8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests

[Abazigal]

Echo chamber, yes.... but folks here also live outside of this too, and tend to talk to others, give advice, and make purchasing decisions for organisations/schools etc.

This whole RAM debacle is entirely avoidable, Apple. Come on.

If so, then why did the iPhone mini fail?

A few people complaining that an Apple product could be cheaper just because they don’t want to pay more for extra ram and storage does not constitute a debacle. That’s just called whining.

A debacle would be if the next version of macOS required 16 gb ram or more to run, thereby obsoleting over 90% of M1 Macs in existence today in a bid to force everyone to upgrade to the latest Mac.

The reality is that 8gb ram does indeed suffice for the vast majority of users out there, for whom “work” entails tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, documents, and other similar stuff. They also use computers to manage personal videos and photos, communication, and web surf. 8gb ram is more than enough today, and I don’t see what would make these tasks suddenly need to consume more resources in the near foreseeable future.

That people are not upgrading isn’t because the current Macs aren’t good enough. It’s just a result of the M1 Mac being so good that 3 years later, it still amply meets the needs of most users and there really isn’t any reason for them to throw out a perfectly good computer that still works.

This is the exact opposite of the forced obsolescence argument that you all so love to trot out here.

 

[M3gatron]

Thank you for the support and very glad to help!

We're also planning on making on this video as well
8GB M3 MacBook Pro vs 16GB Windows Laptop which is similarly priced.

I was looking for some laptops online an I came across the following laptop:

LENOVO Yoga Pro 7 14APH8, AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS up to la 5.1GHz, 14.5" 2.5K, 32GB, 1TB, AMD Radeon 780M, FreeDOS, Storm Grey​

So 32GB RAM LPDDR5X(6400Mhz) and 1TB PCIexpress 4.0 SSD for as low as 700$ before taxes, now it 800$ I think. This is the type of modern Windows laptop you can get today. Its also entirely made of aluminum so premium built.

I also came across the flowing model:

Lenovo 14.5'' Yoga Pro 7 14APH8, 3K IPS 120Hz, Procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7840HS (16M Cache, up to 5.1 GHz), 16GB DDR5X, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 4050 6GB​

This is almost the same as the other one but it has a dedicated GPU and it about 1.140$ before taxes.

My point is, these are the types of Windows laptops I expect to see in the comparison, latest CPU tech, RAM tech and storage tech, not some overpriced Windows laptop with an older AMD or Intel CPU and DDR4 RAM or something. Also a lot of Windows laptops with 16GB RAM at over 1200-1300$. have a dedicated GPU.
My prediction is that the M3 8GB laptop won't fair great in memory constrained scenarios against such Windows laptops. The technology in Windows laptops also evolved a lot in recent years, especially since Apple stopped using x86 CPUs, now there's PICexpress 4.0 as standard, RAM is much faster, storage is much faster, communications and transfers between CPU and GPU are much faster. Even if Unified Memory does help with performance in certain scenarios and alleviates certain data duplications it was never showed that it has such an incredible huge impact that basically it acts as double regular DDR RAM, that doesn't even make sense.

 

[Santabean2000]

If so, then why did the iPhone mini fail?

A few people complaining that an Apple product could be cheaper just because they don’t want to pay more for extra ram and storage does not constitute a debacle. That’s just called whining.

The mini failed because the SE came out just before it, stealing a ton of prospective buyers who were in the market for something smaller and cheaper.

As for whining, um no. It's just calling out BS when it presents itself.

 

[Velli]

But the small engine should still be suitable for the car and what it is advertised for. apple Can do what they want but if you put a pro label on it, it should be able to do basic pro level stuff.
for all those arguing that the entry level pro is good enough for accounts, should consider whether the MBA would be the correct choice. Btw, the MBA should be just the MacBook. it’s a marketing thing hoping that people will buy an MBP.

Again with the crazy focusing on naming… who cares. Is a Surface Pro designed for Lightroom? No.

Pro has better screen and better battery, along with HDMI and SD card which seemed to be mandatory must haves back when MBP’s didn’t have them… apparently now noone needs them and should just get the Air?

Just realize that there are people with different needs than yours. Apple’s whole lineup doesn’t have to fit your ideas of what a Pro computer should or shouldn’t have. Telling me that I don’t need an SD card is just as ignorant as telling you that you don’t need more RAM (which I never claimed, for the record).

