16gb MBP in 2021 isn’t enough for long-term

[Beau10]

For what it's worth, here is my experience with an M1 Pro 10/16 with 16GB of ram.

My test workload:
1. Xcode with 2 workspaces open
2. `fastlane snapshot` running in the background to take simulator screenshots (4 devices, UI Tests running)
3. Browsing the web (Gmail, MacRumors, App Store Connect tabs open)
4. Sketch open with a moderately large file (50 symbols and 100 dartboards).

I kept hitting yellow memory pressure in Activity Monitor. I didn't notice any slowdown which is good, but the fans did kick in and the bottom of the machine did get warm. Not hot, but noticeably warmer than the ambient temperature in my apartment.

For my use cases, I'll be swapping for a 32GB machine to avoid running into the yellow for memory pressure.

View attachment 1885279

That could just be processor load though. Doing something like that would make my 64 gb i9 16" hot to the touch. But yes, you certainly have a valid use case if you don't mind the cost, it just might not have the impact you think it will.

Posting this again - it's been posted like 5-6 times already, but everyone really needs to watch this. Even pushed to page fairly hard the performance improvement is negligible.

 

[mr tech]

I went to Apple store yesterday to see the 14/16” MacbookPro and do some testing. With a few basic apps open, 2 safari tabs it was using 10.5gb/16gb. Restarted the Mac and repeated the sam ram usage after 10-15 minutes.

If you keep your mac only a few years it’s ok but if you are planning to keep your mac for 5 years you should absolutely upgrade to 32gb.

You don't understand how Apple memory works. Watch Max Yurvey on YouTube.

 

[mr tech]

I do fully understand this as I work in IT. I just forgot the average reader here isn’t a complete beginner and it’s sunday morning so I didn’t took the time of justifying my answer like the case i’m handling all week.

Yes macos is using as much ram as possible to cache, accelerate, reduce write and ….. Which also mean that if there’s less ram there’s less caching possible. So while now the system is able to cache everything since there’s plenty it might not be the case in 4-5 years since base system/apps ram usage will increase.

With every release of Macos ram usage goes up (Which I could prove by comparing Snow Leopard vs High-Sierra on my mid-2009 MBP).

I want my system to be as fast as POSSIBLE and I don’t want to be limited in 4-5 years by few hundreds dollars saving I did

Please listen to the guys, they know what they are talking about.

 

[Sanpete]

For what it's worth, here is my experience with an M1 Pro 10/16 with 16GB of ram.

My test workload:
1. Xcode with 2 workspaces open
2. `fastlane snapshot` running in the background to take simulator screenshots (4 devices, UI Tests running)
3. Browsing the web (Gmail, MacRumors, App Store Connect tabs open)
4. Sketch open with a moderately large file (50 symbols and 100 dartboards).

I kept hitting yellow memory pressure in Activity Monitor. I didn't notice any slowdown which is good, but the fans did kick in and the bottom of the machine did get warm. Not hot, but noticeably warmer than the ambient temperature in my apartment.

For my use cases, I'll be swapping for a 32GB machine to avoid running into the yellow for memory pressure.

View attachment 1885279

14"? (Just wondering about the fans.)

 

[mciarlo]

14"? (Just wondering about the fans.)

Yes, 14"

 

[pavvel]

I went to Apple store yesterday to see the 14/16” MacbookPro and do some testing. With a few basic apps open, 2 safari tabs it was using 10.5gb/16gb. Restarted the Mac and repeated the sam ram usage after 10-15 minutes.

If you keep your mac only a few years it’s ok but if you are planning to keep your mac for 5 years you should absolutely upgrade to 32gb.

You have NO idea of how max uses memory.

 

[aevan]

That could just be processor load though. Doing something like that would make my 64 gb i9 16" hot to the touch. But yes, you certainly have a valid use case if you don't mind the cost, it just might not have the impact you think it will.

Posting this again - it's been posted like 5-6 times already, but everyone really needs to watch this. Even pushed to page fairly hard the performance improvement is negligible.

Came here to post this.

 

[AFK]

That could just be processor load though. Doing something like that would make my 64 gb i9 16" hot to the touch. But yes, you certainly have a valid use case if you don't mind the cost, it just might not have the impact you think it will.

Posting this again - it's been posted like 5-6 times already, but everyone really needs to watch this. Even pushed to page fairly hard the performance improvement is negligible.

You and many here are making a lot of sense.

I struggle is buyer's remorse. If I had the 16GB M1 Pro and saw the same thing in my activity monitor, I'd swap it out for the 32GB. And if I saw that the 32GB didn't make a difference, I can eliminate that little voice in my head telling me it was 16GB. With the 16GB, I'd always be wondering.

Yeah I know reviews are there so people can make these kinda informed decisions without needlessly spending money. But the FOMO force is strong. And with me, buyer's remorse almost always beats the living crap out of good sense.

 

[Beau10]

You and many here are making a lot of sense.

