Buyer’s remorse for 64gb ram?

[mightyjabba]

I just don’t understand why a lot of you on these forums are so damn quick to push real pro use cases aside, it’s like you can’t even imagine there are people out there that this hardware in top spec form is utterly perfect for.

Those kinds of people are exactly who these upgrades are for. As I said, people who need it typically know they need it. But what percentage of the user base are they?

There are also a lot of people who just want to have “the best” or who don’t know how much RAM is actually required to do things asking if they should get 64GB “just to be safe.” So we are trying to push back against that idea. The fact is that 16GB is probably fine for most users — even most pros. It’s great that Apple now lets you get a lot more, but that doesn’t mean it makes sense for most people to do it.

 

[CE3]

For the average web surfing joe who is putting together a family photo album or video of a birthday party, no it is not a good deal.

But for a business case it lines up with both opportunity cost and peace of mind in having it be a factory install and therefore with a solid warranty.

Many of you keep going round and round and freaking round on this cost / benefit ratio stuff as if the only people buying this hardware are tech fans who just want to feel good or to have bragging rights.

Well obviously that is just not the case. Some of us bill out thousands a day as we fire hose gobs of data in and out of these things. Time is money and even a 25% gain in operation time while on the road or location can be many thousands in income per year.

I just don’t understand why a lot of you on these forums are so damn quick to push real pro use cases aside, it’s like you can’t even imagine there are people out there that this hardware in top spec form is utterly perfect for.

Did you read the first line of my post? I’m not pushing real pro use cases aside, I’m just not acting like paying $800 for 64GB of RAM is ”a good deal”

 

[Sirmausalot]

Even if you do push beyond your ram limit and the computer has to use a swap file, how much of a real world performance hit is there really? Anything perceptible and in what applications?

 

[LoganT]

I know what I need and I’m not going to keep on defending my purchase just because a lot of you guys clearly buy a Macbook Pro when a Macbook Air would suffice.

 

[jimmy43]

As I already posted this in another thread - you should consider that extra ram does need extra power - as measured by Tom's Hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5960x-haswell-e-cpu,3918-13.html) and extra 32GB of ram is going to need about 12 Watts of power - which is roughly 10% of the total power budget your laptop has at any given time. That means either your CPU or GPU will not be able to scale up to their full potential due to you just running extra ram that you are not using probably 99% of the time.

Another consideration in the same article is heat generation - which has the same effect- reducing the maximum time your CPU/GPU can stay at high frequencies. They measured about 3 C increase under load for 32GB of DDR4 2800 ram.

Finally, this should give you pause about battery life. Likely the same results apply - expect ~10% less battery life due to running the extra RAM all the time.

I don't think 64GB of DDR4 ram makes sense in a laptop. Once they get LPDDR4 in there it will make much more sense. As others have said, 32GB is probably the sweet spot.

 

[Marzel]

What’s often omitted in these conversations is a single, basic, important question: how long do you plan on keeping the laptop?

You may not need 64 GB now, but what about at the end of however long you plan on keeping it? That’s the key.

Well, the thing is I'm not convinced most people are even able to properly assess whether they'll ever need it either. I'm convinced that the vast majority of the people that buy the higher specifications replace their devices the most often and are hiding behind the "you never know" moniker. That's always the case in the enthusiast market.

High specs are supposed to be targeting real Pros that really understand technology and their professional needs but the analysis/justification in most threads, when specs are the subject, appears to be very amateurish (even for me who doesn't know much about computers at a professional level). I mean you can do whatever you want with your money but don't try to convince others about it when you don't really know how things work.

 

[gplusplus]

Well, the thing is I'm not convinced most people are even able to properly assess whether they'll ever need it either. I'm convinced that the vast majority of the people that buy the higher specifications replace their devices the most often and are hiding behind the "you never know" moniker. That's always the case in the enthusiast market.