 

[RigSatMe]

I'm gonna post something interesting because I find your comment to be a bit misleading...
I'm on a baseline 2021 M1 Macbook Air, 256GB SSD and 8GB RAM.
I put your assessment to the test, and just opened Safari with 20 tabs (ranging from YouTube videos, Amazon and other online shopping sites, to construction tech guidelines websites,) Apple's Mail with a very poor inbox organization filled with 1,546 mail messages; I have running the latest Logic Pro 10.8 version using instances of Arturia's latest Analog Lab Pro, Prophet V, Mini V -all of them famous for being CPU and RAM hogs in Windows- Logic's Electronic Drum Kit designer, and two of Wave's mastering plugins on constant looping using the live loops window, and AutoCAD 2024 with an actual construction blueprint for a fire protection system with four different print layouts. No lag on any of the applications, no hiccups, you can browse any website with no video lagging... I'm attaching a screencap, which I edited out the name of the AutoCAD project using Pixelmator Pro with all apps still operating. Love Logic Pro... it's barely hitting 15% CPU loads and NO STRESS on the SSD drive. AutoCAD smoothly pans and zooms in and out the project, all tools respond quickly... and all apps and plugins are M1 native. Coworkers can use browsers, Office and AutoCAD projects on laptops with Core i5 and i7 chips with 16GB RAM and 1TB SSD drives with a healthy dosage of GUI hiccups. I don't buy the lie that any version of a new M3 Mac laptop can't handle Safari with 20 tabs using a couple pro apps at the same time.

Great, but what about Swap? Only launching Xcode on this machine M1, Air, 8gb RAM, 256gb SSD, make Swapping up to 20gb. That’s huge! I’d a chance to talk one of the Apple technician, and he confirmed, they received a lot of macs M cpu series because of dead logic board (ssd).

 

[Velli]

I was looking for some laptops online an I came across the following laptop:

LENOVO Yoga Pro 7 14APH8, AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS up to la 5.1GHz, 14.5" 2.5K, 32GB, 1TB, AMD Radeon 780M, FreeDOS, Storm Grey​

So 32GB RAM LPDDR5X(6400Mhz) and 1TB PCIexpress 4.0 SSD for as low as 700$ before taxes, now it 800$ I think. This is the type of modern Windows laptop you can get today. Its also entirely made of aluminum so premium built.

I also came across the flowing model:

Lenovo 14.5'' Yoga Pro 7 14APH8, 3K IPS 120Hz, Procesor AMD Ryzen™ 7 7840HS (16M Cache, up to 5.1 GHz), 16GB DDR5X, 1TB SSD, GeForce RTX 4050 6GB​

This is almost the same as the other one but it has a dedicated GPU and it about 1.140$ before taxes.

My point is, these are the types of Windows laptops I expect to see in the comparison, latest CPU tech, RAM tech and storage tech, not some overpriced Windows laptop with an older AMD or Intel CPU and DDR4 RAM or something. Also a lot of Windows laptops with 16GB RAM at over 1200-1300$. have a dedicated GPU.
My prediction is that the M3 8GB laptop won't fair great in memory constrained scenarios against such Windows laptops. The technology in Windows laptops also evolved a lot in recent years, especially since Apple stopped using x86 CPUs, now there's PICexpress 4.0 as standard, RAM is much faster, storage is much faster, communications and transfers between CPU and GPU are much faster. Even if Unified Memory does help with performance in certain scenarios and alleviates certain data duplications it was never showed that it has such an incredible huge impact that basically it acts as double regular DDR RAM, that doesn't even make sense.

Great. Please review screen quality and battery life and all the other areas where a Macbook is killing those Lenovo's, when you're done with the speed benchmarks.

 

[woolypants]

I can't watch this YouTuber. It's like he's trying to sell me a used car all the time. It's not just annoying. It also just tires me out.

 

[Velli]

But the small engine should still be suitable for the car and what it is advertised for. apple Can do what they want but if you put a pro label on it, it should be able to do basic pro level stuff.

It should, but is it? Have you tried pulling an 1800kg caravan up a hill with a 1.5 turbo gasoline engine? It's legal, but the experience sucks, compared to using one with a larger engine, or a Diesel. Lowest spec C-class is great for normal everyday driving, but if you have a heavy trailer/caravan, don't get a C200.

(disclaimer, I haven't tried this with the current version, this was a few years ago).

 

[Velli]

The question is, how does a Mac with 8GB of RAM perform when compared to a Windows box with 16GB of RAM in workloads that would be typically run on a machine with a low end memory configuration.

See my post above. Spoiler alert: It's faster.

 

[Velli]

I had to use a base M1 MacBook Air loaner with 8 gigs while my 16 gig M1 MBP was being repaired. It was a joke just running my basic suite of productivity apps - zoom, Office, slack, safari, acrobat, etc. You know, the basic things that everyone who uses a computer does.

