save some grief, buy 16gb and never look back
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I am really torn between 8GB vs. 16GB RAM
- Thread starter Booji
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If you do ANY work besides mail, internet and office apps (word, ppt, and small data sets in excel) you need 16gb. Yes, your 8gb will be able to handle now while it still is new. But the ssd use will degrade your ssd, more ssd usage for swap generates more heat and battery...the collateral effect will be seen with time
If you have a Mac Pro, you can add USB 3 via a card (see sig); PCIe 3 isn't an issue for video, you can't saturate a PCIe 2 bus in 2021: with storage, you are limited by the speed of the hard drive (I did a RAID0 boot drive to help with this - I could reach the SSDs max read/write); Thunderbolt is still (and always will be) a solution in search of a problem. NVMe is in the same boat. AFA needing HEVC encoding - that is a choice. If you need that - move to windows. BTW, in windows everything just works. No need to spend time trying to jury rig something for a decade old computer. Added bonus, Windows 10 is as bullet proof as Mac OS. (I never thought I would type that, but here we are.)
You appear to only do one thing at a time on your computer. That is a side effect of only having 8gb. When I first installed OS/2 in 1992, I left that world behind. I have my entire workflow open simultaneously (6 or 7 apps), Cntrl-tabing between them as needed. That isn't an option on 8Gb (or 32Gb) of ram. As a minimum, it will help with reducing the time for task completion. Which is important if you value your time.
Again, it isn't about what you need today, it is about what you may need tomorrow - having to think about this is one of the many downsides of having a sealed system with no ability to upgrade - the computer becomes an appliance, and is limited in what it can do.
I have been down this rabbit hole with my macbook pro - hence my suggestion to max out any system you get. Every time I increased memory, I got more performance.
AFA getting a new system, if your needs increase, how long will it take for the next generation of Apple Silicon hardware to show up? Apple doesn't do road maps, so you could be stuck with that computer for YEARS. How long between the 6,1 & the 7,1? Oh yeah, over 2,000 days. Obviously, that won't be an issue for Gen 1 (It will have it's own problems, if past performance of V.1 Apple Hardware is any guide), but how long until Timmy kicks out version 2?
I was able to nurse those Mac Pros for over a decade because I nearly maxed each of them out. By the end of 2019, it was more trouble than it was worth, and I replaced it with a real computer. Outperforms any Apple Silicon based computer, for the price of a bottom of the barrel MacBook Pro.
And I can upgrade both the CPU and GPU (ram is already maxed out) as needed, saving me a LOT of money.
Uh newer macs support HEVC. 2010 Mac Pro did not. And how would that impact what I said? If I moved to windows at the time, I would not be getting a 2010 Intel processor that lacked HEVC, therefore my statement still stands - you need newer PC tech anyway instead of just a RAM increase.
As far as the other stuff you mention, yes I actually did notice a difference between PCIe 3 and PCIe 2 with my graphics cards.
CS:GO actually shows a difference between PCIe 4 and PCIe 3.
It's only a hot question because Apple charges reasonable prices for base models and extortion for all forms of BTO. $200 for an extra 8 GB of RAM? That's practically criminal.
Or less than 5 years depending how much swap your SSD is doing everyday
You can also look at it as $200 now for extra ram, and upgrade in say 5 years (who knows when the mini will be updated), or save $200 now and pay ~$800 in 2 years (your plan) for replacement, with a good chance nobody wants your 8gb M1 ....
People need to stop spreading this crap.
Modern SSD’s aren’t going to die from swap. I have over a petabyte written on a Samsung 860 Evo I use in a server, it mostly serves as a cache and a write buffer to a 10TB spinning disk. It’s at 99% Health.
Endurance varies with different types of NAND (SLC > MLC > TLC > QLC). Samsung 860 EVO is MLC while NAND in the M1 is probably no better than TLC. MLC program/write cycles is between 30K and 10K compared to 5K for TLC so about 1/6 to 1/2 the endurance. Hopefully, Q in SSD part # AP0256Q doesn't mean QLC otherwise it's 1K P/E cycles.
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Nope. 860 EVO is 3D TLC NAND. It's the 860 PRO that's MLC.
That said, hard for me to fathom a petabyte worth of writes on the 860 EVO not nudging the media wearout indicator when my 860 EVO already shows some decrease. Granted, Samsung may be basing health on spare blocks used.
