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

[rui no onna]

That's what we bought.

I wanted 16 GB and didn't want to wait five weeks so we got the 1 TB SSD which was in stock at a local store. Got it in about four hours.

Sadly, stores here in CA are closed so all the 16GB/1TB are back ordered.

I got the 8GB/512GB for emergency WFH since that's what was available for same/next-day delivery.

Originally, I was planning on giving the 8GB/512GB to family and buying another MBA with 16GB/1TB for myself. Right now though, I don't know. Now that I'm no longer self-isolating, I'm back to using desktop while working and iPad for leisure. I haven't touched the MacBook in weeks.

 

[pshufd]

Sadly, stores here in CA are closed so all the 16GB/1TB are back ordered.

I got the 8GB/512GB for emergency WFH since that's what was available for same/next-day delivery.

Originally, I was planning on giving the 8GB/512GB to family and buying another MBA with 16GB/1TB for myself. Right now though, I don't know. Now that I'm no longer self-isolating, I'm back to using desktop while working and iPad for leisure. I haven't touched the MacBook in weeks.

16/1 in Air and Pro are in good supply in my area now. It's strange because they were out of stock most of the time in December and January. They are well-supplied this week. I don't know if they are making more of them or if buyers aren't buying them up aggressively. Apple customers have been conditioned to get more RAM if money is no object - at least that seems to be the case in my area.

 

[Phil77354]

My closest Apple store has the 8GB/512GB and 16GB/1TB in stock. All others have delivery of Feb 11-18.

If I was purchasing today, the 16GB/1TB would look pretty good to me.

 

[Fred Zed]

Same, I wanted the 16/512, Adorama had the 16/1TB in stock randomly and I pulled the trigger.

The words Adorama and in stock does not compute . 😂

 

[rui no onna]

16/1 in Air and Pro are in good supply in my area now. It's strange because they were out of stock most of the time in December and January. They are well-supplied this week. I don't know if they are making more of them or if buyers aren't buying them up aggressively. Apple customers have been conditioned to get more RAM if money is no object - at least that seems to be the case in my area.

Probably helps that holiday buying's over. Even back orders doesn't seem as bad now.

Iirc, I bought my 8/512 around Dec 18 (that's around the time stores closed in California) and the 16/1TB was back ordered to February already (I think delay was around 5-6 weeks). Checking now, 16/1TB is scheduled for Feb 18-25 so delay's gone down to just 3-4 weeks.

Alas, no pick up anywhere near me. Only option would be Best Buy, etc. but those only carry the standard 8GB models. Most people I know buy their computers from big box stores so upgrading RAM isn't really an option. Costco is a favorite for free extended warranty.

 

[TyG8]

The words Adorama and in stock does not compute . ?

It did in my case, I watched appleinsider deals and saw that Adorama had the 16/1TB in stock one morning when I refreshed, used their promo code, ordered and got it in 2 days.

This is for a Mac Mini btw.

 

[Fred Zed]

It did in my case, I watched appleinsider deals and saw that Adorama had the 16/1TB in stock one morning when I refreshed, used their promo code, ordered and got it in 2 days.

This is for a Mac Mini btw.

Remind me next time to ask you for the wining lottery numbers.

 

[InwardMomentum]

my normal day.

I think the new 16GB mac mini will help me a lot

I just Read Write on my hard drive 2 TB today

4TB read write today for my SSD , well , the 16GB version arrive on the 17 next month.

What is great is that I will be able to compare them , side by side.

 

[verniesgarden]

my normal day.

I think the new 16GB mac mini will help me a lot

I just Read Write on my hard drive 2 TB today

4TB read write today for my SSD , well , the 16GB version arrive on the 17 next month.

What is great is that I will be able to compare them , side by side.

judging by what you are running, i'm thinking you might just need a windows machine! ?

 

[pshufd]

judging by what you are running, i'm thinking you might just need a windows machine! ?

Windows or an iMac where you can add as much as you want to. The iMac can hold up to 128 GB and your Windows machines depend on the number of DIMM slots.

 

[InwardMomentum]

judging by what you are running, i'm thinking you might just need a windows machine! ?

Man , When i try the Mac mini M1 , i was hook right away. The powerfull 1 core speed, Multiple desktop per screen integrated in the OS and a lot faster than the windows 8750H that i had.

And right now, I am perfecting my setup to be bug free, And i can say , with crossover, Its basically bug free for me.