8gb in a machine that expensive is insulting, ridiculous “lol don’t worry Apple’s 8 is like everyone else’s 16” excuses notwithstanding. It’s not, and turns an otherwise amazingly capable platform into a turd.

You're wrong, as my experiment above shows. It really is as fast as "everyone else's" (i.e. Windows) 16GB models. Just not as fast as a 16GB Mac. Want a turd? Get a 16GB Windows computer.

 

[Agincourt]

More like an echo chamber. Outside of this forum, nobody cares, and it’s not going to influence their purchasing decision one bit.

This is why tech pundits continue to get Apple wrong every time. They focus too much on specs and not enough on the end user experience.

This deserves to be laughed at. It's not just a 'very elite' group that's complaining, it's just us you're interacting with here... there are many beyond this forum. The fact there's a significant sample size out there mostly agreeing this pitiful RAM base line and Apple gouging customers for upgrades that cannot be changed later... kinda defeats your argument.

I may be one of those that don't need 16 GB but I'm absolutely not going to gamble on an expensive computer that I'm going to want to keep for more than five years and settle for what I only need now. I actually don't need 512 GB of storage, but the security of having more than you need IS part of the user experience.

 

[Abazigal]

This deserves to be laughed at. It's not just a 'very elite' group that's complaining, it's just us you're interacting with here... there are many beyond this forum. The fact there's a significant sample size out there mostly agreeing this pitiful RAM base line and Apple gouging customers for upgrades that cannot be changed later... kinda defeats your argument.

I may be one of those that don't need 16 GB but I'm absolutely not going to gamble on an expensive computer that I'm going to want to keep for more than five years and settle for what I only need now. I actually don't need 512 GB of storage, but the security of having more than you need IS part of the user experience.

Where can I find this sample size again? I am not aware of any massive boycott of Macs currently going on because of its supposedly "paltry" ram.

 

[The Game 161]

16GB of ram really needs to be the standard for macbook pros.

 

[MilaM]

Where can I find this sample size again? I am not aware of any massive boycott of Macs currently going on because of its supposedly "paltry" ram.

I think what is happening, and this is of course just speculation based on my experiences, is that people hold on to their Macs for much longer. Increasing prices and bad base configurations are making upgrades less attractive. That's the boat I'm in. I wanted to switch to Apple Silicon many times over the years, but was put off because of the price gouging on RAM and SSD upgrades every time. So I'm still waiting.

 

[kk200]

More like an echo chamber. Outside of this forum, nobody cares, and it’s not going to influence their purchasing decision one bit.

This is why tech pundits continue to get Apple wrong every time. They focus too much on specs and not enough on the end user experience.

Outside of this forum, Mac sales is dropping ...

 

[Abazigal]

I think what is happening, and this is of course just speculation based on my experiences, is that people hold on to their Macs for much longer. Increasing prices and bad base configurations are making upgrades less attractive. That's the boat I'm in. I wanted to switch to Apple Silicon many times over the years, but was put off because of the price gouging on RAM and SSD upgrades every time. So I'm still waiting.

I agree with you that the poor Mac sales this year is due to people holding on to their Macs longer, but I disagree that this is due to rising prices and poor base configs. The M1 has been that good for me. Even though I have the cash to upgrade to a 15" MBA with 16gb of ram, it feels like a waste because of how new my M1 MBA still is. It sufficed for me back in 2020, it suffices for me now, and it will probably suffice for me all the way till I finally find some excuse to replace it.

Just take the recent "Scary Fast" keynote. The challenge for Apple in selling these new MacBook Pros is that the machines are more than what 99% of the Apple installed base need to complete their workflows. We are talking niche territory. I feel there is a certain irony in Apple committing itself to 4 super-niche devices (Mac Pro, Mac Studio, 14" and 16" MBP) that maybe 1-2% of their overall Mac user base will really need. And yet their pro user base continues to gripe and complain, not realising how much backwards Apple has bent over in terms of devoting so significant an amount of time and resources towards serving this incredibly niche community.

Meanwhile, us mass consumers get just the MBA in 2 sizes, the Mac mini and iMac (4 product choices as well), even though we make up more than 90% of buyers. And still people think that Apple's lineup is getting too bloated. The sheer hilarity.

What will get users to finally upgrade? Time probably. Maybe someone’s workflow changes, they get a new job, or they want to try a new hobby. It has only been two years since Apple gave the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros Apple Silicon, and M1 Max users will likely not need to upgrade for another 3-4 years. With that said, there is also the possibility that some Mac users are not going to upgrade to a new Mac. Instead, they will go with iPad or entirely new products like Vision Pro in the future. Such scenarios probably aren’t going to upset Apple too much.

