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16GB or 32GB for multitasking? Not for video productions...
- Thread starter Cham2000
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I am a professional. I need up to date tools to do my work properly. Three years of progress in computer technology makes a difference.
Yeah you are better off using an iPad as a sidecar display if you don’t have a 4K minimum resolution as an external display.Wow! We're over 150 posts already all because the OP was looking for a little motivation to spend the extra money on his new Mac and go with 32Gb Ram rather than the typical 16.
I'd be more worried about the sketchy text/graphics scaling issues with the new Mac silicon than any Ram problems. M1/M2 Ram handling is outstanding, but scaling to an external monitor... not so much.
Good point @MrGunny94 I have a 12.9" iPad Pro that I could try.
I would have an Apple Studio display right now but coming from a 34" wide/curved Dell UltraSharp any 27" monitor leaves me feeling mighty cramped. I run a Windows PC and my M1 MacMini on a single monitor.
I am currently using an LG 43UN700-B 43 inch flat screen monitor with decent results.
Disclaimer. . .
Not to derail your topic @Cham2000 but when you see how poorly Apple silicon scales text & graphics on anything other than their own $2000/$6000 5k/6k monitors you'll realize that Ram issues with your new Mac are the least of your problems.
Good luck and keep us posted!
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For me it's the opposite. The incremental speedups you get in a few years are not enough to justify the inconvenience and lost productivity of migrating to a new system. I need a qualitative change before I upgrade, and a 2x speedup is too small to be qualitative.
Disclaimer. . .
Not to derail your topic @Cham2000 but when you see how poorly Apple silicon scales text & graphics on anything other than their own $2000/$6000 5k/6k monitors you'll realize that Ram issues with your new Mac are the least of your problems.
Good luck and keep us posted!
I was aware of some issues with other - non-Apple - displays with the Silicon Macs. This is why I already selected the Apple Studio Display for my new mini, despite the very high cost of the display. I believe that this display is of very high quality (despite some critics about its camera resolution), and I'm pretty confident that I will be satisfied by it.
So please everyone, could we end this never-ending discussion? It has turned into a - 7 pages wide! - madness! I already decided to go the luxury road of 32GB ram (the mini is even on the road to my house), and despite the 500$CAD price for this STUPID upgrade, I don't think I'll ever regret it later and complain about the lack of memory of my F&*$#ng computer. I may only have regrets if some critical component fails in a few years, after the end of the Apple Care Warranty. From my personal experience with all of my previous Macs, I have trust in Apple for a durable computer.
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Bravo Sir!
The Apple Studio Display is perfect for your new Mac, and 32Gb of Ram is what I was hoping you would do.
As for your thread running over a 150 posts thus far. . .
You should be proud! This has been a great thread with some good info and worthwhile opinions. At one point we even snuck in a little humor (which for this group is a rarity).
Thanks again for your follow-up reply.
Happy computing.
I've enjoyed this thread. I was curious about there being a small bit of swap usage despite having plenty of ram available. I went with a refurb 24gb M2 Air and according to activity monitor I have gotten it up to about 18gb used, that's with very few tabs and some very light gaming, general browsing, and email. I am happy with my purchase because it gives me the opportunity to take on some creative hobbies and not be limited by ram. I have no need for frequent upgrades (and I don't have the financial ability to upgrade often) so I am glad I went with 24gb. If I went with an M2 Pro I would have gotten 16gb because 32 would have been excessive overkill for my use case.
If you own a business, say as an independent software developer, you can write off the cost of the computer over a 3 year depreciation period. At least here in the US. The company I work for is happy to get me a new computer every 3 years, though I usually put it off until 5 years.
If you don’t consider a 2x performance improvement to be noteworthy, then your workflows must be not sensitive to performance. In that case I don’t really understand why you need so much RAM (unless you work with particularly low quality software).
Also… lost productivity migrating? Restoring a machine is like 2-3 hours…
The display is ok, but extremely pricey. Any contemporary display with high pixel density and USB-C connection works with Apple Silicon. People talking about display issues are usually those trying to use low-DPI or ultra-wide displays which Apple doesn’t care about.
I probably spend 10-20% of my working hours running something performance-sensitive locally. A 2x performance improvement doesn't have that much impact on my productivity. And because I work on applications that require a lot of RAM, memory latency and the number of CPU cores are more important performance characteristics than the usual measures of CPU performance. The actual speedups I see tend to be smaller than those in more balanced benchmarks.