My Next step will be a macbook 16inch Max out or a MacPro. And those will be Monster Computer for sure, 4 more core will destroy all the laptop competition , and if they can get 8 + more core. Its GG.

Only aspect left to get there for apple is the GPU , and I am pretty sure they have have something up their sleeve.

Preparing 4k for my next upgrade

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

I have an 8gb and 16gb M1 MacBook Air and I'm testing them. Im very likely, 80%, going to keep the 16g as its £135 extra (7 gpu core version) and £135 is fine for 8gb extra ram because my usage requires it from time to time and I plan to keep this Air for long time - unless 14" redesign truly exceeds expectations and price is reasonable.

I have identical setups and identical apps/web pages/ YouTube/twitch etc all open and running at the same time on both laptops.

8gb vs 16gb
19% vs 9% -- CPU
49% vs 30% -- Memory Pressure
1.7gb vs 5.43gb - free memory
ranging between 50-485mb vs 0 -- Page ins (does settle down to 0 on 8gb)
some v 0 -- page outs
4gb v 3gb -- swap disk

The times when the 8gb struggles is when it can't read/write to disk fast enough so needs a moment to catch up, then its ok. Ive not noticed it on the 16gb at so far. Basically *I* need 16gb.

So the battery must be consumed faster in the 8gb? As its writing to disk swap disk continuously.

Update
1. After a few minutes just watching them the cpu does match up to around 10%. So its the initial usage that causes the 8gb to struggle to re-organise itself but then its ok as long as there isn't fast changing usage.
2. The cpu usage is 2-4% higher on the 16gb after a while. Maybe because it doesn't write as many web pages to the swap disk it keeps them updated more. So battery being consumed. So battery is likely about same over the long term.

Activity Monitor
1. On the 8gb there is a 1.31gb memory usage WindowServer process.
2. On the 16gb there is NO window server process using any memory.
3. The windowserver is using 25% of cpu and 10% of gpu on the 8gb.
4. Kernal task on the 8gb has 1.5tb bytes written to disk and 28gb bytes read. 0 on 16gb.

 

[InwardMomentum]

I Will receive my 16GB mac mini on the 4th. I can say , with experience , If you do something with the computer other than normal stuff, Go for the 16gb.

It really help

 

[armoured]

The times when the 8gb struggles is when it can't read/write to disk fast enough so needs a moment to catch up, then its ok. Ive not noticed it on the 16gb at so far. Basically *I* need 16gb. ...
4. Kernal task on the 8gb has 1.5tb bytes written to disk and 28gb bytes read. 0 on 16gb.

Yes, these are the classic signs of swap slowdown - and I believe the swapping to disk does show up as written by the kernel process, so all this as expected.

The lag you notice as it 'catches up' - if it coincides with switching programs in particular - is the surprise 'whoop we need that memory - now!'. If you only switch infrequently between programs, for example, maybe it's fine - or at any rate it's always the user's choice about what are unacceptable delays.

This lag is the biggest difference I notice with an underspec'd old macbook air compared to a desktop machine with 32gb (objectively more than I need 99% of the time) - the desktop just never has those delays. It may not be a lot of time in the lags but it makes a huge difference in terms of smoothness and 'feel.' As well as spending no time managing programs or windows open, just run everything and don't think about it.

On my old underspec'd airbook, too many programs and windows quickly gets into those 'lags' becoming red memory pressure, that is, the lags start to dominate ).

 

[BostonQuad]

For me it's not true that "8GB on M1 is like 16GB on Intel", and the only unusual thing I've done is keep too many browser tabs open.

Tabs would often bog down my 8GB Intel Mac. I upgraded to a 2019 Intel 16GB MacBook Air, and never had a problem with RAM regardless of how careless I was with open tabs and background programs. I upgraded again to an 8GB M1 MacBook Air, taking a chance that 8GB would be enough on the new machine. On a particularly bad tab-hoarding day, the machine ground to a halt with spinning beachballs until I closed enough tabs to bring the tab count down to about 30 across all browser windows.

I've developed better browser habits rather than regret my purchase, though.

 

[mi7chy]

What device are people upgrading from and how much DRAM did it have? I have an old 2008 laptop that has 8GB DRAM. Makes little sense to sidegrade to 8GB in 2021 unless maybe if you're a student with strict budget but even then device cost difference is ~+20% for 16GB and at ~+$200 difference it's like the cost of cup of Starbucks for a month.

 

[Chairman.Jobbie]

Ive posted a few times on this thread so apologies for repeating myself.

