32GB or 64GB of RAM in MBP16 for programming with many screens?

[Phil108]

Hi all,

Currently I’m using a MacBook Pro 13“ from 2018 with i7 and 16GB RAM together with two directly connected LG UltraFine 4K and one LG UltraFine 5k connected via BlackMagic eGPU.

In general and for everyday office tasks this setup runs fast and perfectly fine, however I’m a software developer, so most of the time I run a lot of applications in parallel:

• Maybe two or three instances of JetBrains Rider (a rather heavy IDE)
• Multiple instances of a git client
• The usual office stuff, i.e. Mail, Calendar, Messages, Chrome, Safari
• Apple Music
• MS Remote Desktop connecting to a single instance of windows on all four screens (!) full screen
• I’m forced to run MS Teams in the MS Edge browser, including video calls and screen sharing

Surprisingly this runs very fine and usable until the video calls and screen sharing come into play. Then app switching might take a few seconds or the system might even freeze unless I at least close Remote Desktop.

So now in order to improve the situation I’m thinking of upgrading my main tool and want to buy a new Mac. As I want to be mobile from time to time and would love to have more screen space I decided on a MacBook Pro 16inch. CPU will be a M1 Max, as I don’t want to fiddle around to get the screens to work. Storage is set to 1TB.

The only point I’m not sure about is if I can simply grab the 32GB RAM version off a shelf and be fine with the above listed tasks or if I’d better upgrade the RAM to 64GB.

As one can see from the hardware I’m currently using, I usually don’t upgrade every two years and can’t see a reason right now to do so in the future.

Any insights will be highly appreciated.

Thanks,

Philipp

 

[kasakka]

I use a good pile of virtual machines or Docker containers on top of a similar things you do on a 2019 Intel MBP with 64 GB. Most of the time I only use at best 32 GB.

But if you don't want to keep second guessing yourself, just spend the extra for 64 GB.

 

[diggy33]

If you're fine with using 16GB currently, you will be fine with 32GB. Save your coin and go with that.

 

[jonobin]

Crying in company issued 8gb m1 MacBook Pro 🥲

[for reference, I'm using a 4k 27" external display and I'm doing FE development with ~4 node/webpack instances running, vscode, teams, chrome, several safari tabs and music and it's doing 'just' fine for now]

 

[mreg376]

I have not seen a single review or test, and I think I watched them all, that shows that the $400 extra for 64GB over 32GB gets a proportional performance boost. It does, however, suck more power. Maybe if you're working with 500TB files. Better to use that $400 for a bigger (and somewhat faster) SSD.

 

[Phil108]

If you're fine with using 16GB currently, you will be fine with 32GB. Save your coin and go with that.

This is a really good argument.

I'm nearly fine with 16GB right now, so things should be perfect with 32GB.

 

[collin_]

Definitely go for the 32. With the M1 Pro and M1 Max machines, people haven't been able to find much of a difference between 16 and 32 even in extreme unrealistic stress tests, let alone 32 vs. 64. Also -- Apple's SSD upgrade prices are insanely unreasonable so I would just save the $400 rather than upgrading anything unless you absolutely need to.

The speed differences between the SSD capacities on the M1 Pro and M1 Max machines are also negligible unless you can somehow find a way to write like 7 gigabytes per second to your drive.

 

[Phil108]

Thanks a lot everyone for the advice, will grab a 32GB one in the next few days.

Still I remember I thought ”how could I ever have performance problems again” when I got a MacBook Air about 10 years ago and then people started building things like Teams for the browser…

 

[MrGunny94]

Grab a 32GB.

Especially because with those high resolution screens you will have a Window Server process of 2-3GB.. Only happens when connected to 4K displays or higher.

 

[Phil108]

Grab a 32GB.

Especially because with those high resolution screens you will have a Window Server process of 2-3GB.. Only happens when connected to 4K displays or higher.

Already ordered one, hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow.

 

[hajime]

Grab a 32GB.

Especially because with those high resolution screens you will have a Window Server process of 2-3GB.. Only happens when connected to 4K displays or higher.

What does Window Server do? Does it happen under MacOS or Windows under Parallels?

 

[jav6454]

Already ordered one, hopefully it'll arrive tomorrow.

I'd be hard pressed to see 32GB being fully utilized under coding. I mean, it can happen, but how often. 64GB right now is kind of absurd.

 

[MrGunny94]

What does Window Server do? Does it happen under MacOS or Windows under Parallels?

Window Server increases from 700MB - 1GB to 1,50GB when using one 4K external monitor however with two it can go up as high as 2,20GB - 3,00GB, taking in consideration the apps you use and so on.

Especially rosetta apps make it go wild.. But for some reason when in clamshell mode with my dual monitors it goes crazy.

The 16GB of RAM is usable however if you have Parallels running one Ubuntu VM you can starting swapping a lot more aggressively, even more so if you have a Ubuntu with 2GB and Windows 11 with 4GB.

I should have gone for the 32GB.. sigh

 

[hajime]

Window Server increases from 700MB - 1GB to 1,50GB when using one 4K external monitor however with two it can go up as high as 2,20GB - 3,00GB, taking in consideration the apps you use and so on.

Especially rosetta apps make it go wild.. But for some reason when in clamshell mode with my dual monitors it goes crazy.

The 16GB of RAM is usable however if you have Parallels running one Ubuntu VM you can starting swapping a lot more aggressively, even more so if you have a Ubuntu with 2GB and Windows 11 with 4GB.

I should have gone for the 32GB.. sigh

Thank you for letting us know.

 

[TAJones99]

I'm new to learning to be a developer and I have a 2019 MacBook Pro 16 inch with 32gb ram, but I got mine off Ebay for $1299 and it has a 2.4 i9, so I'm guessing I should be fine with my choice. And I did thing of getting the M1 but the 32gb ram option was more than I wanted to spend.

 

[Phil108]

After half a day of usage I can already say, that my performance problems are very likely history with the machine I got (MBP16 M1 Max with 32GB RAM).

Didn't expect this, but I notice a speedup almost everywhere. Running all the above mentioned apps, everything stays very smooth and snappy, most apps are instantly there. Web-based video calls, screen sharing and MS Remote Desktop on 4 screens aren't a problem any more.

Will probably give another update in a week or so.