I am really torn between 8GB vs. 16GB RAM

[armoured]

This is not true, and it is what caused me to waste $500 on 128GB of RAM when all I do is 1080p video editing. I fell in the "More RAM = Better" trap and it was a major waste of money. 8GB of RAM and 128GB of RAM for 1080p video editing is only a few seconds export times.

This is a bit silly - I don't think anyone has really said or claimed that you should max ram _whatever the cost_. It's 'all things being equal, more ram is better.'

Even in your case above - your 128gb ram is better, it's a couple seconds faster. Clearly that's not optimal from a performance/cost perspective, but it's not that the ram made anything worse.

The jump from 8gb to 16gb is a much bigger difference; I'm not saying it makes sense for everyone, but it's not the same as going to 128gb.

 

[addoh]

Got a Pro with 8 GB ram and 512 GB storage. Feels amazing but when I edit RAW photos in Lightroom I get over 10 GB swap in a few minutes and memory pressure goes yellow temporarily. I won't be doing anything more intense than this for the foreseeable future, except that the photos will get bigger as I eventually upgrade my cameras. Switching between photos is not super smooth.

Would I be benefitted by 16 GB ram? Thinking of exchanging for Air or Pro with upgraded ram...

Thanks in advance

 

[armoured]

Got a Pro with 8 GB ram and 512 GB storage. Feels amazing but when I edit RAW photos in Lightroom I get over 10 GB swap in a few minutes and memory pressure goes yellow temporarily. I won't be doing anything more intense than this for the foreseeable future, except that the photos will get bigger as I eventually upgrade my cameras. Switching between photos is not super smooth.

Would I be benefitted by 16 GB ram? Thinking of exchanging for Air or Pro with upgraded ram...

Thanks in advance

yes, it would benefit you, but there are also multiple threads and discussions here and elsewhere specifically about lightroom, e.g. here:

Lightroom Classic is BROKEN under M1 Macs with Rosetta. BEWARE!

Seems to be Swap after all... adobe need's to fix their code. I might have to let the MBKP aside for personal use and get a Mac Mini with 16Gb... Or I will wait until the M1X/2 come mid next year.

forums.macrumors.com

So two conclusions:
1) There's something with the graphics acceleration preferences in performance tab. Experiment with the settings there, auto chooses full gfx which seems to cause some of the swap problems.
2) In my view there's some 'collision' where current Lightroom classic plays badly with the gfx on M1 - and likely will be resolved when M1 native edition out. But that's a bit of a guess.

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

That if you are trying to be conscientious it would better to not purchase machines that you fully intend to return at all.

may as well not wake up if I know I'm going back to sleep later... lighten up

 

[Ethosik]

This is a bit silly - I don't think anyone has really said or claimed that you should max ram _whatever the cost_. It's 'all things being equal, more ram is better.'

Even in your case above - your 128gb ram is better, it's a couple seconds faster. Clearly that's not optimal from a performance/cost perspective, but it's not that the ram made anything worse.

The jump from 8gb to 16gb is a much bigger difference; I'm not saying it makes sense for everyone, but it's not the same as going to 128gb.

Again its not in this thread, but look around. People like to say more ram the better. I never had 128GB of RAM so how was I supposed to know it wouldn't make a difference? EVERYONE just deals with 4K video these days so how could I do research on 1080p video editing?

And a couple seconds faster is a rounding error in statistics. I did not test thousands of times and calculate an average, so my computer could have been doing something else with 8GB that made it just a FEW seconds longer.

 

[alien3dx]

Again its not in this thread, but look around. People like to say more ram the better. I never had 128GB of RAM so how was I supposed to know it wouldn't make a difference? EVERYONE just deals with 4K video these days so how could I do research on 1080p video editing?

And a couple seconds faster is a rounding error in statistics. I did not test thousands of times and calculate an average, so my computer could have been doing something else with 8GB that made it just a FEW seconds longer.

more ram = ram drive /scratch disk/ no swap.

Ram just temp quick memory not processing. 128 gb ram in itanium wouldnt be good for my client before because database size equivilant ram size equivilant 1 gb pure enough.

All thing must be consider , a cluster of pc may be better then one pc processing. A fast network good for access your file maybe nas ?

** conclusion ram is not everything but still essential.

 

[armoured]

Again its not in this thread, but look around. People like to say more ram the better. I never had 128GB of RAM so how was I supposed to know it wouldn't make a difference? EVERYONE just deals with 4K video these days so how could I do research on 1080p video editing?

And a couple seconds faster is a rounding error in statistics. I did not test thousands of times and calculate an average, so my computer could have been doing something else with 8GB that made it just a FEW seconds longer.

But again, it IS better - just by not much. You bought too much memory for your use case, although of course you have the room there now to do 4k or 8k video if you want. I mean, someone says "a bigger hard drive is better" - and it is, it has more space - but that doesn't mean you should drop $1000 on a monster drive. It's pretty obvious there's a price trade-off. And just about anyone you ask would also say there is some point of 'enough' ram above which any gains will be pretty small.