Having used the 16gb for a few days with my regular usage I can say I've had no issues so far compared to the 8Gb MBA. There is always 5-6gb+ free ram and memory pressure doesn't exceed 50%.

The 8Gb I had occasional beachballs / unresponsiveness until it sorted itself out and/or I closed a few things. So far on the 16Gb I have not had one issue doing the same as I did on the 8gb. Also I have yet to see the "this webpage is using a lot of memory" message when I've returned to demanding webpage (saw it all the time on 8Gb).

Conclusion : if you do a lot of demanding web browsing (some trading) / leave many tabs / windows running and like having many regular apps running / switching between them frequently + maybe have a 1080 YouTube video or 1080 twitch stream running then id advise you buy 16Gb RAM. I don't do any photo or video editing. Also, worrying about memory management wastes mental energy .. You don't want that.

The 8Gb is good for most people - casual / light users, and RAM is better utilised than on an 8gb intel ram machine. However, if you want to avoid any unexpected bottle necks / have a more smooth experience where you don't have to glance at the memory pressure in the menu bar or activity monitor then do yourself a favour and buy 16Gb - the extra £188 is worth it.

I HAD a £2.5k (!!) 2018 15" MBP intel with 16gb Ram / 512 SSD. It had a terrible keyboard, got ridiculously hot, fan noise, poor battery, beach balled sometimes, heavy etc. I regretted how much I spent on this pos.

I tried to make the base model MBA 8gb / 256 SSD work for me to save £373 - it didn't work out. Its like driving low powered car in fast moving traffic - it'll do the job but you'll always want little more power from time to time.

I NOW have the M1 MBA 16gb / 512 SSD / 7 GPU - great keyboard, never hot, no fan, lightweight + all day battery. And it cost £112 net after selling my 2018 intel MBP. Well worth it, no brainer. With 16gb I'm in no rush to buy the potential 14" - this 16Gb MBA will hopefully serve me for long time. But you never know .. ?

 

[rui no onna]

What device are people upgrading from and how much DRAM did it have? I have an old 2008 laptop that has 8GB DRAM. Makes little sense to sidegrade to 8GB in 2021 unless maybe if you're a student with strict budget but even then device cost difference is ~+20% for 16GB and at ~+$200 difference it's like the cost of cup of Starbucks for a month.

A 13.3" Sandy Bridge (circa 2011/12?) with aftermarket upgrade to 16GB RAM and Samsung 830 256GB. I ordered the laptop, RAM sticks and SSD at the same time.

That said, I'm on the iPad around 90% of the time and at 3-4GB RAM, that one's definitely worse on the memory management front.

Got the 8/512GB for some emergency WFH while on quarantine and was originally planning on replacing that with 16/1TB. Now that things are back to almost normal though, I've barely touched the new MacBook. It's either desktop for work or iPad for leisure. Thinking it may not be worth replacing the MacBook.

 

[Bogdan_CH]

Long topic to follow, but started around page 40 and I can agree with most. So I got my MBP with 8 GB, tested for a couple of days. Not a power user but with an encode in Devinci and a vid in 4K in the background went into yellow / red spikes pressure with 2 or 3 GB of memory swap. While this it's not a common thing in my workflow, I could easily live by with it , but got a awesome deal on a MBP 16 GB for $100 less so decided to return it, but otherwise I would've kept it. Coming from a Dell XPS 15 (9560) with i7 and 16 GB of ram when any movement in Resolve (set on 720p with proxies) was a horror story, even the 8 GB blew me away but still, there is a very noticeable difference from the 16 GB Mac, tried same 4K encoding while runing 3 4K HDR vids in the back and went smoothly , while never jumped from green.

So as many others above stated, browsing web, streaming some media, you will never notice a thing, but if you start pushing it with intensive websites and basically multi tasking a lot, you'll notice a difference especially on the long term.

One thing I've seen as a common mistake is when people confuse intensive apps with multi tasking. To be more specific, one could use a very hard core app or a intensive game which would run perfect on 8 GB but someone else that openes many stuff on a daily basis but static and goes back and forth will benefit alot from the extra ram.

 

[Argon_]

One thing I've seen as a common mistake is when people confuse intensive apps with multi tasking. To be more specific, one could use a very hard core app or a intensive game which would run perfect on 8 GB but someone else that openes many stuff on a daily basis but static and goes back and forth will benefit alot from the extra ram.

