Are 16GB of Memory in an M1 Mac Mini "more" than 32GB of memory in an old Mac Pro?

[Silly John Fatty]

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (twelve cores and 32 GB of RAM) which I wanted to replace with the M1 Mac Mini, but the only thing that's keeping me from doing it is really that it comes with max. 16 GB of RAM.

Some people say that because of the way those new M1 chips are made, that those 16 GB will be like 32 or 64 GB on older machines.

What do you think, is this true? Will the 16 GB be comparable to my current 32 GB?

I no longer want to wait, but don't want to make a mistake on the other hand … I want this new machine for the long-term. As you can see, my Mac Pro is over 12 years old already. So I'm thinking of waiting for an M1 with 32 GB or an M2, but it's been years that I've been waiting now.

 

[jz0309]

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (twelve cores and 32 GB of RAM) which I wanted to replace with the M1 Mac Mini, but the only thing that's keeping me from doing it is really that it comes with max. 16 GB of RAM.

Some people say that because of the way those new M1 chips are made, that those 16 GB will be like 32 or 64 GB on older machines.

What do you think, is this true? Will the 16 GB be comparable to my current 32 GB?

I no longer want to wait, but don't want to make a mistake on the other hand … I want this new machine for the long-term. As you can see, my Mac Pro is over 12 years old already. So I'm thinking of waiting for an M1 with 32 GB or an M2, but it's been years that I've been waiting now.

no, RAM is RAM and apps are using it, also keep in mind that for M-series RAM is shared with GPU...
what is your memory pressure, your usage, apps?
there are plenty threads here on MR re that topic

 

[Silly John Fatty]

no, RAM is RAM and apps are using it, also keep in mind that for M-series RAM is shared with GPU...
what is your memory pressure, your usage, apps?
there are plenty threads here on MR re that topic

Here's my memory pressure right now:

I guess that's not much? But then again, I don't have that many things open: Mail, Safari, Calendar, Notes, iTunes, Word and Activity Monitor. I have a lot of tabs open in Safari however, but they've been in my dock for months or more.

So I don't use much RAM now but I will do I think when I start to make music again. I'll use Logic and many third party plugins, etc. I don't have any of that installed anymore right now so I don't know how much RAM my apps and plugins would use.

What does it change that RAM is shared with the GPU? Is theoratically less of it needed because of this?

 

[GMShadow]

You're going to want to wait for the M2 and get it with 32GB of RAM.

 

[jz0309]

Well I don't know, just saying what I've heard. @jz0309 also states that RAM is shared with GPU, so you see, there's certain factors that do affect this I think.



Here's my memory pressure right now:
View attachment 2098065

I guess that's not much? But then again, I don't have that many things open: Mail, Safari, Calendar, Notes, iTunes, Word and Activity Monitor. I have a lot of tabs open in Safari however, but they've been in my dock for months or more.

So I don't use much RAM now but I will do I think when I start to make music again. I'll use Logic and many third party plugins, etc. I don't have any of that installed anymore right now so I don't know how much RAM my apps and plugins would use.

What does it change that RAM is shared with the GPU? Is theoratically less of it needed because of this?

I have no idea how much of a load Logic would present, for all the other apps you mention 16GB should be plenty.
I use Lightroom/Photoshop and my next Mac (in the next 12-18 months) will get 64GB.

My gut tells me you’d be better if with 33GB though.

 

[HDFan]

I no longer want to wait,

The Mac updates should come by the end of the year, likely November according to Gurman.

 

[Fishrrman]

No.

The m series Macs actually need MORE RAM (in my opinion), due to the design of "system-on-a-chip" and "integrated memory" (in which the OS seems to push lots of VM disk swapping).

That's why I say...
"16gb of RAM is 'the new 8'".

 

[theluggage]

What do you think, is this true? Will the 16 GB be comparable to my current 32 GB?

If your current work actually benefits from 32GB of RAM on an Intel Mac then you will probably benefit from 32GB RAM on an Apple Silicon Mac. The RAM needed by applications hasn't changed much and if that adds up to more than the amount of RAM in your machine, it will start swapping chunks of RAM in and out of SSD storage, which will always slow things down.

However - you're upgrading from an obsolete 10-year-old Mac, and a new Apple Silicon mac, even a 2020 Mini, has faster processor cores, faster GPU cores, new hardware acceleration for some functions, faster SSD and RAM access etc. (which does reduce the impact or running out of physical RAM) and so may still turn out to be faster at your work than a 2012 Mac Pro, might let you have more apps running, open more browser tabs etc. even with only 16GB RAM - but if you are actually using more than 16GB of RAM, then you still won't be using the CPU/GPU to it's full potential.

