Base 24” 8/7, 16Gb RAM, touchID KB or 8/8 8Gb RAM

[MrMister111]

Looking at getting a new 24” iMac and deciding which. It’s for home use, day to day, basic video and photo stuff, to last (hopefully) a lot of years.

I’ve read up and know the base model only has 1 fan, sneaky Apple! but looking doesn’t seem make too much difference, also 1 less GPU. I would definitely want the touchID keyboard as well.

Basically I’m wondering how big a deal 8Gb to 16Gb may be, now and in future as aim to keep this for years hopefully.

So base + touchID KB + 16Gb RAM is £1499, whereas next model up, 8Gb RAM is £1449. I know probably better to get next model up with 16Gb RAM, but that is £1649.

So…. Any help please, how many people have 16Gb, does it make a difference now, or are you future proofing? What about the 7 core GPU will this make a difference? One fan? I know tests on YT seem to say gives a little performance boost when needed on long encodes or something.

Thanks

 

[velocityg4]

16GB is a safer bet for a longer useful life than a slight cooling and GPU bump. As RAM is generally the primary cause of bad performance after a couple years.

 

[MrMister111]

16GB is a safer bet for a longer useful life than a slight cooling and GPU bump. As RAM is generally the primary cause of bad performance after a couple years.

Thanks, I can’t believe (or I probably can!) that Apple still give 8Gb base. I had a 2012 iMac that came with 8Gb, that was nearly 10 years ago…

Think your right, more RAM would be better for future proofing, although as I said, I had 8Gb a long time ago and still works fine….

Not sure on real world difference on 7 GPU to 8.

£150 difference between what I’d want on base (touchID KB and 16Gb RAM), compared to 8/8. Would get extra 2 ports as well though.

Looking at the M1 I think the way the RAM is integrated would make it better as well, rather than the old Intel way of separate.

Decisions….

 

[velocityg4]

For most stuff the GPU difference doesn’t matter at all. Even then it’s a minor difference for stuff which uses it.

But the RAM difference is huge. Once you hit a point where you don’t have enough RAM. It’s debilitating.

Ports are nice if you need them. But you can always get a cheap hub or dock for a whole bunch of ports. Plus hide it under your desk. So, you only have one cable coming out of your Mac.

 

[hobowankenobi]

It gets tricky that Apple ARM CPUs seem to use less RAM than X86 CPUs for the same tasks....so it is harder to compare M1 with anything else. Apples to apples as it were. Tons of folks talking about this, here is a decent overview.

My wife has a base model M1 MBP for her work computer...and she has everything open (like 10+ apps), including a dozen browser tabs. Typically the memory pressure and swap space used it fairly light, and she never seeds actual delays (SBBOD), and is quite unaware that her new Mac has only 8GB of RAM. Her last machine was about 2016 MBP with 16GB, and it rarely saw RAM issues with a very similar workload...but it produce occasional RAM-related lag.

So it would appear that 8GB is often = 16GB, and occasionally is more than 16GB. Which is weird.

 

[MrMister111]

It gets tricky that Apple ARM CPUs seem to use less RAM than X86 CPUs for the same tasks....so it is harder to compare M1 with anything else. Apples to apples as it were. Tons of folks talking about this, here is a decent overview.

My wife has a base model M1 MBP for her work computer...and she has everything open (like 10+ apps), including a dozen browser tabs. Typically the memory pressure and swap space used it fairly light, and she never seeds actual delays (SBBOD), and is quite unaware that her new Mac has only 8GB of RAM. Her last machine was about 2016 MBP with 16GB, and it rarely saw RAM issues with a very similar workload...but it produce occasional RAM-related lag.

So it would appear that 8GB is often = 16GB, and occasionally is more than 16GB. Which is weird.

Sounds promising thanks. I’m just trying to gauge future as well, if the price wasn’t so much for an 8Gb upgrade I think more probably would anyway.

I think the way this RAM is included in chip, reading reports it seems better than the separate RAM.