I struggle is buyer's remorse. If I had the 16GB M1 Pro and saw the same thing in my activity monitor, I'd swap it out for the 32GB. And if I saw that the 32GB didn't make a difference, I can eliminate that little voice in my head telling me it was 16GB. With the 16GB, I'd always be wondering.

Yeah I know reviews are there so people can make these kinda informed decisions without needlessly spending money. But the FOMO force is strong. And with me, buyer's remorse almost always beats the living crap out of good sense.

For sure, the age old advice is if you page more than occasionally, you need more ram.

The advent of SSDs improved this significantly, but now with speeds of both the SSD and the bus so freakin high the effect of the hit appears to be quite minuscule, and we may need to reevaluate this recommendation. It almost seems like… if you needed 64 gigs with intel, probably 32 gigs would be wise.

It’s hard to say though. At the end of the day we should treat our computers as black boxes and just care about the actual performance. No one seems to even discuss we’re post processor clock ratings now in the Apple silicon era - it’s just cores and bandwidth.

Just like with iPads, maybe in another cycle or two the RAM won’t be a configurable or advertised thing because it won’t really matter.

 

[mciarlo]

I watched this video and found it really helpful. Practically speaking, there appears to be only minor performance differences between the 16GB - 32GB and neither machine had any slowdown or flushed webpages with a TON of applications open. It appears that memory pressure did occur more often on the 16GB, but the swap would always kick in to allow the machine to operate efficiently.

My takeaway is if you're strapped for cash, 16GB is more than enough. If you have the money, go for the 32Gb, but know that you're not buying significantly better performance.

 

[Beau10]

My takeaway is if you're strapped for cash, 16GB is more than enough. If you have the money, go for the 32Gb, but know that you're not buying significantly better performance.

I’d be curious to see the impact on battery life doing these types of tests on 16 gigs. If that and heat for instance were impacted to a significant degree that would certainly make the case.

I can easily afford the 32 gigs and it likely would be used to some degree (programmer here), just don’t find it good value. If it were $200 for instance I likely would do it.

 

[adamk77]

For sure, the age old advice is if you page more than occasionally, you need more ram.

The advent of SSDs improved this significantly, but now with speeds of both the SSD and the bus so freakin high the effect of the hit appears to be quite minuscule, and we may need to reevaluate this recommendation. It almost seems like… if you needed 64 gigs with intel, probably 32 gigs would be wise.

It’s hard to say though. At the end of the day we should treat our computers as black boxes and just care about the actual performance. No one seems to even discuss we’re post processor clock ratings now in the Apple silicon era - it’s just cores and bandwidth.

Just like with iPads, maybe in another cycle or two the RAM won’t be a configurable or advertised thing because it won’t really matter.

Great points.

Looking at the activity monitor from a previous poster, it would seem it fits this rule of thumb given the swap space was over 11GB. Though, as you said, with the improved SSD and bus speeds, the cost to benefit ratio does not favor spending the few extra hundred on the memory upgrade.

If one plans on keeping this machine for an extremely long time (basically until it dies), one thing I do wonder about is how badly the paging affects the wear and tear of the non-user upgradable SSD, especially for a power user. I remember reading a while back about some M1 machines writing insane amounts of data to the SSD, but I did not keep up to date with it so do not know what came of it. Or even what kind of an effect all that paging has on the battery life.

 

[smirking]

I went to Apple store yesterday to see the 14/16” MacbookPro and do some testing. With a few basic apps open, 2 safari tabs it was using 10.5gb/16gb. Restarted the Mac and repeated the sam ram usage after 10-15 minutes.

If there are real issues, I'd expect them to be software related as things are sorted out because I had an 8GB M1 on a trial basis this summer and I threw the house at it and did just fine. By throwing the house I mean I did things like run Windows 11 on ARM with Windows Update running while I had a dozen of my regular applications running on the Mac side, multiple browsers, and tabs galore.

As other people have mentioned already, you're being mislead by the "memory used" number in Activity Monitor. MacOS will always occupy more memory than it actually needs if any is available. It's not going to change performance.

 

[smirking]

If one plans on keeping this machine for an extremely long time (basically until it dies), one thing I do wonder about is how badly the paging affects the wear and tear on the non-user upgradable SSD, especially for a power user. I remember reading a while back about some M1 machines writing insane amounts of data to the SSD, but I did not keep up to date with it so do not know what came of it. Or even what kind of an effect all that paging has on the battery life.

There's another thread in here that discusses how much wear is too much wear on an SSD. I had clocked in one of the more extreme cases. I was stress testing an 8GB M1. It performed well, but barely spent more than few minutes outside of red memory for 10 days. In that 10 days I was sometimes racking up almost 1TB of SSD writes.

Keep in mind, this was an extreme case and even in so by stated endurance ratings, I should have expected around 3 years of SSD life on that 500GB SSD.

 

[BigMac?]