Apple Silicon is certainly a bit more efficient at dealing with low-RAM situations than intel, but the ridiculous "8GB on M1 = 16GB on Intel" myth came from people comparing the speed of jobs that weren't using more than 8GB to start with - often video encoding jobs that were massively accelerated by hardware codecs in the MA - also, at the time, there weren't any M1 Pro/Max chips with 32GB to compare with. People also get misled by the memory stats from Activity Monitor - its really only the "Memory Pressure" that counts.

It looks like a 16GB Mini would be more than enough for your current use, and is still quite capable of doing serious stuff in Logic. However, you're talking about "downsizing" from a mac that cost $7000 new to a Mac that costs $1100 new - i.e. you're going from a top-of-the-range Mac to a mid/low-end one. You might very well get away with that - but I'd at least investigate the Mac Studio as a more obvious upgrade from a Mac Pro (still $2000 vs $7000). It's not just RAM, you get more processor cores, more ports and support for more displays.

Also, there's a lot of speculation about M2 Mac Minis (which would probably go up to 24GB RAM) and M2 Pro Mac Minis (which would be more affordable than a Mac Studio) coming soon - unfortunately nobody knows for sure if or when they will turn up (personally, I don't think Apple will launch a M2 Pro Mini while the M1 Max Studio is still relatively new).

What does it change that RAM is shared with the GPU? Is theoratically less of it needed because of this?

Theoretically, you need more RAM c.f. something like a Mac Pro that had dedicated GPUs, since older machines came with several gigabytes of dedicated video RAM and some of those requirements (framebuffers etc.) still have to be stored somewhere. It's possible that up-to-date software will be more RAM-efficient by (e.g.) not having duplicate copies of stuff in main RAM and VRAM but you'll still lose some main RAM to things previously held in VRAM.

 

[MarkC426]

I no longer want to wait, but don't want to make a mistake on the other hand … I want this new machine for the long-term.

A mini is not the wise option, for THE LONG TERM (especially with 16gb ram).
Much like yourself I have been using my Mac Pro for 10+ years, with upgrades over time, extending it's life.

A higher spec 'M2' mini with 32gb/64gb ram could get close to a Mac Studio price (when comparing an i7 mini specced out).

A lot of cMP users are waiting for the OUTCOME of the AsMP, to see how upgadeable it is.

 

[chikorita157]

Ram on an Apple Silicon Maqcs work like memory on an Intel Mac. Don’t believe the 8 GB is the new 16 GB bluff, memory doesn’t work that way. With unified memory, it’s shared with the system and GPU, so more is better. The M2 mini will only support 24 GB at most and I don’t expect Apple to have an M2 Pro option since they would rather upsell users to the Mac Studio. It’s just like what we are seeing with the new iPads, Macbook Air M2 and iPhone 14/14 Plus being priced close to the higher end option.

I upgraded to a Mac Studio since I find that 16 Gb is simply not enough for my uses as the memory pressure gets into the yellow quite often. The Mac Studio is the sweet spot at least for me for what I use it for, productivity and app development. The base model is pretty good since it comes with 32 GB of RAM and you can simply add external storage if you need it.

 

[MacGizmo]

The Apple Silicon Macs can access the RAM much faster, making it feel like you have more RAM in that everything is faster. But that's simply not true. The processor is just that much faster than the previous Intel Macs. The RAM is still used for the same things.

If you use Photoshop and work in an 850MB file, you're going to be able to work much faster (moving layers around, resizing, screen redraws, etc.) with more RAM because it stores the data in RAM, which is shared with the video processors – the more you have, the more data it can hold.

I work in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Acrobat and MS Office all day long, and typically on very large files. I can tell you unequivocally that 32GB is the minimum to be productive working with all those apps open all day. I went with 64GB RAM in the Mac Studio I work on.

In my experience, 16GB is fine for light-duty work, and certain workflows that rely a lot more on the processor speed and SSD speed than RAM.

There is no right or wrong answer here, it just depends on your workflow.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Here's my memory pressure right now:
View attachment 2098065

I guess that's not much? But then again, I don't have that many things open: Mail, Safari, Calendar, Notes, iTunes, Word and Activity Monitor. I have a lot of tabs open in Safari however, but they've been in my dock for months or more.

