I wonder how many people in this thread STILL havn’t decided 8 or 16.......??
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
I am really torn between 8GB vs. 16GB RAM
- Thread starter Booji
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I think there would be little debate if 16GB models were actually in stock anywhere.
Most of this here is about "can I get by with just 8GB" and less so about the added cost (admittedly overpriced upgrade) -- at least in my view.
Most of this here is about "can I get by with just 8GB" and less so about the added cost (admittedly overpriced upgrade) -- at least in my view.
They come on and off. I see them in inventory locally from time to time but they are usually gone pretty quickly. I see more inventory of the 8 GB models but sometimes they are completely sold out as well. The unfortunate thing is that the only 16 GB models in the stores come with 1 TB SSD which is more than I need.
This is nice and works for some programs, but may fail for programs which do not use the macOS memory allocator. An example is Firefox which uses jemalloc instead of the default zone allocator for performance reasons.
The zone allocator in use needs to implement the macOS introspection API, which still seems to be absent or not fully implemented in jemalloc (I took a look at the source code on Github). So this approach fails for Firefox and some other big programs.
Also, the command as presented will fail if anything in the pipeline quits (such as awk) before vmmap gets to it, at which point xargs will quit immediately. This following is more robust (with the introspection caveat mentioned above):
Bash:
ps -o pid= | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -I {} -n 1 sh -c "vmmap {} || :" | egrep 'swapped_out|Path'
Last edited:
I just wish that Apple would offer 16 GB for all systems default so we can get away from these threads about whether 8 GB or 16 GB would be enough. Problem solved. MAYBE. ?
Then we could argue about 16 or 32.
Even more relevant than extra ram, you literally cannot have enough storage... ?
Order one online with the spec you need, what’s the hurry.
Storage isn't as important with the cloud and with NAS. Setting one up also means that I don't need to duplicate files on multiple devices. I used to buy more storage with mobile devices but it's mostly unused now.
That delay is significant! Also looking at keeping the 8GB until the 16" gets an upgrade as I will likely trade in for that once it is out.
I have never seen someone coming back from a fight wishing they had less ammo or a less powerful gun
A bit off-topic but the trade-off works the other way: less powerful and accurate gun, more ammo can be a very good trade-off to make (at least for some circumstances). The big revolution of the Kalashnikov-style submachine guns (based on german analysis, copied later by almost everyone) was to trade off a smaller round and smaller gun for more, lighter, easier to fire ammo. (Good book: c j chivers' The Gun)
In this comparison I'd trade off a slightly less fast CPU against more ram.
true in almost* all accounts - still no one has ever regretted having more ammo... power can be expressed in different ways, still is power - accuracy, number of rounds (capacity), stopping power....
* I will take the faster CPI and more RAM
The
That’s exactly why I returned my 8gb model. 16gb is 16gb, unified or not . I would rather have it then not.
It'd have made my decision easier, certainly!
In an ideal world I would have a Silver 16GB/512GB, but I didn't want to wait over a month for it. So I got a Silver 8GB/512GB (stock model available for store pickup) in the hope that 8GB would be enough for me. Turns out I wasn't comfortable with it, so got a Space Grey 16GB/1TB (stock model, also available for store pickup, though rarer than the 8GB/512GB model).
No, the SSD will probably last 20 years with this kind of writing.
There have been numerous endurance tests on SSDs, even some lasting years. Apple is not using some special SSD.
High-end SSDs can survive 1000 to 10000 terabytes written to them.
Exactly.
And when did Apple start soldering SSDs to the motherboard? 5 years ago? Or more?
Macs last a long time... I haven't heard that their SSDs were failing from too much swap writing.
Exactly.
And when did Apple start soldering SSDs to the motherboard? 5 years ago? Or more?
Macs last a long time... I haven't heard that their SSDs were failing from too much swap writing.
After 2015 I think. My 2015 has a plug-in NVMe.
What if swap was faster than RAM? Then you would want a 1 Gb model so that the OS would use swap all the time.
The M1 has several things which make the penalty of having less RAM less severe than on Intel Macs, thus it _feels_ like you don't need more.
Unified memory means the CPU don't have to copy content to the GPU's dedicated RAM or vice versa.
If the GPU needs to use 1Gb for a few seconds, it can so immediately, while on Intel it would have a max memory of maybe 256Mb or something like that.
Having their own SoC means they might have implemented memory compression in hardware, thus expanding the available memory without much performance penalty.
Better and faster disc controller and SSD makes it faster to shuffle content back and forth between RAM and SSD.
Where did you get those numbers? Would Apple really source a "High-end SSDS" in their Systems?
Here are some number of Samsung SSDs (Market leader for SSDs, in-house NANDS)
840 Pro (MLC) from 2015 test, lasted 2400 TBW+ (it didn't die) . Tho it is only rated 73 TBW in warranty.
Warrantied TBW for 970 PRO (MLC): 600 TBW for 512GB model, 1,200 TBW for 1TB model
Warrantied TBW for 970 EVO Plus (TLC): 150 TBW for 250GB model, 300 TBW for 500GB model, 600 TBW for 1TB model, 1,200 TBW for 2TB model.