Ultimately, Apple doesn't need their base to keep buying new products; they just need them to keep using them. The fact you haven't switched to a windows PC already means that even if you don't buy a new Mac now, eventually, one day, you will.

 

[brizna]

Apple is a very petty company these days, only in position due to the complete a**hatery by its rivals.

Let its ecosystem be there but break apart its product and distribution channels completely through regulation. That should force them to be more sensible.

It’s like slowly the engineering and design teams are being suppressed by basic product managers trying to ‘optimize’ buyer willingness to pay.

 

[kk200]

I think what is happening, and this is of course just speculation based on my experiences, is that people hold on to their Macs for much longer. Increasing prices and bad base configurations are making upgrades less attractive. That's the boat I'm in. I wanted to switch to Apple Silicon many times over the years, but was put off because of the price gouging on RAM and SSD upgrades every time. So I'm still waiting.

Imaging your parents buy a MBP for you as Christmas gift, And it is with the default 8GB RAM. I will resell it without any hestination.

 

[kk200]

Again with the crazy focusing on naming… who cares. Is a Surface Pro designed for Lightroom? No.

Pro has better screen and better battery, along with HDMI and SD card which seemed to be mandatory must haves back when MBP’s didn’t have them… apparently now noone needs them and should just get the Air?

Just realize that there are people with different needs than yours. Apple’s whole lineup doesn’t have to fit your ideas of what a Pro computer should or shouldn’t have. Telling me that I don’t need an SD card is just as ignorant as telling you that you don’t need more RAM (which I never claimed, for the record).

I guess that only one of its HDMI and TB ports can only be used for the external monitor at any time. A pro machine with just one external monitor is a joke.

 

[heretiq]

And if you want a cheaper PC because you can save a few hundred dollars...then you deserve the PC experience. Enjoy your fan noise.

Sorry...haven't yet had my morning coffee. I'll start being nicer now....

Perfectly said. Skip the coffee — you’ve earned a tall mug of Ruby bliel Anakin.

 

[Abazigal]

Imaging your parents buy a MBP for you as Christmas gift, And it is with the default 8GB RAM. I will resell it without any hestination.

And that's why I stopped buying gifts for people a long time ago.

 

[Raebo]

Imaging your parents buy a MBP for you as Christmas gift, And it is with the default 8GB RAM. I will resell it without any hestination.

If I got my high school daughter or college bound son the basic MBP, they would be thrilled even with the 8gb RAM. That would be a nice computer that does everything they need to do, except maybe play some games.

 

[avkills]

Waiting for the “18 GB memory proves to be bottleneck for M3 Pro” video.

That would be for some of the things I need to do. 32GB was a bottle neck. My next laptop I would like to get 128GB, but that is a work purchase, so we will see.

And to put Apple price gouging for RAM into perspective, the 3rd party ECC RAM I bought for my 2019 Mac Pro was like $700 for 192GB, but now goes for $534. That was six 32GB sticks, which from Apple would be $3600, as they charge $1200 for a pair of 32GB sticks.

That my friends is highway robbery.

 

[M3gatron]

Great. Please review screen quality and battery life and all the other areas where a Macbook is killing those Lenovo's, when you're done with the speed benchmarks.

Those are also very good especially for their price, reviews online are quite positive for them.
You forgot to mention the keyboard which a top performer on Lenovo laptops.

 

[Ulfric]

As a 3D artist this is probably one of the reasons, I will never choose a Mac over PC. For an instance some high poly scenes or models with say 32 million polygons on with a bare minimum 2K or even 4K Textures (don't even think about 8K textures) will not even load in this base or even with the 16 GB configuration

Go to Kitbash3D search for any of their asset packs & you will see the minimum requirement is 32 GB RAM + 8 GB VRAM. While in Apple Silicon it is shared.

Now a M3 Pro pr M3 Max might be more powerful than my R9 5950
32 GB DDR4 (3200 MHz) + 250 GB SSD (Evo 970) + RTX 4060 (8 GB GDDR6), but at least I will be able to load those high-res models or scene (regardless OF the software: Maya, Blender, Substance Painter, Houdini, Unreal Engine 5). I can texture them on my PC. There is a very big change that it will lag even on a Mac pro with 16 GB RAM.

In a theoretical world M3 Max or Pro will obliterate my system with 32 or 64 GB Unified memory, But it will cost 2-3X more than my set up.

Sometimes just running the thing or opening the thing matters more than the render speed. What would I do with all those speeds if my 3D Scene doesn't even load on my PC (in this case mac).