Even if macs are more efficient with 8gb of RAM, I can't imagine that it wouldn't bottleneck tons of performance in other apps. Even the iPad Pro has 6gb of RAM and we expect these laptops to do a lot more.
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ARM based MacBook Pro discussion [merged]
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Anyone with a M1BP13 and a CalDigit ThunderBolt 3 Pro dock /w 2x 4k displays connected via DisplayPort want to tell me what happens when you plug it in?
I've had 16 GB RAM in my MacBooks for a decade now! Very disappointing that the new M1 MB Pro can't be fitted with more ram. 16 is "OK" for the moment, but very much not future proof since I'm already typically around 14 GB RAM usage and my need increases with about one GB per year. Yet another generation that I'll have to pass on...
I’m quite sure that the comparison of ram needs from previous Intel based systems to Apple Silicon are not apples to apples. That being said, I am also sure that the next round of updates Apple makes to the MacBook Pro’s (16” and/or 14” and 16”) and likely the iMac (Pro or otherwise) will include options for more ram as well.
What I find very interesting, is that the current AS Macs certainly appear to be performing at levels that most reviewers can’t believe is possible (that is punching far above their weight), while doing so at the same price as previous versions. So for some people, spending $1k - $1.5k now for a work device that is faster and more efficient makes a ton of sense.
And next year if better options are released, you simply sell and upgrade. The downside is likely going to be for those people who bought Intel machines this year and want to upgrade, as they’re likely going to drop in value far more and far faster than Macs have historically, given the steep performance and efficiency increases the latest models offer.
Can you elaborate on this? Do you think that M1 laptops consume more/less ram than Intel-based ones? Why?
It’s not an issue of consuming ram, but rather how it’s used and the other supporting systems like ML that appear to be allowing the M1 to operate much more efficiently. If you haven’t already, I’d recommend watching some of the comparison videos out there to see what strengths these new devices have.
MacWorld's "With M1 Macs, memory isn't what it used to be" gives a very entry level explanation.
Because the RAM is unified and on the chip there is no worries about what commands go through what bus to what chip (CPU or GPU)
There are Youtubes video where people compare via real world tests and look at the ram consumed. They are surprised that the M1 is more efficient with its RAM even though ARM as a general rule needed more RAM compared to an x86 chip. The M1 mac is using about 60% of its RAM while the Intel Mac is chewing through around 80%.
It will be interesting on how Apple will handle the Mac Pro because one of the big selling points there is expandability and so they will have to have some way for the M1 to turn expandable RAM on a bus into unified RAM so as to keep its insane speed benefit.
No it doesn't. There's nothing in the article suggesting the M1 Macs will utilise more or less RAM than Intel Macs. It's just an explanation of how tighter integration of the memory will make the system run faster.
URL?
"But perhaps the item on the spec sheet that will require the biggest diversion from the old way of thinking is system memory. It’s a feature that’s already frequently misunderstood (and frequently confused with storage size), and now Macs with Apple silicon are using it in an entirely different way.
The old way of thinking of RAM is dead."
While somewhat speculative see "Apple M1 Mac Chip Explained: Questions & Doubts Answered" 11m58s mark
Like an idiot I didn't mark that particular one but Max Tech will be running the 16 GB M1 MacBook Pro vs a 32GB Intel MacBook Pro so we will soon have real world stats I can easily refer to.
Closest thing I could find at the moment was "All of these things are made possible by the hardware and software being made to work together, pulling some of the same types of benefits that allow iPhones to outperform similar-pedigree Android phones with only a fraction of the RAM." - "Opinion: Is the base MacBook Air M1/8GB powerful enough for you?" 9to5Mac. The fun thing is Android uses ARM so this SoC is a total game changer or as the article first pointed to stated "These new Macs are, in their way, kind of alien."
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For what exactly? Too broad a statement. Low end AS Macs are outperforming Intel counterparts. The GPU was intended to outperform an Intel iGPU and outperforms a GTX 1050ti and GTX 1060.
So... this is just from my brief time with M1, since I've only had the computer for less than a day up to this point. TL;DR: I can "see" that even 16GB may not be enough, but the "feel" is that 16GB is plenty even for use cases that greatly exceed the available memory.
My observation is this: 8GB and 16GB seem very limited, but even when swap is engaged, the performance degradation that we'd see on past Intel Macs are much less severe on M1. In fact, I'd say it's almost imperceptible.