High specs are supposed to be targeting real Pros that really understand technology and their professional needs but the analysis/justification in most threads, when specs are the subject, appears to be very amateurish (even for me who doesn't know much about computer science). I mean you can do whatever you want with your money but don't try to convince others about it when you don't really know how things work.

I agree with everything you’ve said, which is why my proposed question is relevant. These “what specs should I get” analysis threads are exactly what you said: amateurish. They ask the wrong questions and focus on the wrong topics.

I do know a lot about technology and I do know a lot about computer science. It’s how I pay my bills. So with that, my opinion is that 99% of the content in these threads is way off the mark.

Here are the only two questions that matter:

1. What are you doing with the machine?
2. How long do you need it to do that?

Talking about price, value, bragging rights, macOS’s memory consumption, whatever... does not matter. If you’re trying to determine the right specs for your use case, none of that matters.

Whether you can afford the right spec or not is a completely different conversation. But people just love to justify their decisions so they can feel good about it.

I really have a hard time believing that someone who doesn't need 64GB of RAM today will find themselves needing it by the end of the likely lifespan of the product. If you really feel the need to future-proof, go with 32GB, but by the time macOS requires 64GB to be usable, the computer will be insanely out of date. In fact, it's very likely that the machine won't even support running that version of the OS, since Apple phases out support for older machines.

If you find it hard to believe, then clearly, you’re not one of those people who need it. That’s fine. But just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean others don’t, either.

You’re also focusing on the wrong topic; the operating system’s memory consumption isn’t the important variable. Photos, videos, data sets, infrastructures, and pretty much any assets associated with workloads, all get bigger and bigger over time. Resolutions get larger, density increases, complexity increases, and so on. Some of these are linear, some of these are quadratic. It depends.

For the average web surfing joe who is putting together a family photo album or video of a birthday party, no it is not a good deal.

But for a business case it lines up with both opportunity cost and peace of mind in having it be a factory install and therefore with a solid warranty.

Many of you keep going round and round and freaking round on this cost / benefit ratio stuff as if the only people buying this hardware are tech fans who just want to feel good or to have bragging rights.

Well obviously that is just not the case. Some of us bill out thousands a day as we fire hose gobs of data in and out of these things. Time is money and even a 25% gain in operation time while on the road or location can be many thousands in income per year.

I just don’t understand why a lot of you on these forums are so damn quick to push real pro use cases aside, it’s like you can’t even imagine there are people out there that this hardware in top spec form is utterly perfect for.

You nailed it. Thank you.

 

[Marzel]

For the average web surfing joe who is putting together a family photo album or video of a birthday party, no it is not a good deal.

But for a business case it lines up with both opportunity cost and peace of mind in having it be a factory install and therefore with a solid warranty.

Many of you keep going round and round and freaking round on this cost / benefit ratio stuff as if the only people buying this hardware are tech fans who just want to feel good or to have bragging rights.

Well obviously that is just not the case. Some of us bill out thousands a day as we fire hose gobs of data in and out of these things. Time is money and even a 25% gain in operation time while on the road or location can be many thousands in income per year.

I just don’t understand why a lot of you on these forums are so damn quick to push real pro use cases aside, it’s like you can’t even imagine there are people out there that this hardware in top spec form is utterly perfect for.

I don't think that anyone disagrees with what you are saying. Obviously if raw power is integral to your business and has proven to provide a financial benefit then it's worth every penny. But I'm not convinced that the majority that comments on this forum and advise other people are people like you.

The problem I have, and is a bit of topic here, is that every time someone who has a sincere question regarding which configuration to choose creates a thread, you get a series of completely uneducated/unrelated/empty statements. As a result, the discussion then gets out of control and eventually comes down to individual agendas.

Logic would suggest that the main configuration to promote to someone who isn't very tech-savvy would be the base model, but that NEVER happens. Even the more conservative posters would advise a bit more of this or that, which is funny when this year's upgrade appears to be the most all around balanced.

