ibooks author
calendar
iPhoto
I can play 3 videos streaming at the same time and no stutter, i.e. youtube, iTunes HD podcast, vimeo HD 4K .Thats all 3 playing at once. Yes its a mess but all 1080p and 4K
Apple would seriously have to mess things up to make 4gb not enough.
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Well, not to be rude, but it seems a lot of you don't know what you're even talking about. You listened to the salesmen trying to con you out of a few extra bucks so he could get that sale commission.
Alot of you don't seem to understand how memory management works on OS X. It doesn't matter how much RAM is being used. There's a reason Apple invented the memory pressure gauge.
It's kind of funny, because my previous laptop lasted for about 6 years, and I had 4GB of RAM and an Intel Pentium processor. And out of that 4GB, only 3 were usable because the gpu stole up to that much when I was trying to do things like watch videos and play games.
Now I have an i5, Hd 5000 gpu, 256gb SSD, and 4GB ram. It's worlds apart! The only thing similar is the amount of RAM. But guess what? It hasn't affected my performance at all.
But what are you guys trying to argue anyways?
He wants to know if he can save his money. You're telling him to waste it on RAM, when really, that's superfluous.
Save your money, OP. If you have to upgrade, get more SSD. RAM isn't as important for you.
Alot of you don't seem to understand how memory management works on OS X. It doesn't matter how much RAM is being used. There's a reason Apple invented the memory pressure gauge.
It's kind of funny, because my previous laptop lasted for about 6 years, and I had 4GB of RAM and an Intel Pentium processor. And out of that 4GB, only 3 were usable because the gpu stole up to that much when I was trying to do things like watch videos and play games.
Now I have an i5, Hd 5000 gpu, 256gb SSD, and 4GB ram. It's worlds apart! The only thing similar is the amount of RAM. But guess what? It hasn't affected my performance at all.
But what are you guys trying to argue anyways?
He wants to know if he can save his money. You're telling him to waste it on RAM, when really, that's superfluous.
Save your money, OP. If you have to upgrade, get more SSD. RAM isn't as important for you.
No, I can't agree, because what you're saying is meaningless drivel.
Please tell is about an "allocation" that might take place specifically when you're under memory pressure? LOL.
As for "overhead," well, closer. That overhead is called swapping, which is the process of the OS moving the least-frequently-used data in physical memory to disk. But as I explained in my post, my 4GB Mac isn't swapping, so, no, there's no overhead.
Garbage. The amount of memory and number of cores Photoshop benefits from depends entirely on how many images you have open, how big the images are, how many layers they have, which operations/filters you're using, and whether or not you're doing batch operations.
Certainly if you're a professional photographer doing batch operations on hundreds of photos that you shot RAW from a high resolution DSLR, you will benefit enormously from more memory and more cores.
If you're a casual Photoshop user like me, working one-at-a-time on relatively low resolution images and not using any CPU intensive filters, there's no amount of memory you can throw at Photoshop that will make that faster.
Even more drivel. What you're describing is a memory leak, and the OS doesn't care one iota if an app is leaking memory or not.
4GB costs less. I would have thought this was blindingly, painfully obvious?
Why would I recommend that somebody waste money on extra memory that won't benefit them now or in the future?
You may want to get that cough checked, as there was nothing wrong with the iPhone 4.
I appreciate that. I was asking, because I didn't want to be rude either by presuming you were talking out of your ear.
Photoshop works fine with 4GB for basic photo editing tasks (such as web design and basic photography), and it won't run those same tasks any faster with 8GB. If you're regularly "working" with 40MP images (or similar "advanced" work), that's of course a different story, but I don't think too many folks here are suggesting that if you make your living on the back of PS, 4GB is where it's at.
While a number of PS features are multi-threaded, they are not heavily so (i.e. 4 cores is little better than 2 cores for the vast amount of functionality, and faster single-threaded performance will often win out over slower multi-core performance).
DigLloyd's own conclusion on PS: "Few or no operations use all cores fully. There is significant use of multiple cores, but average use is little better than 1.5 cores. Very frequently-used operations like Open and Save are single-threaded."
You're understanding of OS X's memory management is not so good. It doesn't work that way. And as pointed out by others, it's not entirely clear that you understand what you think you understand.