It's more like 2-3 days for me. My computers tend to accumulate all kinds of workarounds, adjusted hidden settings, installed dependencies, and alternate versions of core tools to allow compiling software designed for Linux servers. Doing a clean install whenever I get a new computer is a good way of getting rid of obsolete things before they start causing too much trouble.
Yeah I have an Acer X34A at home so I completely get what you mean, coming from a 21:9 display to a 16:9 27" feels cramped and with lack of space with everything we have...Good point @MrGunny94 I have a 12.9" iPad Pro that I could try.
I would have an Apple Studio display right now but coming from a 34" wide/curved Dell UltraSharp any 27" monitor leaves me feeling mighty cramped. I run a Windows PC and my M1 MacMini on a single monitor.
I am currently using an LG 43UN700-B 43 inch flat screen monitor with decent results.
Disclaimer. . .
Not to derail your topic @Cham2000 but when you see how poorly Apple silicon scales text & graphics on anything other than their own $2000/$6000 5k/6k monitors you'll realize that Ram issues with your new Mac are the least of your problems.
Good luck and keep us posted!
Only benefit of an Apple Studio display at a 27" is the resolution in macOS
I would have though you would spend more money on monitors to hold all those tabs!
😆Thanks for the detailed reply! This again shows that different people have different use cases and expectations. I can certainly see that for someone like you purchasing a computer with more RAM might be a good idea.
I would have though you would spend more money on monitors to hold all those tabs!
I'm fine with my laptop screen, thanks
It seems that 16GB has been the top end consumer amount for years now, with 8GB being the minimum. By consumer, I mean like walking into a Best Buy and getting one in stock, without ordering a customized rig online. The old standard was 4/8GB and how long ago was that? At least 5-10 years. You are just starting to see some consumer rigs with 32GB, but that is usually on gaming machines.
My point is, 16GB was more than enough for years now, and I don't see software needing 32GB (again, beyond video, heavy virtual machines or heavy gaming) for a long time. Software just isn't changing much. Nowadays, a 5 year old processor keeps up the same as newer ones (power management does get better every year though.) Maybe with the rise of AI, you might see a jump. But again, not for a while.
My point is, 16GB was more than enough for years now, and I don't see software needing 32GB (again, beyond video, heavy virtual machines or heavy gaming) for a long time. Software just isn't changing much. Nowadays, a 5 year old processor keeps up the same as newer ones (power management does get better every year though.) Maybe with the rise of AI, you might see a jump. But again, not for a while.
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$1000 PC laptops typcially ship with 16GB RAM and 512/1TB SSD's. Just because Apple doesn't do it doesn't mean 8GB "has been the minimum" for $1000 laptops which Apple considers as "entry level".
And top end consumer laptops have much more RAM, they have 64GB RAM. And they have 16GB VRAM too on their RTX 4090. So in total they have 64 + 16 = 80 GB RAM in "Apple Silicon terms" (as with Apple Silicon the RAM is shared with the GPU).
And I know how you try to exclude gaming, but the gaming market is larger than Apple itself, so it's not something you can ignore. In fact, the M&A deal of Microsoft purchasing Blizzard is in the top 3 largest M&A deals projected up to 2029.
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Well this to the op and many others! Use the web site link RoaringApps.com to see if the software you want is compatible with your silicone New Mac!
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Not true. In an unscientific experiment, I went to Bestbuy.com and sorted them by RAM:
8gb 280
16gb 498
32gb 107
64gb 2
The 2 64GB are not even close to mainstream:
MSI - Stealth 17.3" 240hz QHD Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i9-13900H - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 - 2TB SSD - 64GB Memory - Black - $4000
ASUS - ProArt Studiobook Pro 16 OLED W7600 16" Laptop - Intel Xeon - 64GB Memory - NVIDIA Quadro RTX A5000 Graphics - 4TB SSD - Star Black - $5000
16GB is the sweet spot, with 8GB still being a major thing (not everyone wants to spend 2 or 3 thousand on a laptop.) The VAST majority of people on the planet use it for email and web browsing. Most don't even need 16GB.
People need to stop spec chasing. It doesn't match real world use.