 

[PeterJP]

I just checked memory pressure on my 8GB machine and it's actually always in the green. I am playing a bit more with VMs nowadays, but usually for testing basic server setups before moving onto the metal. Doing an OpenSuse install in VirtualBox, I now hit yellow memory pressure (VM with 4GB of RAM). So frankly, 16GB should get you a long way.

I have a Windows desktop at home that I configured with 16GB in 2012 "just in case" but it never used anything near that even with Lightroom working on a 24MP catalog of several 100s of photos. CPU speed, now that was a different matter.

So I'm going to back down from my personal promise that I want a 32GB/1TB machine and say that the base level would be quite sufficient indeed. Even with VMs. No huge data sets or video edits here.

 

[icloudUser]

This is going to be my first Mac and I have no idea my use case (java web development mainly, will ran mysql, MongoD, Reid’s, elastic search in the background, intellij and several tomcat or springboot apps for developing. Occasionally exploring other things with docker compose and maybe other vms. Excel in windows parallel vm.) needs how many gbs of ram. I currently use a win 10 hades canyon with 32GB ram and sometimes it hits 20+ gb ram without running any vm. now I don’t know if the number will be similar on a macO.
since I can’t upgrade ram later, I really don’t want to feel bad later when hitting the ram ceiling. But again, if I max out, I could waste $400 which could‘ve been for my next iPhone or whatever Mac apps I need.

I wonder if there is anybody who thought they needed 64gb ram and later found out they actually don’t? Or the other way around, anybody regrets for not getting 64gb? Please share. Thanks.

Thats some list you have there but if thats going to be your usage (all specified above) I dont think 64gb is an overkill. With that many processes and the load on them I think your machine might be CPU bound so think about that too.

 

[redheeler]

For most people 32 GB will be fine for many years to come, and 64 GB is overkill. 16 GB may be cutting it close though, considering 32 GB will likely be standard on the 16" in 1-2 years.

Buying a MBP with 16 GB now is like a buying a MBP with 4 GB in 2011, only without the ability to upgrade later. If your usage was very basic on the 4 GB Mac without a lot of open apps / tabs, you might've not seen the need to upgrade until around 2016. For anything heavier it would've been a real handicap just a few years later. 8 GB would've done away with both these problems and is still enough for basic usage today (as 2 GB was in 2011).

 

[Macshroomer]

The elephant in this room and that really makes it hard for some people to decide what config to get is that it is not possible to upgrade the components beyond the initial build. So I totally understand why someone might opt for 32GB of ram over the entry level 16GB because of this, even if their overall use is pedestrian. There is also a mental thing in buying entry level in anything, like it is going to become inadequate too soon and it has nothing to do with actual use.

As for maxing it out but not really needing that kind of hardware, that is also a human nature thing, fast car vs slower car going to the same destination and costing more, etc.

It is what it is and I totally understand why some who are trying to offer real world advice are getting frustrated by the remarks of telling people to overspend.

 

[dead flag blues]

The way Apple creates a desire to upgrade the RAM due to it’s immutability, and *then* capitalises on it by pricing the upgrade so high is a true Masterclass in product pricing.

This has been going on for decades. Apple didn’t write the book on this.

 

[redheeler]

As I already posted this in another thread - you should consider that extra ram does need extra power - as measured by Tom's Hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5960x-haswell-e-cpu,3918-13.html) and extra 32GB of ram is going to need about 12 Watts of power - which is roughly 10% of the total power budget your laptop has at any given time. That means either your CPU or GPU will not be able to scale up to their full potential due to you just running extra ram that you are not using probably 99% of the time.

Another consideration in the same article is heat generation - which has the same effect- reducing the maximum time your CPU/GPU can stay at high frequencies. They measured about 3 C increase under load for 32GB of DDR4 2800 ram.

Finally, this should give you pause about battery life. Likely the same results apply - expect ~10% less battery life due to running the extra RAM all the time.

I don't think 64GB of DDR4 ram makes sense in a laptop. Once they get LPDDR4 in there it will make much more sense. As others have said, 32GB is probably the sweet spot.

You've linked to a very old article here, from 2014. Plus it is comparing four memory modules to two, obviously four modules are going to use twice as much power as two.