I am curious how long it has been since you’ve restarted your Mac or even Web browser because that seems like a lot of RAM usage for those apps.

I did a test:
• at least 25 tabs in Safari — mostly news sites (i.e., lots of dynamic ads and trackers)
• four online stores, Facebook, and a YouTube livestream in Google
• Bing news in Edge

 

[ArkSingularity]

In terms of memory management, one of the biggest differences between the M1 and the Intel Macs is with regards to how memory compression is handled. Intel Macs handled this in software, which of course not only took CPU cycles away from the application, but also introduced context switching latency between the application and the kernel to handle this (further introducing thousands of CPU cycles worth of latency). The M1 and the A14 both, if I recall correctly, introduced hardware compression, vastly reducing the latency here (although the actual amount of reduction is anyone's guess, fairly safe to assume it's not insignificant if they introduced dedicated hardware for it.)

The M1 tends to be very good at handling workloads with moderately high memory pressure with surprisingly minimal slowdowns across many workloads. My M1 Mac certainly handles these kinds of workloads much better than my old Intel Macs did (which would slow down more noticeably as memory pressure began to rise). However, I have noticed that if I absolutely hammer the swap and push the memory pressure into the red, even the M1 will grind to a halt in much the same manner that the Intel Macs did. It takes A LOT to do this (I pretty much have to have an entire development workflow already open and then open the iOS simulator on top of it), but once the memory pressure starts entering red territory, it's going to be a tough experience.

As far as memory usage itself, my workloads have generally been very similar across both platforms. If you need 10GB of RAM for a workload and you only have 8GB, the M1 isn't going to magically double your RAM and "make it work like a 16GB system" - however, the M1 does do a much better job of reducing slowdowns that result from moderate memory pressure (i.e some swap usage and memory compression). So, while both systems will show memory pressure in the yellow, the M1 will generally churn through it faster than the Intel one will, and the slowdowns are often less noticeable. The M1 has "tricks up its sleeve" to an extent, but it can't really do anything about swapfile thrashing, so there is a limit to how far the M1 can effectively compensate for it.

 

[kschendel]

I'm a bit on the fence here. 16 GB is easily enough for what you're doing now, but if you get into music production with lots of plugins, I can imagine you needing a bit more. I think ArkSingularity has it right in that the latest MacOS and m1 tricks can alleviate RAM shortages to a certain extent but can't do magic. A RAM shortage in your Mac Pro might be like falling off a cliff, whereas a similar shortage in an M1 Mini with SSD swap might be more like sinking slowly into quicksand.

I think where you need to be is a Mac Studio Max. You've squeezed 12 years out of your (5,1) which is awesome. Get a Studio Max and you're probably set for another 10 at least.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

I am curious how long it has been since you’ve restarted your Mac or even Web browser because that seems like a lot of RAM usage for those apps.

I did a test:
• at least 25 tabs in Safari — mostly news sites (i.e., lots of dynamic ads and trackers)
• four online stores, Facebook, and a YouTube livestream in Google
• Bing news in Edge
View attachment 2099355

Here it is again, and it's much lower now:

I don't restart the computer too often actually.

Right now I have Mail open, I have Safari open with 27 windows with a total of
9+7+2+5+4+3+7+13+1+1+4+4+15+25+17+3+7+2+4+15+3+5+12+8+8+5+5 = 194 open tabs (I closed dozens of them today, could it have made the difference?), then I also have Calendar, Notes, Word and Activity Monitor open.

Maybe my Mac is just tired.

I'm a bit on the fence here. 16 GB is easily enough for what you're doing now, but if you get into music production with lots of plugins, I can imagine you needing a bit more. I think ArkSingularity has it right in that the latest MacOS and m1 tricks can alleviate RAM shortages to a certain extent but can't do magic. A RAM shortage in your Mac Pro might be like falling off a cliff, whereas a similar shortage in an M1 Mini with SSD swap might be more like sinking slowly into quicksand.

I think where you need to be is a Mac Studio Max. You've squeezed 12 years out of your (5,1) which is awesome. Get a Studio Max and you're probably set for another 10 at least.

The thing is that the Mini has a nice small size and that theoretically I can take it with me on travels. Which I would do if I had it. And I would use my iPad Pro as a screen (not sure how well this works now, but I remember researching it 1-2 years ago and it was possible and worked very well from what I had seen).