Nope. Samsung specs show MLC.
https://www.samsung.com/semiconductor/minisite/ssd/product/consumer/860evo/
STORAGE MEMORY
Samsung V-NAND 3bit MLC
3-bit MLC = TLC
Which is technically correct considering the M in MLC stands for Multi. However, colloquially, MLC is typically used in reference to 2-bit MLC.
Nope. 2-bit is eMLC and 3-bit is MLC. Stop arguing with Samsung when you're wrong.
While eMLC (enhanced MLC) likely does use 2-bit MLC, 3-bit MLC actually is TLC. Check their QVO drives with QLC NAND. It will say 4-bit MLC. I'm not arguing with Samsung. I'm just familiar with their marketing techniques.
Multi-level cell - Wikipedia
P/E cycles (rough estimate)
SLC: 100,000+
MLC 50 nm: 10,000
MLC 3x nm: 5,000
MLC 2x nm: 3,000
TLC (planar): 1,000
3D TLC: 3,000
I've never really paid attention to P/E cycles for 3D MLC but it should be better than planar.
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16GB should be standard in 2021. It's really not that much RAM for a modern OS and apps.
This^^ No over ever regretted having too much storage or RAM.
One the other hand, every day, I regret not getting a larger SSD when I bought my Macbook last year. It's already warning me about being low on space and there is nothing I can do about it since I need the files for my work.
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Too bad Apple priced the +8GB upgrade so high at ~+$200 otherwise it's a no brainer. On desktop I standardize on 32GB minimum since it's only ~$120 for Crucial DDR4-3200.
If they didn't price accordingly everyone would go for more memory.
Remember, Apple is a business - they need to make profit for their stakeholders!
Imagine living in Germany/Russia/etc and pay 280$ for +8GB... Why are we still here? Just to suffer?
Has anyone talk about MBA M1 with 8 GB of RAM for Full Stack developer?
Does anyone have tried to run multiple apps? e. g. Docker, Intellij, VS Code, Android Studio
I use Windows right now with 16 GB of RAM, it's kinda between enough and not enough when I run multiple apps.
Does anyone have tried to run multiple apps? e. g. Docker, Intellij, VS Code, Android Studio
I use Windows right now with 16 GB of RAM, it's kinda between enough and not enough when I run multiple apps.
I see this thread has been beat to death but here's my take. I bought the M1 pro at costco in mid december, it was on sale and came with 8gb of ram. I assumed apple was full of **** in their marketing speak regarding the ram. I can wholeheartedly report now that indeed they were full of ****. I haven't tried a 16gb arm mac yet, and honestly probably won't (at least for a LONG time).
FWIW, I am a power user, but I bought the 13 M1 because I was having surgery and was disallowed from lifting more than 5 pounds for 6 weeks, so it filled that purpose. I didn't expect to do anything intense on it, just use iterm, chrome, messages, textedit, intellij for light work, vlc etc.. But I found it constantly unusable as it was OOMing. It has sat on one of my desks unopened now for more than 4 weeks and I'll be returning it in the next day or three.
FWIW, I am a power user, but I bought the 13 M1 because I was having surgery and was disallowed from lifting more than 5 pounds for 6 weeks, so it filled that purpose. I didn't expect to do anything intense on it, just use iterm, chrome, messages, textedit, intellij for light work, vlc etc.. But I found it constantly unusable as it was OOMing. It has sat on one of my desks unopened now for more than 4 weeks and I'll be returning it in the next day or three.
I wouldn't do it. I'm not a full stack dev, but I use docker, intellij, among other things you probably use, too, for physics modeling and my M1 mac was unusable for this. iterm works but homebrew is still a joke. VNC is a joke. mosh works, sure. Worse yet I couldn't connect both of my Dell P2715Q 4k displays because then well I couldn't charge my mac. One isn't enough screen real estate for me.
I would recommend you look into a used 2018+ 5k iMac with 32-64gb of ram. A lot of my hedge fund friends that insist on macs love their mac minis with eGPUs, too.
If you're a dev I don't understand why this question is being asked. Get more ram. You can build whatever to test your app with less ram, but you probably need the additional ram for tools, debugs, etc. Oh, and to have enough ram to test your app with various ram levels.