Apple is switching out lower capacity chips for higher capacity chips rather than adding more, AFAIK. So it'd be the equivalent of 2x32 GB modules, not 4x16 GB which would consume more power.

 

[mightyjabba]

The elephant in this room and that really makes it hard for some people to decide what config to get is that it is not possible to upgrade the components beyond the initial build. So I totally understand why someone might opt for 32GB of ram over the entry level 16GB because of this, even if their overall use is pedestrian. There is also a mental thing in buying entry level in anything, like it is going to become inadequate too soon and it has nothing to do with actual use.

As for maxing it out but not really needing that kind of hardware, that is also a human nature thing, fast car vs slower car going to the same destination and costing more, etc.

It is what it is and I totally understand why some who are trying to offer real world advice are getting frustrated by the remarks of telling people to overspend.

It’s also true that for a long time Apple had a habit of only giving the bare minimum amount of RAM on the base model, so people just expected that they would have to upgrade, but that’s not really the case anymore.

 

[||\||]

For most people 32 GB will be fine for many years to come, and 64 GB is overkill. 16 GB may be cutting it close though, considering 32 GB will likely be standard on the 16" in 1-2 years.

Are office apps and web browsers really needing that much RAM these days? RAM usage in the Mac operating has not changed substantially since 2011. Wired memory is still sits at about 2 - 2.5GB for me in 10.14. 16GB might become the standard because memory prices have decreased. It is unlikely to become the standard because people need that much in average use. 8GB will do most users just fine in the forseeable future.
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Even if you do push beyond your ram limit and the computer has to use a swap file, how much of a real world performance hit is there really? Anything perceptible and in what applications?

Yes. We are in a time of 3 GB/sec SSDs.

 

[applesed]

As I already posted this in another thread - you should consider that extra ram does need extra power - as measured by Tom's Hardware (https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-core-i7-5960x-haswell-e-cpu,3918-13.html) and extra 32GB of ram is going to need about 12 Watts of power - which is roughly 10% of the total power budget your laptop has at any given time. That means either your CPU or GPU will not be able to scale up to their full potential due to you just running extra ram that you are not using probably 99% of the time.

Another consideration in the same article is heat generation - which has the same effect- reducing the maximum time your CPU/GPU can stay at high frequencies. They measured about 3 C increase under load for 32GB of DDR4 2800 ram.

Finally, this should give you pause about battery life. Likely the same results apply - expect ~10% less battery life due to running the extra RAM all the time.

I don't think 64GB of DDR4 ram makes sense in a laptop. Once they get LPDDR4 in there it will make much more sense. As others have said, 32GB is probably the sweet spot.

Really interesting take. This sounds right in theory, but I’m not sure how it shakes out in the real world with this computer.

 

[applesed]

64gb of ram is if you’re working with enormous datasets and your current computer (which presumably has 32gb of ram) is chugging along or acting slow.

for example if I have to load a giant dataset in matlab and it takes a while to manipulate it for whatever reason, then 64gb ram makes sense.

I can’t think of any other use cases (including gaming or video editing) that would REQUIRE 64gb of ram

even ML training happens in batches, what are you actually doing in matlab that requires loading such a large dataset at once?

 

[miroki]

The elephant in this room and that really makes it hard for some people to decide what config to get is that it is not possible to upgrade the components beyond the initial build. So I totally understand why someone might opt for 32GB of ram over the entry level 16GB because of this, even if their overall use is pedestrian. There is also a mental thing in buying entry level in anything, like it is going to become inadequate too soon and it has nothing to do with actual use.

As for maxing it out but not really needing that kind of hardware, that is also a human nature thing, fast car vs slower car going to the same destination and costing more, etc.

It is what it is and I totally understand why some who are trying to offer real world advice are getting frustrated by the remarks of telling people to overspend.