I know that wasn't directed at me specifically, but FTR, as I stated earlier in this thread (where I listed the RAM requirements for the different versions of OS X over the years), I would advocate that everyone should get 8GB if the extra money doesn't break the bank, particularly because it offers future flexibility and convenience. I don't believe we should be rationing RAM like it's war time, or requiring users to apply for permits to get more than 4GB. So we don't disagree there. But your general dismissal of 4GB as possibly being adequate for basic usage just doesn't match reality. Presently, I would guess that at least half of all Mac users out there would be "fine" with 4GB.
I appreciate your response. We shall disagree at some points. However, the original notion was for the next 3 years. I'll simply ask would you get 4 gigs of RAM to use for the next three years or perhaps 8 gigs? Would you consider that it is possible that more apps over time may be added and multiple apps are left open and perhaps some are more likely to be RAM hogs than others? I am hoping you see I am not being sarcastic here and though chided in previous posts and given a dismissal of sorts on referencing RAM, applications and OS...I'll stand by my statements and indeed I do have a decent understanding of how RAM is exploited and some frailties of OSX. Btw, the ONLY reason I use Apple is for OSX which I happen to appreciate (almost as much as OS/2 and some variants of Linux).
While Linux normally upon boot and fully initialize average about 600 megs of RAM, OSX is approx 3.6 gigs but of course may go down or up depending on what else is installed or not. So again, to last 3 years, I still recommend people consider 8 gigs of soldered RAM knowing that Apple says it runs on 2 and 4 should be the minimum.
Think about when you sell it. There will be zillions of base models competing for your buyer. Maybe you do or don't need the extra specs and may not get all of your extra expense back, but at least you can actually sell it more quickly without giving it away.
I notice that on eBay the hot versions of Apple products seem to have a lot more bidders whereas the base models often have none.
I notice that on eBay the hot versions of Apple products seem to have a lot more bidders whereas the base models often have none.
Im the OP for this thread...
Decisions... decisions... decisions...
I am not gonna be re-selling it, after 3 years I will likely retire it as livingroom computer for net-browsing/youtube only. Which means that it will likely only run one software at a time either a browser or iTunes or whatever. Maybe I will convert it into a mini music entertainment.
However for first 3 years I am planning to use it as my primary machine, likley web browsing, iTunes and MS Office opened all the the same time. And I would really hate it to have slow switching between windows and or slow poorly responsive software because of some random OSX update that now requires so much RAM that everything has to be paged.
I am not looking for re-selling, I am not looking for running Photoshop, multimedia editing. I am not likely to play games on it and probably the most intensive software will be iTunes and HD flash playback.
So reading all of your responses it really does seem like 4GB will be enough.
Decisions... decisions... decisions...
I am not gonna be re-selling it, after 3 years I will likely retire it as livingroom computer for net-browsing/youtube only. Which means that it will likely only run one software at a time either a browser or iTunes or whatever. Maybe I will convert it into a mini music entertainment.
However for first 3 years I am planning to use it as my primary machine, likley web browsing, iTunes and MS Office opened all the the same time. And I would really hate it to have slow switching between windows and or slow poorly responsive software because of some random OSX update that now requires so much RAM that everything has to be paged.
I am not looking for re-selling, I am not looking for running Photoshop, multimedia editing. I am not likely to play games on it and probably the most intensive software will be iTunes and HD flash playback.
So reading all of your responses it really does seem like 4GB will be enough.
Can you please get it into your head that just because OS X says a certain amount of memory is used (i.e., allocated) it doesn't mean that that amount of memory is actually required?
Imagine you have a two small piles of books, let's say history and science fiction.
Imagine you also have a giant bookcase with 5 big shelves and you want to organize your books in the bookcase. You set aside two shelves for history and two shelves for science fiction, because why not? You're not doing anything else with the bookcase.
Now imagine somebody asks you how many shelves you're using. Well, you're using 4. Does that mean you need 4? No, you don't even have enough books to fill 2 shelves.
What if somebody tells you you have to fit all your books into 2 shelves instead of 5. Fine, no problem, they're small piles of books and big shelves. You can fit all your books on 2 shelves just as easily as you can on 5 shelves.
Just because you were using 4 shelves when you had 5 doesn't mean you actually needed all 4 shelves.
Hopefully this kindergarden level explanation of memory allocation will clear things up for you. If it doesn't, I don't know what to tell you.
How do you define tick vs tock? You don't think Lion was a "tock" compared to snow leopard?
