Because if the M1 flies with 8GB, but the Intel crawls with 8GB, that would mean it needs more ram to do the same tasks. This isn’t too hard to understand, but you seem to have some sort of issue with the M1 being an advanced chip.
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8GB RAM is a disappointment?
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That's an entirely different discussion than the one I have been involved with.
Cool. Some people believe what they see with their own eyes. Others need proof instead. You seem to fall into the second category. No problem.
For all your well reasoned arguments, I think I'll stick with what I'm seeing, not some theory on paper. My lack of an explanation is not proof that my eyes are deceiving me. It's just evidence that I'm ignorant on the topic at the moment.
What leads you to the conclusion the Intel system isn't crawling because it is under powered compared to the M1? Why does it have to be crawling because it require more memory? If you believe it's the latter then please provide some supporting evidence. Merely saying "M1 being an advanced chip" is insufficient.
As for the M1 being an advanced chip I agree. That's why I own an M1 Mini (at $699 how can you not?) The benchmarks I've done show it outperforms my 2010 and 2013 Mac Pro for video transcoding (one of the most CPU intensive tasks I use my computers for). I am very happy with it. That said my satisfaction changes nothing about memory requirements.
It doesn't appear your eyes are deceiving you. What it appears is that you've been over estimating your RAM requirements.
When someone works to avoid seeing the point, it's easy to waste a lot of time, even all of it. As was mentioned before, the point is explained at the link below, for anyone who hasn't read it. The thesis defended is "M1 Macs need less RAM to perform equivalently to, if not better than, their Intel-based counterparts."
daringfireball.net
The M1 Macs
To acknowledge how good the new M1 Macs are — and I am here to tell you they are *astonishingly* good — you must acknowledge that certain longstanding assumptions about how computers should be designed, about what makes a better computer *better*, are wrong.
How is it different? You said that the reviewer didn't need that 64GB of RAM then. So how is it a different discussion? Why did he get the 64GB of RAM to begin with then?
What leads you to the conclusion the Intel system isn't crawling because it is under powered compared to the M1? Why does it have to be crawling because it require more memory? If you believe it's the latter then please provide some supporting evidence. Merely saying "M1 being an advanced chip" is insufficient.
That’s a fair point, definitely possible it’s somewhat due to the Intel chip or the graphics as well. For me, I’m just happy that I’d be just completely fine with a base model 8GB Mac now, as I wouldn’t be with any of the Intel Mac’s with the same ram.
I will offer my $0.02, which is slightly different. 9/10 people feel like a power user but maybe 1/10 is one.
Buy the cheapest M1 MB Air with 256GB or 512GB HDD, 8GB RAM and look for a deal on a TB3 docking station on Amazon Warehouse or similar.
Take good care of it, keep the box and sell it in a couple of years on site like Swappa.com.
Really, have a look at what crazy prices people pay for second hand MacBooks.
Then buy the newest sleek 14" MB with edge-to-edge screen.
The difference between what you get for the old one and the price of the latest model will not be much more than any money you would spend today on "future proof" upgrades.
Buy the cheapest M1 MB Air with 256GB or 512GB HDD, 8GB RAM and look for a deal on a TB3 docking station on Amazon Warehouse or similar.
Take good care of it, keep the box and sell it in a couple of years on site like Swappa.com.
Really, have a look at what crazy prices people pay for second hand MacBooks.
Then buy the newest sleek 14" MB with edge-to-edge screen.
The difference between what you get for the old one and the price of the latest model will not be much more than any money you would spend today on "future proof" upgrades.
LOL! I read this while waiting to pick up my new Mini (one cannot just walk into an Apple store these days, you have to make an appointment). Let's just say I was not impressed. Just because some blogger posts information to the Internet does not mean that blogger knows what they're talking about. This is a prime example.When someone works to avoid seeing the point, it's easy to waste a lot of time, even all of it. As was mentioned before, the point is explained at the link below, for anyone who hasn't read it. The thesis defended is "M1 Macs need less RAM to perform equivalently to, if not better than, their Intel-based counterparts."
The M1 Macs
To acknowledge how good the new M1 Macs are — and I am here to tell you they are *astonishingly* good — you must acknowledge that certain longstanding assumptions about how computers should be designed, about what makes a better computer *better*, are wrong.
I bet you would, if it were just a matter of RAM. In fact I bet you'd prefer the Intel Mac if your RAM requirements exceeded 16GB.
so I have the 8gb ram Mac mini coming Sunday. im afraid 8gb won't be enough for video editing after reading all these threads. but all these big youtube channels showing how it rips through 4k and 5k footage on the base 8GB Mac mini.... even with grading layers etc.. and fast exports
Given you have 14 days to return it give it a try and see if it meets your needs. I wanted to get the 16GB version but they don't sell it at the Apple store. I ended up getting the 8GB model. At $699 it's an inexpensive way to get introduced to the AS Macs. I am really looking forward to the next generation releases.
I wouldn’t need more than 16, so it’s not really relevant to me. You make a valid point, but we really don’t know currently as the M1’s are maxed at 16.
When someone works to avoid seeing the point, it's easy to waste a lot of time, even all of it. As was mentioned before, the point is explained at the link below, for anyone who hasn't read it. The thesis defended is "M1 Macs need less RAM to perform equivalently to, if not better than, their Intel-based counterparts."
The M1 Macs
To acknowledge how good the new M1 Macs are — and I am here to tell you they are *astonishingly* good — you must acknowledge that certain longstanding assumptions about how computers should be designed, about what makes a better computer *better*, are wrong.