I do notice you have a maxed out MBP 16 lol

 

[hipnetic]

I can't give you a definitive recommendation, but I'm in a similar spot as you, both because I'm thinking seriously about buying a new 16" MBP w/64GB RAM, and also because I'm a Java/IntelliJ developer. Some random thoughts on both sides of the argument:

- The biggest thing to worry about is whether you might be underspec-ing a machine, such that it won't be capable of performing adequately with whatever the latest version of OSX will be a few years from now. The good news here is that the lowest-spec'd machine that Apple still sells brand-new as of today is a MacBook Air w/8GB or RAM and a 128GB SSD. They aren't going to leave those users in the cold in just a few years, so they're kind of limiting themselves to keep the OS storage and RAM requirements within those limits for at least a 4 years, IMO.

- Adding to that last point, if you can comfortably run their OS today with just 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, think about how much more headroom you'll have with 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and a larger capacity SSD.

- From the opposite side of the argument, I today have a late-2013 MacBook Pro 13" w/8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, and I'm close to the storage limit of my SSD and am often running close to my 8GB RAM limit, even just browsing with the web (with, admittedly, a lot of tabs open). So, I definitely feel some pain today, and if I'm going to spend some money to upgrade, do I *just* want to double my RAM and storage, or should I pay even more to go beyond that?

- As I just noted, my current MacBook is a late-2013 model, so about 6 years old. If I can stretch out a MacBook to last me 6 years, and it costs me an extra $360-400 to go from 32GB to 64GB of RAM, that's about $60/year. Tacking on an extra $360 today might feel a little painful when you're configuring that $2200-$3000 MBP 16", but if you think you can keep it for 4-6 years, that extra amount to upgrade the RAM (or SSD, or CPU, or whatever) doesn't seem so awful.

- I haven't run the numbers on this idea myself (yet), but maybe instead of trying to stretch my MacBook to last me 6 years, maybe I should do the opposite and buy the lowest-config'd MBP 16" and plan to sell it (or trade it in) in 2 years, and get a brand-new MBP every 2 years. Like I said, I haven't (yet) run the numbers on this idea, but again, if you figure out what the "loss" is per year, maybe it's not that awful. That said, I think I'd be unhappy with just 16GB of RAM doing software development, and would want to at least upgrade to 32GB.

 

[dead flag blues]

My first computer for work cost over $100k. Quibbling over (relatively) inexpensive RAM is boring.

 

[miroki]

I can't give you a definitive recommendation, but I'm in a similar spot as you, both because I'm thinking seriously about buying a new 16" MBP w/64GB RAM, and also because I'm a Java/IntelliJ developer. Some random thoughts on both sides of the argument:

- The biggest thing to worry about is whether you might be underspec-ing a machine, such that it won't be capable of performing adequately with whatever the latest version of OSX will be a few years from now. The good news here is that the lowest-spec'd machine that Apple still sells brand-new as of today is a MacBook Air w/8GB or RAM and a 128GB SSD. They aren't going to leave those users in the cold in just a few years, so they're kind of limiting themselves to keep the OS storage and RAM requirements within those limits for at least a 4 years, IMO.

- Adding to that last point, if you can comfortably run their OS today with just 8GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD, think about how much more headroom you'll have with 16GB or 32GB of RAM, and a larger capacity SSD.

- From the opposite side of the argument, I today have a late-2013 MacBook Pro 13" w/8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD, and I'm close to the storage limit of my SSD and am often running close to my 8GB RAM limit, even just browsing with the web (with, admittedly, a lot of tabs open). So, I definitely feel some pain today, and if I'm going to spend some money to upgrade, do I *just* want to double my RAM and storage, or should I pay even more to go beyond that?

- As I just noted, my current MacBook is a late-2013 model, so about 6 years old. If I can stretch out a MacBook to last me 6 years, and it costs me an extra $360-400 to go from 32GB to 64GB of RAM, that's about $60/year. Tacking on an extra $360 today might feel a little painful when you're configuring that $2200-$3000 MBP 16", but if you think you can keep it for 4-6 years, that extra amount to upgrade the RAM (or SSD, or CPU, or whatever) doesn't seem so awful.