On my system with 16GB RAM, I tried some insane use cases: opened some photos at 1Gpixels (yes, you read that right) in Photoshop, created 20 full bitmap layers, then applied various filters and effects to those. Let's just say Photoshop was really chugging along because it's still running under Rosetta 2. After that, it took up 12GB of RAM just by itself. Then I went to other apps... created 10 tabs in Safari, and opened up Capture One Pro, which took up about 3GB by itself.
Needless to say, opening just one extra tab in Safari caused swap to engage. But, even though Activity Monitor told me swap was happening, I couldn't tell if Safari was dropping frames while scrolling, or if it was missing a beat or not. Photoshop still chugged along because of Rosetta 2, but native apps worked without skipping a beat at that point. And amazingly, full-screen animations were still perfectly smooth.
So what I can say is this: yes, memory utilization doesn't seem to change. If you have apps that need RAM, they will use up that much RAM all the same. The difference is when we hit swap. On Intel Mac (I have a 16" MacBook, by the way), the behavior is... not graceful. CPU usage spikes up because things need to be swapped to storage then released from memory. M1 does swapping in a much more graceful way. I couldn't see any CPU usage spike at all. That probably is the most major difference.
As an aside, I was also one of those who was skeptical of the performance of the M1 chip (you can just scroll back in this thread some pages ago). When I finally got my M1, let's say... I was pleasantly surprised. There are still app compatibility issues, but... other than those, M1 has thoroughly blown me away as far as performance is concerned. I won't say "it's a game changer", but now it doesn't feel like my Mac is behind my iPhone and iPad anymore.
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Regarding the difference in memory usage, Daring Fireball mentions the hardware designed for software situation in that the hardware is designed to release memory very quickly in the way that the macOS software wants to.
daringfireball.net
More technical details are on the page and it’s well worth a read. However, this fallout captures the big idea.
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.
More technical details are on the page and it’s well worth a read. However, this fallout captures the big idea.
M1 doesn’t change how Macs can keep the state of applications indefinitely, does it? If it starts to dump data like iOS/iPadOS... that would be horrible news. I’m sure this hasn’t changed but I would feel much better to hear someone confirm this.
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MacOS and iOS/iPadOS dumps memory in the same way, under Intel or M1. But, the Mac also has at least 2-4 gigs more than any current iPhone/iPad and up to 10-12 gigs more depending on which one you get.
I think you're misunderstanding something. iOS is fundamentally different from MacOS. TL;DR is "your MacOS app can run indefinitely until you close it".
iOS supports virtual memory but does not support swap. What that means is... when more memory is needed, apps that are cached/sleeping in memory will be requested to write their state to storage, stop processing, and release their memory.
MacOS supports virtual memory with swap. What that means is... when more memory is needed, it pages unused memory out and happily gives more memory to the app that needs it. When an application whose memory was paged out requests to access that memory, the system will then page that memory in. This page in/out operation doesn't happen on iOS, so the app is forced to quit. But on MacOS, as long as you don't quit, the app can run indefinitely. Though if you're constantly running out of memory, then your swap size will continue growing. Swap is typically implemented as a backing store on the SSD. This is why people would prefer to have 16GB or 32GB RAM in their MacOS computers, to avoid wearing out their SSD prematurely with too many read/write operations.
More info here: https://developer.apple.com/library...tual/ManagingMemory/Articles/AboutMemory.html
Also, I think it is this page in/out operation that's much faster on Apple Silicon compared to their Intel counterpart (it also makes sense because the Air's SSD is twice as fast now). So that's why people with 8GB of RAM can open a ton of applications and don't feel like performance is dropping.
^ I guess that's the shorter version of my post above.
Are you two giving conflicting information, or is bill-p’s just the fuller picture? Appreciate the responses either way.
Not sure if “misunderstand” is the right word because I didn’t think I understood at all haha. All I know is on Mac, I’ve never had anything refresh on its own. Like you said, I can leave an application open and in the background indefinitely and it will stay exactly as it was, after weeks or however long. While on my iPad, apps always refresh eventually. I’ve even had an app refresh AS I was typing in it, causing me to lose work. So one thing I did assume was there is something fundamentally different in the way the two OSes handles things, and not just due to a different amount of ram (as Unregistered 4U seems to be saying?). Anyway, I appreciate the explanation. I think I grasp the general idea.
