Curious to see their findings. I haven’t bought the base model yet because I’m still waiting for Cisco to update AnyConnect for Apple Silicon, so yeah I can wait until they solve it out and in the meanwhile I get to see 8 vs 16GB
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8GB RAM is a disappointment?
- Thread starter MacBH928
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I don't understand it - I'm swapping and the memory pressure is low. There's some general lagginess but it's not very noticeable. At what point does the memory pressure become high?
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Significantly cheaper isn’t a $100 dollar discount. I know that the miserly discounts we see from Apple make it seem like a huge discount but let’s look at it honestly. This is a refresh of a 2014 Mac mini with the major improvement being the CPU and GPU. Not a bad thing there but nothing impressive on the ports and bandwidth department.
Apple has reduced the complexity of the motherboard by removing the need for connections to a T2 enclave, RAM, system controller, etc. they bring their own designer chip to the party with a stable supplier that makes them for their portables. Outside of R&D their costs have been reduced pretty significantly.
A significant discount would have been to see some of those supply chain savings passed on. Something uniquely innovative to Apple- an lineup of Macs with an innovative chip at Apples most affordable pricing ever. Offsetting some of that R&D cost by volume instead of widening their margin. Do you think the tear down cost of this M1 Mac mini is more than $150? I don’t.
Here’s a discount. Introducing the 2020 Mac mini, Apples most affordable portable desktop yet- starting at $499.
Lightest and most affordable portable yet the Apple MacBook Air starting at $799
And the smallest, most affordable Apple portable for pros starting at $999
that’s a discount and I think it really wouldn’t hurt Apple and might actually make them more money. Because saying we’re making our own chips for cheaper but we bring it to you without and price increase is like saying you’ve done something amazing by keeping down the price on a line of chips you’ve been building in-house for years on a form factor that’s virtually identical with parts, like the 720 FaceTime camera, but a price that’s static.
I’m dying to see the price tag on their actual pro portables with Apple silicon. Considering Apple hasn’t had a true pro portable in years I hope the prices aren’t ridiculous.
I've been using the base model mini for a few days. It has been more than sufficient in my case, but I am still waiting for the build to order option with 16GB to arrive. I've reached the conclusion that the OS will use whatever memory it has available and will optimize the performance accordingly.
I'll be interested to see how much better everything runs with double the memory. Either way I've decided to stick with the mini and return the latest iMac. Is the iMac faster? Yes, no doubt. Especially when rendering 3D files. Will the mini suffice for a year or two until the new iMacs are out? Definitely. It's an incredibly capable little beast.
I'll be interested to see how much better everything runs with double the memory. Either way I've decided to stick with the mini and return the latest iMac. Is the iMac faster? Yes, no doubt. Especially when rendering 3D files. Will the mini suffice for a year or two until the new iMacs are out? Definitely. It's an incredibly capable little beast.
Even supposing the 16GB M1 package uses the same amount of RAM as a 16GB Intel package in an equivalent machine (would be interesting to see if that's usually the case), it may do so with faster RAM operation, faster swapping and less heat, allowing for better performance.
Good question. Would be interesting to see some examples, and comparisons to Intel Macs to see if memory pressure is still measured the same way.
$100 is a 12.5% decrease. I think most people consider that significant. Judging from what I've seen here, it's going to sell well at that price.
It's odd how many people have their own private definition of what "pro" means, disconnected from what pros actually use.
I think the magic is the UMA.
Howard Oakley
Michael Wolfe’s article
The way I read it... yes 16gb is 16gb ram. But there is a lot of overhead already removed with this design.
For me it is not a matter whether a tasks get done or not when it terms to RAM requirements. But in general use case removing this overhead results to a smoother and buttery experience in the whole system even if you have tons of apps loaded
UMA is not Apple's invention as it has already existed in Nvidia CUDA Unified Memory. But this is probably the first implementation on mass market devices which only possible with control on both software and hardware.
I am a believer. I think RAM as we know it or what we call Random Access Memory will be a legacy idea in the next 5 years
Howard Oakley
Michael Wolfe’s article
The way I read it... yes 16gb is 16gb ram. But there is a lot of overhead already removed with this design.
For me it is not a matter whether a tasks get done or not when it terms to RAM requirements. But in general use case removing this overhead results to a smoother and buttery experience in the whole system even if you have tons of apps loaded
UMA is not Apple's invention as it has already existed in Nvidia CUDA Unified Memory. But this is probably the first implementation on mass market devices which only possible with control on both software and hardware.
I am a believer. I think RAM as we know it or what we call Random Access Memory will be a legacy idea in the next 5 years
From what I understood so far, UMA does not necessarily in itself reduce the need for system RAM. It makes the system RAM equal citizen for all of the M1 SoC's functional blocks. UMA reduces the need for higher memory bandwidth to achieve similar or higher performance levels for the GPU.