I also don't believe apple supports legacy machines and OS's very well. Not only do the OS's have seemingly arbitrary cutoffs, apples ceases security updates fairly quickly on past os's.
Not having enough ram is a cutoff that apple can use for os updates. OS X was effectively doubling the ram requirements on each iteration of OS X for a while though 10.10 has the same as 10.9 and 10.8 at 2 gb (iirc). It wouldn't surprise me if the next iteration required >2gb
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While true, it is never preferred and will still slow a machine down. As fast as SSDs are, they are still much slower than ram and any page outs will be very noticeable
The tick/tock definition is done by introduction of new features and designs vs optimization of existing features and designs. Apple further takes this by utilizing a similar naming scheme with its operating systems. Snow Leopard wasn't overly dressed with new features, unlike Leopard or Lion. It was instead refined by removing PowerPC code and enhancing existing technologies. Lion introduced a new UI and a new codebase. Because of these two things, it has been noted to run more poorly than Snow Leopard. Mountain Lion was an optimization of Lion through the dropping of 32-bit code with a few new features.
While pages out on a slower SATA I or II bus may present a noticeable impact on the machine's operation, SATA III and PCIe SSDS like those used in the Macbook Air don't show such a degree of degradation in operation. Even then, most end users like those of mattdocs12345 would be hard pressed to notice any slow decreases in usability unless they are pointed out or they are actively looking for them.
While pages out on a slower SATA I or II bus may present a noticeable impact on the machine's operation, SATA III and PCIe SSDS like those used in the Macbook Air don't show such a degree of degradation in operation. Even then, most end users like those of mattdocs12345 would be hard pressed to notice any slow decreases in usability unless they are pointed out or they are actively looking for them.
I am just a tiny bit familiar with Intel hardware and OSX and its origins as well as a few other OS system along with ADA, assembly and just a touch* more. Now, what were you saying? Oh yes, you were spouting off trying to give me some lesson about allocation of memory registers. Lets just say that you keep advocating 4 gigs of RAM for the 3 year haul and I'll keep suggesting that people consider getting more given that the RAM is soldered in and its a one time shot. I'll refrain from responding in kind to your dolt offering of an insult referencing kindergarten. PAX
If you can afford more ram, get it. Can never go wrong. I have 16 gigs in my 2012 mbp. Used to need it in grad school, no longer but nice knowing I have it.
like others have said. Thats because OS X will use all the ram. It fills it anyway. Its not a reflection of limitation.
You're a "tiny bit familiar" with assembly? The fact that you're talking about "memory registers" proves that you don't know the first thing about assembly or computer architecture in general. If you studied assembly for more than 5 minutes you'd know that you can read memory into registers, and write the contents of registers out to memory, but they are completely different things. You might as well also tell me that you own a "tree car" for as much sense as you're making now.
I have a degree in computer science and I'm a professional software developer. The more you try to confuse me with big words like "allocation" and "register" and "assembly" the more it backfires on you.
I bought a brand new base model 2010 MBA when it first went on sale at the local Apple Store. I could easily have afforded the model with 4GB of RAM but I predicted I wouldn't need that much RAM in the upcoming 4-5 years, and guess what, I didn't. So I already have one correct prediction under my belt. What makes you think my current prediction is wrong, exactly? We've already completely discredited your "evidence" that OS X now requires 6.39GB of RAM (your post #77 to this thread). How many times do you have to be proven wrong before you realize that you might not have the full story on how OS X works and how much RAM you actually need?
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It occurs to me that you could arguably say that registered memory has "memory registers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Registered_memory
But since those registers aren't visible to any software and aren't allocated or managed in any way, and only exist to reduce the electrical load on memory controllers, I'm going to go ahead and assume you didn't know that registered memory exists and it's not what you were talking about.
Correct, 4 GB will easily meet those needs and for longer than 3 years too. You have nothing to worry about.
I am still laughing here. I always love the smugness of those that claim by having a degree makes them an expert. In that case, I would be an "expert" several times over. I merely spoke of how far back I have been around the tech neighborhood as response to your arrogant comment. I suggest you remain happy being a "professional" software developer. As for your comment about first boot up, finish reading the sentence so you don't make foolish "aha" comments that speaks volumes about they why of your OCD myopic rants. Now you may have the last word and I'll save your last post to share with my friends in the industry who will probably give more than a chortle at your presumptuous blather.