1 .1 GB Windows 10 = 3.6 GB macOS Intel = 7 GB Apple Silicon, a RAM comparison with WINE and Rosetta 2 on Fidelity Active Trader Pro

[pshufd]

I see complaints about Fidelity Active Trader Pro on r/Mac on a regular basis and one person in particular said that he runs Think or Swim and TastyTrade on a base Apple Silicon Mac with 8 GB of RAM but that Active Trader Pro runs really poorly on his system. I run Active Trader Pro and Think or Swim on my M1 Studio and M1 Pro MacBook Pro 16 (32 GB RAM) and it runs though I only use it for trading but use Think or Swim (native Apple Silicon) for analytics.

So I ran an experiment to see what the differences are between Windows 10, macOS Intel and macOS Apple Silicon.

I was somewhat shocked to find out that my simple setup uses 7 GB of RAM on my M1 Studio. Performance is adequate but the machine has so much RAM so that swap isn't an issue for me.

To test on Windows 10 meant that I had to put my Windows 10 desktop back together and I hadn't used it for a year so it spent many hours running Windows Update. I had to install a new version of Active Trader Pro as well. And I ran it and it used up 1.1 GB of RAM - which was a surprise.

So then, of course, I had to try it on my 2015 iMac 27. It used up about 3.6 GB of RAM.

Active Trader Pro is a Windows program that was written on a platform that I've heard is from back in the 1990s. It runs on macOS Intel via WINE and Apple Silicon via WINE and Rosetta 2.

I made a video on this showing the statistics from Activity Monitor and Task Manager but the video basically just states what is in the text above.

If you need to run large Windows programs under WINE, size up the RAM on Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[Sydde]

How much memory does WINE itself consume? And, on AS, how much memory does the x86 emulator use?

 

[pshufd]

How much memory does WINE itself consume? And, on AS, how much memory does the x86 emulator use?

The only numbers I can go on are gross numbers. I suspect that there are hidden processes or processes that have names that I don't recognize that are using up RAM. Same thing with Rosetta 2.

 

[KPOM]

It makes sense. It’s a 32-bit app running on a 64-bit process, then translated from Windows to macOS binaries, and then from Intel to Arm.

 

[KPOM]

How much memory does WINE itself consume? And, on AS, how much memory does the x86 emulator use?

Here is another example, with Quicken for Windows. Using Crossover (WINE):

Quicken 741.4 MB
Crossover 424.9 MB
Wineserver: 25.3 MB
winedevice.exe 23.0 MB
winedevice.exe 20.5 MB
winewrapper.exe 17.3 MB
wineloader64 10.6 MB

By contrast, when running in Windows Arm in a Parallels virtual machine, Quicken used 145.5 MB. Of course the VM took 7GB and Parallels Desktop another 154.9 MB.

 

[pshufd]

It makes sense. It’s a 32-bit app running on a 64-bit process, then translated from Windows to macOS binaries, and then from Intel to Arm.

Fidelity released both 32-bit and 64-bit ATP around the same time that they released the latest version for macOS. I looked around to see whether or not there's support for. 64-bit Windows programs and some places say yes and some no. Is there a way to tell whether it's using 32-bit or 64-bit binaries?

 

[pshufd]

Here is another example, with Quicken for Windows. Using Crossover (WINE):

Quicken 741.4 MB
Crossover 424.9 MB
Wineserver: 25.3 MB
winedevice.exe 23.0 MB
winedevice.exe 20.5 MB
winewrapper.exe 17.3 MB
wineloader64 10.6 MB

By contrast, when running in Windows Arm in a Parallels virtual machine, Quicken used 145.5 MB. Of course the VM took 7GB and Parallels Desktop another 154.9 MB.

So about 1.260 MB and Apple Silicon vs 146 MB on Windows.

I don't think that it's an issue if you have enough RAM to cover it but I could see this causing problems on base Apple Silicon Macs.