I read that the M1 GPU compresses (hardware assisted?) GPU data before storing them in system RAM and de-compresses them before using the compressed data. This probably reduces the memory stress of macOS. macOS may also be more aggressive in memory compression if it is hardware assisted, which further reduces the need for more RAM compared to when using Intel CPU. I have no way of verifying this assumption tho. Maybe someone with the necessary knowledge can write a test utility to test it out.
I read that the M1 GPU compresses (hardware assisted?) GPU data before storing them in system RAM and de-compresses them before using the compressed data. This probably reduces the memory stress of macOS. macOS may also be more aggressive in memory compression if it is hardware assisted, which further reduces the need for more RAM compared to when using Intel CPU. I have no way of verifying this assumption tho. Maybe someone with the necessary knowledge can write a test utility to test it out.
I've wondered if this is playing any special role with the M1 too, but a quick search didn't return any clear answer. Would also like to know more.
This is the piece of info that people do not understand. As one guy on the internet put it, you want the computer to use as much RAM is it can. Unused RAM is wasted RAM. Its like you buy a 8 passenger car but you only go out in it with your wife. If you have 8 passenger car you want to fill it with your big family and use that space you paid for, not keep the space empty. When the RAM is full smile, your money is working for you. If you computers starts to move in slow motion, thats when you need more RAM.
There was a multimedia software dev, I think OTOY, that said there’s 100:1 ASTC compression.
But it doesn’t solve every problem. Even a building a basic Unity game can max out 8GB:
Thats when you need more RAM, and the installed RAM is not enough. Why don't you do a little experiment and try to stress the RAM and see how far 8GB takes you? launch applications and load tabs and watch that memory pressure gauge. Report back here.
btw, I just noticed that in your image that you think "swap" is the RAM. Where it says MEMORY that is the RAM you see its no where near full. SWAP is when the computer loads information into RAM, when it doesn't need it, it stores it on the hard drive. When it needs it again, it calls it back into RAM. Don't worry about it, it all works magically.
EDIT: Just forget it, @MrGunnyPT has posted this video that shows that 8GB will take you very very far.
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The Chromebook I'm using to type this very message currently has 68 opened tabs (don't ask... just don't ask), one of them being an online music service streaming some Johannes Brahms, and I can still do some other stuff on the side.
Not too shabby, I dare say, for a machine running on a Celeron with 4GB of RAM.
I think the new Macs can survive just fine with 8GB depending on that other application you open.
That is a crazy amount of tabs.
Since when has the number of Chrome tabs been a useful benchmark? Not sure what people are doing on these computers, but I get them for producing my 1080p content. Not looking at 20+ browser tabs. And I think that says more about how memory intensive Chrome is vs how much memory you need anyway.
That's usually what happens when you're clumsy as hell and accidentally open an entire folder of bookmarks all at once... ?
Pretty impressive. With that said, I'm still glad I got the 16GB.
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While I enjoyed the review and am pleased by the results, I'd STILL buy the 16Gb, because upgrading later just isn't an option.
ChromeOS is not macOS. There's A LOT LESS running on ChromeOS at any given time than there is on macOS. Hence why the former is fine with a modern era Celeron and why pretty much no other OS is.
One thing that stood out to me from a video I saw a few days back. They were doing some music app from Apple. I'm not familiar with it or that type of work to be completely honest. But they pushed and pushed and pushed until the thing ran out of resources and gave them an error. Over 1,000 instruments? if I recall correctly. It was over 1,000 something for sure.
It seems obvious with more memory, they could have pushed it harder. What I found shocking however was that up until the point of failure, there seemed to be no indication that the system was on the verge of collapse. Everything appeared to be running smoothly. Even after they pushed it too far, if I recall correctly, the rest of the system seemed to be behaving and running fine.
I think that's some of the "magic" people keep talking about. It's not that more memory wouldn't help. It's just that even under the worst conditions, the system is still able to speed right along and hide some of the nightmare happening under the covers. Like it's so powerful, you don't even realize that you're asking way more of it than you should be.
It's been my experience on Intel boxes, if something is chewing up system resources, you feel it. One thing running poorly can have a big effect on everything else, including the OS itself. Some rogue program can bring the whole system to its knees. That doesn't seem to be as much an issue here. Which might help with the illusion that memory isn't as important as it once was.
It seems obvious with more memory, they could have pushed it harder. What I found shocking however was that up until the point of failure, there seemed to be no indication that the system was on the verge of collapse. Everything appeared to be running smoothly. Even after they pushed it too far, if I recall correctly, the rest of the system seemed to be behaving and running fine.
I think that's some of the "magic" people keep talking about. It's not that more memory wouldn't help. It's just that even under the worst conditions, the system is still able to speed right along and hide some of the nightmare happening under the covers. Like it's so powerful, you don't even realize that you're asking way more of it than you should be.
It's been my experience on Intel boxes, if something is chewing up system resources, you feel it. One thing running poorly can have a big effect on everything else, including the OS itself. Some rogue program can bring the whole system to its knees. That doesn't seem to be as much an issue here. Which might help with the illusion that memory isn't as important as it once was.