Tabbing from a productivity app or game to a browser. When the extra RAM becomes far less negotiable.

 

[jim468]

Ive posted a few times on this thread so apologies for repeating myself.

Having used the 16gb for a few days with my regular usage I can say I've had no issues so far compared to the 8Gb MBA. There is always 5-6gb+ free ram and memory pressure doesn't exceed 50%.

The 8Gb I had occasional beachballs / unresponsiveness until it sorted itself out and/or I closed a few things. So far on the 16Gb I have not had one issue doing the same as I did on the 8gb. Also I have yet to see the "this webpage is using a lot of memory" message when I've returned to demanding webpage (saw it all the time on 8Gb).

Conclusion : if you do a lot of demanding web browsing (some trading) / leave many tabs / windows running and like having many regular apps running / switching between them frequently + maybe have a 1080 YouTube video or 1080 twitch stream running then id advise you buy 16Gb RAM. I don't do any photo or video editing. Also, worrying about memory management wastes mental energy .. You don't want that.

The 8Gb is good for most people - casual / light users, and RAM is better utilised than on an 8gb intel ram machine. However, if you want to avoid any unexpected bottle necks / have a more smooth experience where you don't have to glance at the memory pressure in the menu bar or activity monitor then do yourself a favour and buy 16Gb - the extra £188 is worth it.

I HAD a £2.5k (!!) 2018 15" MBP intel with 16gb Ram / 512 SSD. It had a terrible keyboard, got ridiculously hot, fan noise, poor battery, beach balled sometimes, heavy etc. I regretted how much I spent on this pos.

I tried to make the base model MBA 8gb / 256 SSD work for me to save £373 - it didn't work out. Its like driving low powered car in fast moving traffic - it'll do the job but you'll always want little more power from time to time.

I NOW have the M1 MBA 16gb / 512 SSD / 7 GPU - great keyboard, never hot, no fan, lightweight + all day battery. And it cost £112 net after selling my 2018 intel MBP. Well worth it, no brainer. With 16gb I'm in no rush to buy the potential 14" - this 16Gb MBA will hopefully serve me for long time. But you never know .. ?

Thank you for your observations here. I purchased the 8GB version but eventually ended up returning it for the 16GB for the following 2 reasons.

1. Uneven base: my MBA 8GB did not sit evenly on a table - one of the 4 feet would not touch the table, and the laptop would slightly wobble when I rest my palms on the palm rest. This was annoying.

2. RAM: The 8GB works very good. The only issue I faced was when I had too many apps (in particular News, Stocks, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, OneNote, Notes, Messages) or browser tabs open, the laptop would slightly lag when I switched between apps. This lag was just for a split second and many people might not notice it, but for my personal preference it made the overall user experience feel sluggish. So I got a new one with 16GB ram and I have not faced that sluggishness with similar usage. Also when I had the 8GB ram, I always had Activity Monitor open and would constantly keep on checking the Memory pressure and Swap disk usage. Since having 16GB, I haven't seen the memory pressure graph in yellow or green color and it's more mental peace. I don't keep checking the activity monitor as often as I used to since the UI is smooth.

Overall I am happy with 16GB. I agree with what you said - I too feel that "worrying about memory management wastes mental energy"

 

[Michael Scrip]

Just curious... how much RAM does MacOS take up? Or how much RAM is available to the user?

Let's say MacOS uses 4GB on its own... which leaves you with 4GB for your applications on an 8GB machine.

But if you have a 16GB machine... MacOS still uses the same 4GB... but you would have 12GB for your applications.

In that example... you would have three times as much RAM available to you on a 16GB machine vs an 8GB machine.

 

[pldelisle]

Just curious... how much RAM does MacOS take up? Or how much RAM is available to the user?

Let's say MacOS uses 4GB on its own... which leaves you with 4GB for your applications on an 8GB machine.

But if you have a 16GB machine... MacOS still uses the same 4GB... but you would have 12GB for your applications.

In that example... you would have three times as much RAM available to you on a 16GB machine vs an 8GB machine.

It's not *that* simple.

 

[Michael Scrip]

It's not *that* simple.

I didn't say it was.

I was merely asking how much RAM is taken up by the system and how much RAM is available for the user.

That's what everyone is wondering about, right? How much RAM they have for their applications?

 

[pldelisle]

I didn't say it was.

I was merely asking how much RAM is taken up by the system and how much RAM is available for the user.

The system will take as much as it can. We're not in the 90s anymore.