 

[NT1440]

Memory management is different in Windows vs macOS. How much ram was available on your windows machines to begin with?

Both systems will try to load up what it thinks you need in RAM (up to a point), so something consuming more RAM isn’t a measure of efficiency if that’s what the goal was here.

 

[pshufd]

Memory management is different in Windows vs macOS. How much ram was available on your windows machines to begin with?

Both systems will try to load up what it thinks you need in RAM (up to a point), so something consuming more RAM isn’t a measure of efficiency if that’s what the goal was here.

I have 128 GB of RAM on my Windows system and 32 GB on my Macs. There was plenty of unused RAM on all 3 systems.

The original complaint that I saw was someone with an 8 GB Apple Silicon Mac in that he could run Think or Swim and TastyTrade but couldn't run Active Trader Pro. His expectation is that he would be able to run all 3 at the same time. I suspect that this workload would run well on a Windows system with 8 GB of RAM.

 

[NT1440]

Thanks for clarifying

 

[Sydde]

I looked around to see whether or not there's support for. 64-bit Windows programs and some places say yes and some no. Is there a way to tell whether it's using 32-bit or 64-bit binaries?

Run it in Windows 11: 32-bit is not supported.

 

[KPOM]

Run it in Windows 11: 32-bit is not supported.

32-bit apps still run on Windows 11. There just is no longer a 32-bit version of Windows 11. Arm itself is dropping support for 32-bit Arm apps but it doesn’t affect Windows Arm’s ability to run 32-bit x86 apps as Microsoft uses a compatibility layer.

 

[KPOM]

So about 1.260 MB and Apple Silicon vs 146 MB on Windows.

I don't think that it's an issue if you have enough RAM to cover it but I could see this causing problems on base Apple Silicon Macs.

I’m not an active trader so I haven’t run Think or Swim (I’m mostly an indexer). Quicken is fairly light on resources. I’ve had at least 16GB since even before M1. I have the M3 Pro with 18GB.

 

[pshufd]

Run it in Windows 11: 32-bit is not supported.

Fidelity makes 32-bit and 64-bit versions on Windows.

They only make a 64-bit version on macOS now. They support back to High Sierra though I haven't tried it in a few years.

So it's possible that they use 32-bit executables or 64-bit executables though WINE. I don't really know how to tell though.

 

[pshufd]

I’m not an active trader so I haven’t run Think or Swim (I’m mostly an indexer). Quicken is fairly light on resources. I’ve had at least 16GB since even before M1. I have the M3 Pro with 18GB.

Think or Swim allows you to configure to up to 26 GB of RAM in the settings so it can be used to run pretty complicated trading setups. I run it on 2 monitors with about 130 real-time charts, about 30 with complex studies.

 

[Zest28]

Apple themselves said 8GB RAM = 16 GB RAM on PC's (so MAC is even more efficient than Linux which can run literally on a toaster).

And MacRumors also have been saying for years that 8 GB RAM is all you need.

So it looks to me that your tests are not done correctly.

 

[pshufd]

Apple themselves said 8GB RAM = 16 GB RAM on PC's (so MAC is even more efficient than Linux which can run literally on a toaster).

And MacRumors also have been saying for years that 8 GB RAM is all you need.

So it looks to me that your tests are not done correctly.

Apple is wrong.

 

[Sydde]

And MacRumors also have been saying for years that 8 GB RAM is all you need.

Please fail to post incorrect information. MR has most decidedly not been saying that. They/we have been saying there are many use cases where 8Gb is entirely adequate. Nowhere does anybody say that it is enough for everybody's needs.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Apple themselves said 8GB RAM = 16 GB RAM on PC's (so MAC is even more efficient than Linux which can run literally on a toaster).

And MacRumors also have been saying for years that 8 GB RAM is all you need.

So it looks to me that your tests are not done correctly.

I assume we miss the "/s" addition..?