16GB RAM for M2 Pro MacBook Pro 14-inch 2023?

[ninjaiphone]

Hello,
I am upgrading from a Late-2013 Dual Core 4th-gen i7 8GB Retina MacBook Pro to a 2022 MacBook Pro 10‑core CPU, 16‑core GPU 1TB SSD.

I chose the 16GB RAM configuration but this laptop will not be doing crazy video editing, mostly photo editing, surfing, occasional gaming, Youtube and movies, and AirPlay/HDMI for Sporting events. I know the macOS takes up RAM but is 16GB enough, I don't want it to bottleneck or put more wear on the SSD if it has to switch to that..?

 

[Svetlin]

I would say you don`t need to worry about ssd wear at all. My experience (M1 8/256) is that my machine uses a little swap but i checked the S.M.A.R.T. data on my ssd and it`s fine, no issues what so ever. 16Gb of Ram will be sufficient for medium use like yours.

 

[Beau10]

From a pure performance aspect, for most applications that traditionally benefit from extra RAM, there may be negligible difference due to the speed of the bus and SSD. Memory compression certainly helps and wear leveling has improved to the point where moderate swap shouldn't be a concern to SSD life.

Of course for applications that use a ton of RAM all at once it's still worthwhile - ie. intense photo/video editing, 3d modeling, machine learning - which are generally tasks that would benefit from going to the Max anyway. This guide gives a good rundown:

16GB vs. 32GB MacBook Pro: How Much RAM is Enough?

Apple's high-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro offers the M1 Pro chip with 16GB of RAM as standard, but you can upgrade to 32GB of RAM for...

www.macrumors.com

 

[james2538]

I wish they offered 24GB of RAM. I sometimes near the limits of 16GB but 32GB is expensive overkill for me.

 

[Carlson-online]

So, I had to get a new laptop today for reasons I will not go into here ( not good ! ).

I couldn't get a 16GB model *today* for pickup, so went with the 32GB model.

What i've noticed in the activity monitor, and this will surprise hopefully nobody, is that i'm sitting at 23GB used, having almost identical things open that I did yesterday on my old 16GB model, that was sitting at 12GB.

TLDR; the system is designed to cache things in RAM, if there's RAM available. Sadly, I dont have my old machine to compare this side by side, but I assure you my workload was never hitting any memory pressure.

Even closing everything so only finder open, and it says I have 18GB used, so it's definitely cache