The 1TB version of the SSD 980 Pro (TLC) is only rated for 600 TBW, vs 1,200 TBW on the 1TB SSD 970 Pro.
Here's some rated TBW from Sandisk's own extreme pro line
up to 300TBW for 512GB, up to 600 TBW for 1 TB, and up to 1200 TBW for 2 TB drives.
A Test post on reddit suggest they lasted around 2800 TBWs until they are done for.
While Samsungs SSD (850 pro 256 GB MLC in this case) lasted up to 9100 TBWs in testing (being rated for only 150 TBW)
Given that Apple is sourcing Sandisk for M1-based MBPs and MBAs, it is most likely to be a TLC.
if the numbers from Sandisk's own extreme NVMe SSD spec sheet, and third-party tests revolving it, and Apple's tendencies to source a "mid-range" part in their systems.
I'd say that those NANDs are most likely to be rated around "industry standard 1200 TBW" at the most as they are all using TLC NANDS now. And may not last beyond 3000 TBWs.
From that number you would only have 0.65(rated)/1.64(projected last) TB average quota per day over the 5 year period.
Depending on how much of a "power user" one is. It could be problematic. But at any rate, it is unlikely to be nowhere near that 10000 TBW you mentioned. unless they somehow source the most premium Samsung NANDs in their next Hardware Revisions. Which is unlikely as M1 Macs are lower-end machines (or at least are targeted as such).
EDITED 2-3 times for more info.
Link:
M1 MacBook Pro and Air Teardowns
Past, meet future—it’s a mix of old and new in our dual teardown of the newest M1-powered MacBooks.
www.ifixit.com
The SSD Endurance Experiment: They're all dead
I never thought this whole tech journalism gig would turn me into a mass murderer. Yet here I am, with the blood of six SSDs on my hands, and that’s...
Samsung 970 PRO | Consumer SSD | Specs & Features | Samsung Semiconductor Global
Samsung 970 PRO delivers PCIe Gen 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3 interfaces, M.2 form factor and 512GB, 1TB capacities. Download 970 pro firmware, driver, and more.
Samsung 970 EVO Plus PCIe 3.0 SSD | Samsung Semiconductor Global
Samsung 970 EVO Plus maximizes the potential of NVMe™ bandwidth for unbeatable computing. In capacities up to 2TB, with reliability of up to 1,200 TBW.
SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe 3D SSD (500 GB, 1 TB, 2TB) | Western Digital | Western Digital
Designed for demanding workloads, the SanDisk Extreme PRO® M.2 NVMe SSD delivers spectacular performance while providing superior durability thanks to our latest 3D NAND technology. With extreme read speeds of up to 3,400MB/s,1 6x faster than typical SATA SSDs,2 it boots up fast, loads...
Last edited:
I have a question about swap usage.
Let's say your computer shows that it is using 1GB of swap. Seems normal.
But you're not writing 1GB of swap every minute, correct? It's just a 1GB area of your SSD that has now been allotted for swap. Yes there will be some writes to that space... but also a lot of reads from that space too.
It seems like people are getting bent out of shape whenever they see their computer using swap thinking "ZOMG my SDD is getting continually damaged by swap!!!"
If writing to an SSD is damaging... wouldn't a photographer copying 50GB of photos to an SSD every week be more damaging than a swap file? Or if you're streaming a movie on Netflix... the data is still being written to the SSD as you watch the movie. That's at least 1GB per hour. Isn't that more damaging than a swap file?
Macs with SSDs have been around for a long time... and all Macs use some amount of swap space. But I'm unaware of Mac SSDs failing from swap overuse.
Let's say your computer shows that it is using 1GB of swap. Seems normal.
But you're not writing 1GB of swap every minute, correct? It's just a 1GB area of your SSD that has now been allotted for swap. Yes there will be some writes to that space... but also a lot of reads from that space too.
It seems like people are getting bent out of shape whenever they see their computer using swap thinking "ZOMG my SDD is getting continually damaged by swap!!!"
If writing to an SSD is damaging... wouldn't a photographer copying 50GB of photos to an SSD every week be more damaging than a swap file? Or if you're streaming a movie on Netflix... the data is still being written to the SSD as you watch the movie. That's at least 1GB per hour. Isn't that more damaging than a swap file?
Macs with SSDs have been around for a long time... and all Macs use some amount of swap space. But I'm unaware of Mac SSDs failing from swap overuse.
Last edited:
I would guess that 1GB swap is total used. if you look at my prior posts. you can even get a number of how your running programs uses swap. Check #1054 for that particular command.
I think SSDs these days are rated for 600 TBW and 1200 TBW 1TB model (TBW - TerraBytes Written)
This would give you 0.65TB (650 GB) of write quota per day over 5 year period.
Depending on your use-case, you might or might not exceed that quota.
for reference. My Samsung 970 Pro 512 GB has 12.7 TB written to it over 2.5 years time (I bought it in June 2018)