- I haven't run the numbers on this idea myself (yet), but maybe instead of trying to stretch my MacBook to last me 6 years, maybe I should do the opposite and buy the lowest-config'd MBP 16" and plan to sell it (or trade it in) in 2 years, and get a brand-new MBP every 2 years. Like I said, I haven't (yet) run the numbers on this idea, but again, if you figure out what the "loss" is per year, maybe it's not that awful. That said, I think I'd be unhappy with just 16GB of RAM doing software development, and would want to at least upgrade to 32GB.

I am currently using a win10 32G 4core8hyperhtread Intel Nuc (Hades Canyon). Everything runs smoothly (without using any vm). For me, the most reasonable buy if I decide to switch to MacOS is actually a MBP 13 with 32gb ram, which doesn't exist for another 4 to 7 months. And I feel I need a notebook asap. So my next best choice is MBP 16. the extra weight is a nuisance, to make up for it, I'd need its performance, i9 8c16t. Having that power at hand, I feel I need to explore new territory, hence docker compose or even vm cluster. so I'd go with 2T. with i9 and 2T, 32G ram begins to seem the weakest link. after spending that much money, *what if* ram becomes the bottleneck. a *mere* $400 (compared to what's spent) will make the entire investment safe and put mind in ease.

well that's the rabbit hole I'm chasing. All I actually want is a 32G 1T MBP 13/14.

I played with several MBP's at the Apple Store. I notice MacOS utilizes ram in a adaptive way. for example, after opening several apps, the used ram on a 16G machine is 11gb, with green in memory pressure. I tried similar apps on a 8G machine, the used ram becomes 6gb, with higher but still green memory pressure. now it's not a scientific experiment cuz I don't really make sure two machines run the exact same apps, but it gives me an idea of how ram management works for MacOS. I am not surprised when people claim they don't have any memory pressure issue when running several supposingly ram hungry apps plus vms on a 16G or even 8G MBP. But I can't help but wonder if they get memory penalty without their knowledge. given more ram, things may run even faster or smoother. I really hope to see side by side comparison, but I can't find any at the moment.

 

[hipnetic]

For me, the most reasonable buy if I decide to switch to MacOS is actually a MBP 13 with 32gb ram, which doesn't exist for another 4 to 7 months. And I feel I need a notebook asap. So my next best choice is MBP 16. the extra weight is a nuisance, to make up for it, I'd need its performance, i9 8c16t.

On that note, I'm torn myself, because I dislike the added size and weight of the 16". I have a company-supplied MBP 15" (2016 or 2017) and my old late-2013 MBP 13", but prior to that I had a MacBook Air 13", which I absolutely loved size/weight-wise, and that was pre-retina. I upgraded my wife's MacBook Air 13" to a 2018 MacBook Air w/retina last year, and I don't love the butterfly keyboard, but otherwise it's a beautiful size/weight/screen.

I actually don't travel much. I work out of my home. But I often have my laptop directly on my lap when I'm chilling/working in my living room, and it's nice to have a lightweight laptop. OTOH, the added screen real estate of the 16" is pretty nice, especially when working with IntelliJ. Still, if I could buy a 13" MacBook Air w/scissor keyboard, decent CPU, and 32GB of RAM today, that would be pretty sweet.

...but if I'm going to live without the lighter weight and go with a MBP 16", I figure maybe I should splurge and max out the RAM. But I'm sure that 32GB would be fine, too.

 

[iBarça-Boy]

No regrets with my 8GB MacBook Pro.

+1

 

[pshufd]

I think the number of people who legitimately need 64GB of RAM is vanishingly small. If you don't know for sure that you need it, chances are you don't.

I know that 32 GB would be right for me as I experience pressure at 16. I currently run two 16 GB MBPs to deal with a couple of memory hogs that I run. I suspect that what I run would use more than 16 but not that much more.

If you keep your old MacBook Pro, you could always partition some of the applications that you run between two machines.