I went to Apple store yesterday to see the 14/16” MacbookPro and do some testing. With a few basic apps open, 2 safari tabs it was using 10.5gb/16gb. Restarted the Mac and repeated the sam ram usage after 10-15 minutes.

If you keep your mac only a few years it’s ok but if you are planning to keep your mac for 5 years you should absolutely upgrade to 32gb.

Same here. I got 16” with 16GB on the 26th. Returned on 27th am ordered with 32GB.

I reached red RAM-Stress indication with Final Cut and Designer working “light pro jobs”.

 

[BigMac?]

If there are real issues, I'd expect them to be software related as things are sorted out because I had an 8GB M1 on a trial basis this summer and I threw the house at it and did just fine. By throwing the house I mean I did things like run Windows 11 on ARM with Windows Update running while I had a dozen of my regular applications running on the Mac side, multiple browsers, and tabs galore.

As other people have mentioned already, you're being mislead by the "memory used" number in Activity Monitor. MacOS will always occupy more memory than it actually needs if any is available. It's not going to change performance.

This depends on the GPU: the bigger the gPU the more RAM-Hunger.

 

[BigMac?]

Just because you see the 32GB machine using 17GB-24GB doesn't mean it would struggle on a 16GB machine, it doesn't work like that. The base model would also handle those programs with an ease

Ahh, but it’s also a bit more complex than you want us to believe. One thing is opening the apps, another is working on a multi-layer image or Multicam video editing.

The RAM- Stress indicator in activity monitor gives a pretty good impression if your ram is enough for your workflow.

I reached orange to red with light workload (affinity designer and Final Cut, all on the newest version).

 

[elmateo487]

Disagree completely. I've never been close to running out of memory, and won't be close 5 years from now either.

Then why would you buy this machine? Likely you will never be close to using its CPU or GPU either.

 

[smirking]

This depends on the GPU: the bigger the gPU the more RAM-Hunger.

Sure. Let's assume I used 0 memory for GPU. With what I threw at it, it was incredible that it didn't melt into a blob and stop responding. I did have some isolated issues, but they were software related as the problems I had existed regardless of if I ran that program alone with nothing else or if I ran it with over a dozen heavy programs trying to claim 8GB of memory.

If I have problems when I get my M1 Max and I find it slow at things I absolutely cannot sacrifice time in, I'm not returning it for a 64GB machine. I'm returning it and keeping my 2018 i7 until all the software I depend upon has been fully tuned up for an M1 Max.

 

[BigMac?]

Oh god, another one of these nonsense threads. If you have no clue how RAM works, please stop advising others and spreading false information...

Not going to repeat myself because I've done so in similar threads that popped up last couple days.

Anyway, 16GB is still the sweetspot for the majority. Only people with heavy workloads benefit from 32GB or more.

May I remember you this is about the RAM-demand for a Pro machine? This is not the normal “word” and “mail” Starbucks workflow.

 

[BigMac?]

I’d be curious to see the impact on battery life doing these types of tests on 16 gigs. If that and heat for instance were impacted to a significant degree that would certainly make the case.

I can easily afford the 32 gigs and it likely would be used to some degree (programmer here), just don’t find it good value. If it were $200 for instance I likely would do it.

All official reviewers got 32GB+ machines

 

[MrGunnyPT]

After seeing the video I kind of regret getting 16" 32gb RAM with 512 gb. Seems like I have should have gone for the 16gb and 1TB instead.. The main reason why was I didnt know the SSD meant that much. and I barely use the space on my 512 mbp 2017 now.

Yeah I usually have 32GB on my desktop machines and i'm currently using the 16GB on my M1 Pro without any issues.

 

[Rck1984]

May I remember you this is about the RAM-demand for a Pro machine? This is not the normal “word” and “mail” Starbucks workflow.

16GB is plenty for loads of “Pro“ work. Besides, the machine might be called Pro, there is still a lot of average/enthousiast users buying these machines.

 

[casperes1996]

I went to Apple store yesterday to see the 14/16” MacbookPro and do some testing. With a few basic apps open, 2 safari tabs it was using 10.5gb/16gb. Restarted the Mac and repeated the sam ram usage after 10-15 minutes.

If you keep your mac only a few years it’s ok but if you are planning to keep your mac for 5 years you should absolutely upgrade to 32gb.

That's not how macOS treats memory though. Unused memory is wasted memory. It doesn't matter if you're actively using the data, there's nothing lost by having it in RAM and if it starts being needed there's a massive gain. If other data is needed instead you load that in instead.
While I tend to think of MaxTech more as entertainment than information, look at this

 

[DesertNomad]

I have a 16" i9, 64GB, 4TB, 5600M. I will probably keep this at least another year - probably 2 more years. If I were buying an M1 today I think I would opt for an 16" M1 Max, 32GB, 4TB. I do software development and have two external displays (XDR and 27" Thunderbolt). The 4TB helps with the life of the SSD and I think 64GB is probably overkill but 32GB is not.