If an application Mallocs 32 GB of RAM, then it needs 32 GB of RAM. Now the OS can say that the program isn't really using it and page out most of the allocated memory to the SSD and, if the OS is really smart about paging needed memory back in, then things can seem really, really fast. And I expect that this is the case here. Running your large program probably doesn't mean that you need everything in RAM at the same time - you may serially process through a large file and may only need to prefetch stuff that comes next. Of course it's really nice if everything is in memory as you don't have to do paging at all but it can certainly feel like there is no paging going on.
My Windows system is currently using 24 GB of RAM for programs and it's caching 10 GB on the SSDs. It is nice to have lots more RAM than you need for programs so you can cache things. But I don't have to see my system paging to the SSD. I suspect that Apple gets much better SSD and RAM performance with everything on the SoC but you're still going to get paging and more wear and tear on the SSD.
RAM is really cheap these days and technically speaking, I'd just rather have more RAM as I won't be able to just replace the SSD in the Mac should there be additional wear due to paging.
A lot of video professionals and educators agree that 8GB of RAM is fine for 1080p video editing. 4K can benefit from 16GB of RAM.
I'm a web guy who likes to tinker with Xcode and iOS/MacOS. I don't have high requirements. But as has been mentioned already, I've been around long enough to know "get more than you think you'll need". Especially since you can't upgrade later. With these new machines, I still think that's good advice (if I hadn't just got a new MacBook Pro in April, I'd still go for 16GB). But I also wonder if that bit of advice carries as much weight as it once did. Even if it doesn't make sense, it would seem that less memory isn't as big a bottleneck on these devices as it is on others.
Since my laptop is about 6 months old, I'll probably hold on to it for a while yet. Meanwhile, my iMac is starting to get up there in years. So that's probably when I'll jump into the Mx world. These questions should be well answered by that point.
It's clear that many of Apple's performance claims for the M1 are checking out.
The problematic claim (which AFAIK Apple *hasn't* made themselves) is that there is some kind of magic that makes 8-16GB RAM in an M1 system work like 32-64GB of RAM in an Intel system. There's no rational reason why that should be so - even "Unified memory" makes memory faster - it doesn't make it hold more.
A 64GB Intel Mac getting it's clock cleaned by an M1 doesn't prove that unless that it is doing a task that has been shown to max out the memory on an Intel with < 64GB. If the fans are roaring it probably means that the CPU and GPU are pegged and being throttled - if the RAM was running low they'd be falling idle waiting for data.
My suspicion is that a lot of people have gone for 32 or 64GB without actually needing it (doing video production => must have 64GB), or where it is only causing a marginal speed up due to unused RAM being used as a disc cache, and the M1's performance is down to the M1 being generally more efficient all round - and that those tasks that reaslly do need extra RAM (because, e.g. they involve loading 16GB of actual data into RAM) will still need it on the M1.
To repeat the broken record: 16GB max is fine for a MacBook Air or "2 port" MBP and has long been the limit for the Intel Macs being replaced and pretty much every ultra-portable PC with LPDDR4 RAM. When the "really pro" M1 Macs arrive, some people will genuinely need more.
I don't see how your first sentence fits with the rest, which seems to unsay it, unless you meant it as a tautology.
The point being made about RAM with the M1 is that the faster access to it, along with faster swapping, and effective information compression, makes it practical to use less for the same applications than in Intel equivalents, which you seem to agree with.
The claim about wear and tear on the SSD is one I've seen frequently, but without evidence to indicate how serious an issue it really is in practice.
I imagine if Apple found they could get the same results for the same cost in dollars, size, power, etc, with more RAM and less swapping, they'd do that instead.
I did not say ANYTHING about Arm vs Intel. Read my post again. Arm was not listed ONCE in that entire post. ALL I said was 8GB of RAM is fine for 1080p and 16GB of RAM is preferred for 4K. Where did I state Intel requires this and Arm requires this? If 8GB of RAM is fine for 1080p with Intel, then its fine for 1080p for Arm.
Again, you are turning EVERYTHING into an argument when I clearly did not even bring up Arm vs Intel in that post. I did not bring up 12GB+ RAM in my post.
I think as RAM capacities have increased this carries less weight for more users. The system I'm responding on has only 8GB of memory and I see no reason to increase it. The M1 Mini I own has 8GB of memory and I think it will be fine for what I intend to use it for. The system I use for virtualization has 192GB of memory.
I think the larger question, before the release of the SoC M1, is why does Apple (and others) force users to decide at purchase time? It used to be one could buy a lower memory system and expand it as their requirements demanded. Unfortunately today it's a guessing game.
It relates to how a system feels in performance. There is a delta between SSD and RAM access but Apple is apparently hiding it really well in IPC and other means.
Yes and people constantly follow in that trap. This is why I got 128GB of RAM on my system when all I do is 1080p processing. I noticed NO difference compared to 16GB of RAM.
One of the early systems I worked on back in the mid-1970s was a PDP-11 (might have been a 45). This system had 28 KB of core. The operating system ran in 20 KB and user space was 8 KB. The OS swapped out a user to disk from memory and then swapped in a user into memory from disk, gave that user some time and so on. The user interface was ASR-33s which were teletypes at 10 characters per user and you generally felt like you had the whole computer to yourself. I think that the maximum number of users configured was 8. So you ostensibly had people that would normally need 64 KB of user memory sharing 8 KB of actual memory.
Paging became popular later on in Virtual Memory Systems.
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