 

[antiprotest]

I am surprised at the many "no" comments here. I will put in one anecdotal vote for a possible "yes". On the M series, 8GB on the Mac does FEEL like 16GB on other computers. My fanless M1 with 8GB RAM performs better than my Windows gaming desktop with 32GB of RAM with a dedicated nvidia graphics card (in everyday usage, not necessarily when playing games). You might not believe it, and I cannot explain it. This is just my experience.

Yes -- this is only anecdotal (but depending on what you are looking for, this could actually be a more practical perspective), only based on real world "feel-like" performance instead of scientific measurements, and I am comparing to a Windows instead of a Mac. I could also compare it to a Mac with 16GB, but that one was too old and there is no contest so I will not count it.

I have several other relevant examples, but again anecdotal, which again, might actually be what counts. Nevertheless, there could be a bigger difference between the OP's question of 16 vs 32 compared to my example of 8 vs 16. So I cannot be certain.

 

[MacCheetah3]

Preface: I know plenty of people are going to lash out at me for the following, but meh...

Right now I have Mail open, I have Safari open with 27 windows with a total of
9+7+2+5+4+3+7+13+1+1+4+4+15+25+17+3+7+2+4+15+3+5+12+8+8+5+5 = 194 open tabs

That’s a lot of pages.

I know everyone’s process/workflow is different, and that’s fine. However, you might be hanging onto a bad habit. For example, I formerly left tabs open as an alternative to bookmarking. However, after a Web browser update switched off the setting to preserve tabs when quitting, thus everything lost on the next browser launch, I realized how poor that method was.

If your Mac has macOS 10.13 or 10.14, you can try tab grouping in Chrome:

Use tab groups with your keyboard - Google Chrome Help

You can organize tabs into groups with your keyboard. Create a tab group To create a tab group: Open the tab menu. Select Add tab to new group. Give the group a name. Press Enter.

support.google.com

In newer versions of macOS (i.e., versions I don’t think your current Mac supports), Apple has a similar feature:

Group tabs in Safari on Mac

In Safari on your Mac, organize tabs into groups to conveniently move among related websites.

support.apple.com

Another option:

How to Make Safari Always Open Your Previous Tabs on Mac

Tired of losing all your browser tabs when you close or restart Safari on Mac? Here's how to make Safari restore your session every time you start the app.

www.howtogeek.com

At least that should allow you to quit Safari daily or following each work session, preventing some unreasonable possible cache buildup in RAM. (Again, Web browsing is far from efficient nowadays.)

 

[kschendel]

...

Right now I have Mail open, I have Safari open with 27 windows with a total of
9+7+2+5+4+3+7+13+1+1+4+4+15+25+17+3+7+2+4+15+3+5+12+8+8+5+5 = 194 open tabs (I closed dozens of them today, could it have made the difference?), then I also have Calendar, Notes, Word and Activity Monitor open.

Words fail me. I mean, you work how you want to work ... but 194 tabs after closing dozens? Zaz.

 

[Silly John Fatty]

Preface: I know plenty of people are going to lash out at me for the following, but meh...

That’s a lot of pages.

I know everyone’s process/workflow is different, and that’s fine. However, you might be hanging onto a bad habit. For example, I formerly left tabs open as an alternative to bookmarking. However, after a Web browser update switched off the setting to preserve tabs when quitting, thus everything lost on the next browser launch, I realized how poor that method was.

If you’re Mac has macOS 10.13 or 10.14, you can try tab grouping in Chrome:

Use tab groups with your keyboard - Google Chrome Help

You can organize tabs into groups with your keyboard. Create a tab group To create a tab group: Open the tab menu. Select Add tab to new group. Give the group a name. Press Enter.

support.google.com

In newer versions of macOS (i.e., versions I don’t think your current Mac supports), Apple has a similar feature:

Group tabs in Safari on Mac

In Safari on your Mac, organize tabs into groups to conveniently move among related websites.

support.apple.com

Another option:

How to Make Safari Always Open Your Previous Tabs on Mac

Tired of losing all your browser tabs when you close or restart Safari on Mac? Here's how to make Safari restore your session every time you start the app.

www.howtogeek.com

At least that should allow you to quit Safari daily or following each work session, preventing some unreasonable possible cache buildup in RAM. (Again, Web browsing is far from efficient nowadays.)

Words fail me. I mean, you work how you want to work ... but 194 tabs after closing dozens? Zaz.

You haven't met my Grandma then! Legend says she has never closed a tab in her life.