Of course, before spending $500 on a very large amount of memory, one normally does research. You could easily have got 64gb or even 32gb to check first.

 

[tubular]

FWIW I'll likely be getting an M1 mini February-ish, and I intend to go for 16GB for the sake of futureproofing. It'll be my main driver for two years or more, and that puts the marginal upgrade price at about $0.25 per day.

But I'll also be keeping my 2018 hexcore mini, with its upgradeable-with-difficulty socketed memory. It's annoying to know that for the $200 memory bump in the M1 mini that gets an extra 8GB RAM I can buy 64GB for the Intel mini, but there you are.

 

[macbookfan]

I feel your pain.

The biggest problem is the lack of knowledge any of us have about memory in these new M1 devices.

Allegedly, you can't compare memory to an Intel machine.

Allegedly, 8GB is the new 16GB and 16GB the new 32. However, that all depends on who you listen to.

Apple is just not explaining any of this to us. They don't want us knowing their secret sauce.

I would definitely go 16GB, however.

8GB is still 8GB and 16GB is still 16GB. The new machines are just really fast at swapping. However RAM is always faster then swapping to disk. So if you have the money and can wait for the machine to come. Get the 16gb.

 

[macbookfan]

FWIW I'll likely be getting an M1 mini February-ish, and I intend to go for 16GB for the sake of futureproofing. It'll be my main driver for two years or more, and that puts the marginal upgrade price at about $0.25 per day.

But I'll also be keeping my 2018 hexcore mini, with its upgradeable-with-difficulty socketed memory. It's annoying to know that for the $200 memory bump in the M1 mini that gets an extra 8GB RAM I can buy 64GB for the Intel mini, but there you are.

The RAM is built into the M1 chip. They can't make it so amazingly fast if it was socketed. So while it's more expensive it's also better performance.

 

[Chozes]

My experience is that 16GB seems best for me. 8GB causing cuases and stutters here. Very brief spikes with memory pressure. Having said that waiting for the next M1 chip.

 

[Maxwells_Equations]

The way I see it, if anyone on here is using the M1 Air as a "placeholder" until the real stuff comes out then who cares if you tear into massive RAM swaps?

It is an opportunity to get out of your intel while you still can, get a baseline and run it!

 

[Ethosik]

You could easily have got 64gb or even 32gb to check first.

Even 8GB vs 16GB for just 1080p video editing only saved 5 seconds on a 15+ minute export. This is a rounding error and I only tested once. The 8GB test might have had something running in the background that made it run 5 seconds slower than my 16GB test. And the difference is not any better going all the way to 128GB of RAM. So no, for what I do more RAM is not better. There is 0% chance I will be doing 4K even in the next 5 years. It offers ZERO benefits for what I do and I even need to drop my content to 720p for some clients that have very poor internet.

 

[armoured]

Even 8GB vs 16GB for just 1080p video editing only saved 5 seconds on a 15+ minute export. This is a rounding error and I only tested once. The 8GB test might have had something running in the background that made it run 5 seconds slower than my 16GB test. And the difference is not any better going all the way to 128GB of RAM. So no, for what I do more RAM is not better. There is 0% chance I will be doing 4K even in the next 5 years. It offers ZERO benefits for what I do and I even need to drop my content to 720p for some clients that have very poor internet.

So you spent $500 to go to 128gb when you would have been happy with 8gb?

I can see why your expertise on memory is sought after.

 

[tubular]

The RAM is built into the M1 chip. They can't make it so amazingly fast if it was socketed. So while it's more expensive it's also better performance.

Well, not the chip itself but the package, which almost the same thing. And yes, that's where the hard ceiling is coming from. I'd expect that more memory in the package brings with it more thermal issues, and that they're in the process of solving this for later Silicon CPUs. I suspect that Apple Silicon's days of running so cool may be limited. For now their solution for mini users who need more than 16GB is to continue to offer the hexcore Intel mini (which has served me splendidly for almost two years now). But eventually they will need to get that into the package.

 

[JeepGuy]

Even 8GB vs 16GB for just 1080p video editing only saved 5 seconds on a 15+ minute export. This is a rounding error and I only tested once. The 8GB test might have had something running in the background that made it run 5 seconds slower than my 16GB test. And the difference is not any better going all the way to 128GB of RAM. So no, for what I do more RAM is not better. There is 0% chance I will be doing 4K even in the next 5 years. It offers ZERO benefits for what I do and I even need to drop my content to 720p for some clients that have very poor internet.

It's one of those things, that is very easy to get talked into, "more is better" but as we know there is always a sweet spot, and going beyond that, has little to no benefit.

 

[dogslobber]

8GB isn't really 8GB for your apps so don't fall into the trap of buying an underspec'd machine that'll be out of juice in a few years. Get a 16GB or keep your money.

 

[Ethosik]

So you spent $500 to go to 128gb when you would have been happy with 8gb?

I can see why your expertise on memory is sought after.

Because people make suggestions that more memory is better so I went with 128GB. How am I supposed to know if it doesn't help if I NEVER used 128GB of RAM before? I went with advice from people that get as much memory as possible. Thinking it would help I maxed out my i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM and it wasn't better. Why is that difficult to understand?