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And if you walk into a Best Buy, most of the machines on display will have 8GB RAM, followed by a handful (primarily gaming laptops and desktops) coming with 16GB. The "mainstream" configs are what you will see in the stores, not the hundreds upon hundreds of models on their website.
Yep. And the only 32GB model I know you can get in-store is the Dell XPS 15.6. But a lot of people spec-chase, and think that's what everyone else does/needs. I've done that too, with 64GB laptops and you know what? They were no better performers than the 16GB that I used.
a lot of "mainstream configs" can be had for less than 1000, even with 16/512GB.
sure, you will not get the ultra highest speed RAM or SSD, but my new sub 1000 laptop came with 16GB LPDDR5 too, though @ "only" 4.8GHz i think. not sure about the speed of it's 512GB M2 NVMe drive.
but you can also get a system with 32GB of RAM for <1000 too.
Again, not the super state of the art memory, but the "mainstream" doesn't care about that... and it's often actually even not that important unless you want to have a high end gaming rig with a couple of more fps than your friends, or have some other critical use cases where the use of ultra high end RAM will actually make some more significant difference other than just winning benchmarks, so actually having the amount of memory you require will give you MUCH more benefits than the last couple % the "turbo" memory will provide you even over just "bog standard" memory speeds.
sure, you will not get the ultra highest speed RAM or SSD, but my new sub 1000 laptop came with 16GB LPDDR5 too, though @ "only" 4.8GHz i think. not sure about the speed of it's 512GB M2 NVMe drive.
but you can also get a system with 32GB of RAM for <1000 too.
Again, not the super state of the art memory, but the "mainstream" doesn't care about that... and it's often actually even not that important unless you want to have a high end gaming rig with a couple of more fps than your friends, or have some other critical use cases where the use of ultra high end RAM will actually make some more significant difference other than just winning benchmarks, so actually having the amount of memory you require will give you MUCH more benefits than the last couple % the "turbo" memory will provide you even over just "bog standard" memory speeds.
Without wishing to be too sardonic, I do think some apps have greater ram needs than others even if they are nominally similar. The classic example is MS Teams, which seems to suck every resource it can get. Word and Excel are similar, and slack can be quite slow, as can zoom and Miro.
So a basic office productivity set of open apps can bring my 16gb M1 Pro MBP 14” to being somewhat less snappy and responsive than I would like.
In contrast, I can run Ableton 11, Izotope plugins (via Rosetta) and Serum (natively), a couple of Adobe Suite apps, Photos etc, Safari with hundreds of tabs, and still have a very responsive system with headroom to spare.
Hence my desire for 32gb in my next machine. If all apps ran well, 8gb really would be fine. But I don’t think they do.
So a basic office productivity set of open apps can bring my 16gb M1 Pro MBP 14” to being somewhat less snappy and responsive than I would like.
In contrast, I can run Ableton 11, Izotope plugins (via Rosetta) and Serum (natively), a couple of Adobe Suite apps, Photos etc, Safari with hundreds of tabs, and still have a very responsive system with headroom to spare.
Hence my desire for 32gb in my next machine. If all apps ran well, 8gb really would be fine. But I don’t think they do.
RAM is not crucial to multitask as it was on HDD days, as SSD pages really fast, I use an ancient PC with 4gb of RAM and a SSD and can do any multitask you can imagine. Sometimes it get stuck 1 or 2 seconds but the ssd pages really fast.
BTW Is not so presentable that apple sells computers in 2023 with 8gb of RAM.
BTW Is not so presentable that apple sells computers in 2023 with 8gb of RAM.
But how much of that is a legitimate need to use more RAM and how much of that is due to sloppy coding and resource management on the part of the developers? My guess is that it's more of the latter where Microsoft is involved - especially given your experience running Ableton and those other apps simultaneously without issues.
8gb was the standard NINE YEARS AGO on MacBook Pros back in 2014. The fact that 16gb isn't the bare minimum today is a joke. 32gb is optimal even though you don't NEED it today; you may in the future and it sure as hell will help trying to sell it once you need to upgrade.
If you get yourself a relatively premium laptop today it should last you close to 10 years; I say that because the MacBook Pros from 2013 are still more than capable for almost everything.
If you get yourself a relatively premium laptop today it should last you close to 10 years; I say that because the MacBook Pros from 2013 are still more than capable for almost everything.