Tab groups are definitely something that's missing for me, but I can't upgrade my Mac to higher than Monterey (I will do so as soon as my new Metal-supporting GPU arrives), and I also want to stay on Safari.

I have many different topics everywhere, so I just keep these tabs open, if I put them as a bookmark I'll forget them (and I have too many bookmarks already), but it seems like it's no big deal anyway as the memory pressure seems quite low. And Activity Monitor says that Safari uses only around 740 MB of memory.

But yes, since I want that new Mac for a long time, I won't risk going with 16 GB. I'll make sure to go with at least 32 GB, maybe even more. Who knows what I'll be wanting to do with it in the future.

 

[Fishrrman]

194 tabs?
No wonder this guy might be having memory problems...

<-- (Fishrrman NEVER uses tabs, ever, not a single one)

 

[trhoffmann]

<-- (Fishrrman NEVER uses tabs, ever, not a single one)

Because @Fishrrman doesn’t use browsers?

 

[ignatius345]

That’s a lot of pages.

I know everyone’s process/workflow is different, and that’s fine. However, you might be hanging onto a bad habit. For example, I formerly left tabs open as an alternative to bookmarking. However, after a Web browser update switched off the setting to preserve tabs when quitting, thus everything lost on the next browser launch, I realized how poor that method was.

You can also set up tab groups in Safari. So, if I'm shopping for running shoes and have 11 tabs open related to that, I can save that group then safely close that window entirely. When I launch the tab group again, that exact set of tabs opens again. It takes a little discipline to open things the appropriate Safari window, but it's massively helpful in being able to "let go" of open tabs knowing they're easy to resurrect later.

 

[ignatius345]

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (twelve cores and 32 GB of RAM) which I wanted to replace with the M1 Mac Mini, but the only thing that's keeping me from doing it is really that it comes with max. 16 GB of RAM.

The M1 Mini is going to absolutely roast that 12 year-old Mac Pro. The speed of the processor and graphics will more than make up for the difference in RAM. You can see this in any benchmarking numbers you care to look up -- but even those don't tell the full story. Even my MacBook Air with only 8GB of RAM is like a night and day difference from my old 2014 iMac 5K which had 32 GB of RAM. No comparison whatsoever.

 

[Fishrrman]

trhoffman:
"Because @Fishrrman doesn’t use browsers?"

I use browsers. Numerous different ones. Possibly more variations than you do.

But whenever possible (especially with Safari), if I'm on a page, and need to open a URL, I right click on it and choose "open in new window". ALWAYS.

If by chance I "miss" and the menu opens the URL opening in a new tab, I IMMEDIATELY CLOSE THE TAB, right-click on it again, and this time open in a new window.

I seldom add bookmarks any more. If I want to save a page's URL, I go to the menu bar, and drag the URL to the desktop to create a "webloc" file.

I've seen one or two other browsers where the ONLY WAY to open certain URLs is with a new tab. I use this only if I have to, do what I need to do, then close the tab.

As you may have surmised, I have no interest in tabbed browsing.
Zero.

Most browsers run just fine without them.

 

[MacCheetah3]

I have many different topics everywhere, so I just keep these tabs open, if I put them as a bookmark I'll forget them (and I have too many bookmarks already)

Okay. However, it is a methodology that will use excessive resources.

With that said...

I have a 2010 Mac Pro 5,1 (twelve cores and 32 GB of RAM) which I wanted to replace with the M1 Mac Mini, but the only thing that's keeping me from doing it is really that it comes with max. 16 GB of RAM.

[...]

I no longer want to wait, but don't want to make a mistake on the other hand … I want this new machine for the long-term. As you can see, my Mac Pro is over 12 years old already.

I see two options:

• Mac mini — Should be good overall, although, may slow/stutter occasionally if memory usage surpasses 16GB.
• Mac Studio — Still significantly smaller than the Mac Pro, far more performance, and does provide 32GB of RAM. It is more expensive but could very well last you 10+ years again. Basically, it’s not a bad choice.

So I'm thinking of waiting for an M1 with 32 GB or an M2, but it's been years that I've been waiting now.

There won’t be an M1 or M2 with 32GB+. The M1 Pro has a 32GB option and M1 Max has 32GB. The presumed M2 Pro and Max (and base M3) should have 32GB or thereabout options. However, that’s just speculation at this point. If/when Apple offers an M2 Pro or Max Mac mini is also just a guess/hopes.