Just wanted to make sure M1 does not change anything about the way macOS is able to keep things in suspended state indefinitely, and it seems that is still the case. Glad to hear!
I’m ONLY referring to garbage cleanup, when you mention how they “dump data” I was assuming you meant specifically that. BUT, bill-p provides more information about the memory goings-on.
You can attach what I said to what bill-p said in the last paragraph and you’re good.?
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I don't have the data for the GPU in M1 compare what the 16" MBP with the GPU that run Gddr and HBM2
Im not sure how the big elephant in the room is gonna be adressed with the ARM Macs.
While opening 50 applications to a dead silence is fun and makes great YouTube videos, a lot of us Apple fans, rely on Windows (Im using it to run Solidworks and Siemens NX) because some apps only exist in that space. ATM there are no plans to revive bootcamp and the virtualized go to programs like Parallels do not work on the M1. And if they do one day, will they run on the Apple silicon graphics as well as they do on a 5600M?
Those are very important questions which have to be addressed as there are many developers from the engineering and gaming sector as well that depend on using these apps and also love OSX and the ability to run another OS on their Mac
While opening 50 applications to a dead silence is fun and makes great YouTube videos, a lot of us Apple fans, rely on Windows (Im using it to run Solidworks and Siemens NX) because some apps only exist in that space. ATM there are no plans to revive bootcamp and the virtualized go to programs like Parallels do not work on the M1. And if they do one day, will they run on the Apple silicon graphics as well as they do on a 5600M?
Those are very important questions which have to be addressed as there are many developers from the engineering and gaming sector as well that depend on using these apps and also love OSX and the ability to run another OS on their Mac
Then buy an Intel Mac.
Even on an Intel Mac, SolidWorks sucks in Parallels or CrossOver, which are the only two solutions to ever work in M1. The only other alternative (Windows 10 ARM in BootCamp) still runs through emulation and likely will have even worse performance.
So if you know you need SolidWorks, an Intel Mac with BootCamp is your only option.
Note that Autodesk has expressed absolutely zero interest in even making Fusion 360 app, which already has a Mac version, to support Metal. SolidWorks is almost guaranteed to not come to this M1 Mac for the next 2 years.
"Solidworks on Mac: There's a strong chance solidworks is going to move to cloud-based in the next 3-5 years or so, or at least provide a cloud-based option. In that situation, you probably would be able to use it on pretty much any machine."
Cloud computing has several advantages over the traditional methods the biggest being all the advantages of a "live services" model and I would be surprised if more and more high end software doesn't go that way over the next 5 to 10 years.
You're basically describing Fusion 360. It's the cloud-based solution. Workflow and some other fundamentals exist, but it's the cross-platform cloud-based solution Autodesk is grooming.
Even if SolidWorks were to go cloud-based, it would still require a Windows client because that's what it's based on.
Even if SolidWorks were to go cloud-based, it would still require a Windows client because that's what it's based on.
I already have one. The latest one with 5600M!Even on parallels, unless you build an entire assembly it works good. Its flying on Bootcamp because of how powerful that Pro card is ......just thinking about the future that's all. Also keep in mind that most peeps/small companies don't like cloud software because you no longer own....you rent.(not to mention the huge IT overhead required to certify each "cloud" for specific security concerns of large companies)
Especially when it comes to history based models, once you stop paying your rent.....all your work is done, because agnostic file formats don't save history.
Yeah. That's why I still buy Capture One Pro, even though it cost me $299 initially, and about $130+ for every major update.
Owning the software is much more different than relying on the cloud to get it done.
In the same token, if you really need SolidWorks, I think you'll have to stick with an Intel Mac for now.
And yeah, I know it works under Parallels, but performance under Parallels is almost nothing compared to native Bootcamp. I think you know that as well. I don't think Apple Silicon will be able to solve this one particular problem. If you need x86 software, then you really need an x86 processor.
Owning the software is much more different than relying on the cloud to get it done.
In the same token, if you really need SolidWorks, I think you'll have to stick with an Intel Mac for now.
And yeah, I know it works under Parallels, but performance under Parallels is almost nothing compared to native Bootcamp. I think you know that as well. I don't think Apple Silicon will be able to solve this one particular problem. If you need x86 software, then you really need an x86 processor.