You can't know something unless you learn from others or try it yourself. Others stated get AS MUCH MEMORY as possible, so I did, and I LEARNED it wasn't any benefit. People just expect everyone to be born with the knowledge that 128GB of RAM is not useful for 1080p video when you hear it ALL THE TIME that get the most memory possible? Okay.

 

[Ethosik]

It's one of those things, that is very easy to get talked into, "more is better" but as we know there is always a sweet spot, and going beyond that, has little to no benefit.

And for 1080p that seems to be 8GB. For 4K that seems to be 16GB. As shown by many benchmarks comparing 16GB of RAM vs 128GB of RAM for even 4K work has little benefit. But how is someone looking for advice on how much memory to get and gets told "max it out" or "get as much memory as possible" supposed to know? I am not a YouTube reviewer that buys 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB AND 128GB of RAM and tests them all out. So as someone that NEVER used 128GB of RAM before, I did not know it would be little to no benefit on 1080p editing.

I can't know something without learning or being taught. But people are flooding me stating "I should have known". Why do you think I asked for advice on RAM when I did? I was told to get as much as possible and max it out if I could. So I did. And it was no benefit. So I learned that my use case is fine at 8GB for 1080p, which is why people need to be more careful with more memory the better comments. I stress my system hard with my 1080p work and its fine with 8GB of RAM. Someone just using Microsoft Word doesn't need 16GB of RAM.

We are not talking about systems that do dozens of virtual machines, heavy statistical analysis, complex 3D modeling and more. These are entry systems and the lowest spec ones at that. We are not talking about Mac Pro level of performance here. Sure if you do massive statistical analysis you probably do want maybe the 1.5TB of RAM that comes with the Mac Pro depending on your workflow. But they would not even look at these systems to begin with.

While getting certified for my job I watched many online courses on video editing that all had the same line of thinking that 8GB is the sweet spot for 1080p....and this was after I asked for advice and got 128GB of RAM.

 

[armoured]

Because people make suggestions that more memory is better so I went with 128GB. How am I supposed to know if it doesn't help if I NEVER used 128GB of RAM before? I went with advice from people that get as much memory as possible. Thinking it would help I maxed out my i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM and it wasn't better. Why is that difficult to understand?

All right, for those who didn't get the memo: more ram is good, but it's not free.

Therefore, it does not make sense to buy 8 times what you need.

 

[Gravydog316]

You can't have enough RAM... totally get 16GB... everything is using more RAM now too

What exactly do you use your rig for?

If its just for browsing the net and watching Netflix then 8GB is really all one needs.

If you like to play demanding games then 16GB would be better

Even browsers are using crazy RAM amounts now. My Firefox browser uses 4GB of RAM sometimes...
& is using over 2GB right now just to watch YouTube...

 

[Ethosik]

All right, for those who didn't get the memo: more ram is good, but it's not free.

Therefore, it does not make sense to buy 8 times what you need.

How can the M1 Mac beat the Mac Pro in this test when it has 192 GB of RAM? More RAM should make it better right? Its not always that easy is all I am saying. Go to 5:35 timestamp.

 

[Never mind]

Because people make suggestions that more memory is better so I went with 128GB. How am I supposed to know if it doesn't help if I NEVER used 128GB of RAM before? I went with advice from people that get as much memory as possible. Thinking it would help I maxed out my i9 iMac with 128GB of RAM and it wasn't better. Why is that difficult to understand?

You can't know something unless you learn from others or try it yourself. Others stated get AS MUCH MEMORY as possible, so I did, and I LEARNED it wasn't any benefit. People just expect everyone to be born with the knowledge that 128GB of RAM is not useful for 1080p video when you hear it ALL THE TIME that get the most memory possible? Okay.

So where did these people come from that suggested all the memory you can buy will help. Was it on Macrumors? Or some other forum? I get my information from the best source I can fine and not from strangers on a forum.

 

[rui no onna]

So where did these people come from that suggested all the memory you can buy will help. Was it on Macrumors? Or some other forum? I get my information from the best source I can fine and not from strangers on a forum.

I've seen that advice too (buy the most you can afford) but often, the max the motherboard on consumer devices will actually support is 16-32GB so the upper limit is fairly low to begin with.

You'd pretty much need server grade hardware for 128GB RAM which is what the Mac Pros have and it's probably unexpected on the part of the one giving advice.

And really, on Windows PCs, 2x16GB DDR4 2666 kits can be had for $100 so maxing out RAM is a fairly cheap endeavor.

 

[Quixotic3]

I bought the 8Gb ram 512ssd Mac mini... I am returning it for the 16Gb 1Tb. I have had several issues with memory load and many spinning beach balls. I work off of external t5 and t7 drives so the hard drive space was not a real issue but as I am swapping it out I figured that I might as well upgrade that too. I use 5-6gb just having Mail, Safari and Amazon Music open at a min. I usually close everything to work in DaVinci Resolve but having the freedom to allocate a 8Gb dedicated ram to that application seems like a better option for me and well worth the $200.