Is 36GB RAM going to hamstring M4 Max machine in the future? Have I made the right call?

[groovatious]

Just bought a binned 14" M4 Max 36GB for music production (Logic/MainStage), some "moderate" 4K video editing (around 4 simultaneous 4K streams w FX/grading) and "light" photo editing in Lightroom (24MP images) and it's handling all of this wonderfully.

Was originally planning to go with an M4 Pro (unbinned) w 48GB RAM, but really wanted the extra encoding/decoding engines for FCP which have proved very handy and cut down export/background rendering times substantially.

I'm not even tickling the binned CPU and (during rendering only), memory pressure never gets above 50% while staying well in the green. To get it into yellow and start using swap, I had to simultaneously render 11 layered 4K files in FCP, while using Logic, having MainStage, Lightroom and Photoshop open and a bunch of web pages - far beyond my usual workflow and just a test of the machine.

I don't want to have to upgrade to the unbinned chip as I'm not even close to using the full power of this one, but don't want to step down to the Pro just to get an extra 12GB memory and lose the extra video cores and encoders. So my question is - is 36GB RAM likely to start running out of puff in say, 4/5 years? Aside from what Apple includes w Apple AI, I have no intention of running LLMs/VMs or doing any 3D rendering etc. Thank you for your thoughts!

 

[Andrey84]

Just bought a binned 14" M4 Max 36GB for music production (Logic/MainStage), some "moderate" 4K video editing (around 4 simultaneous 4K streams w FX/grading) and "light" photo editing in Lightroom (24MP images) and it's handling all of this wonderfully.

Was originally planning to go with an M4 Pro (unbinned) w 48GB RAM, but really wanted the extra encoding/decoding engines for FCP which have proved very handy and cut down export/background rendering times substantially.

I'm not even tickling the binned CPU and (during rendering only), memory pressure never gets above 50% while staying well in the green. To get it into yellow and start using swap, I had to simultaneously render 11 layered 4K files in FCP, while using Logic, having MainStage, Lightroom and Photoshop open and a bunch of web pages - far beyond my usual workflow and just a test of the machine.

I don't want to have to upgrade to the unbinned chip as I'm not even close to using the full power of this one, but don't want to step down to the Pro just to get an extra 12GB memory and lose the extra video cores and encoders. So my question is - is 36GB RAM likely to start running out of puff in say, 4/5 years? Aside from what Apple includes w Apple AI, I have no intention of running LLMs/VMs or doing any 3D rendering etc. Thank you for your thoughts!

If under your current usage you have green memory pressure with 36GB, then I don't think you'll have any issues in 4-5 years. There might be no noticeable performance problems even with yellow memory pressure.

 

[dmccloud]

Just bought a binned 14" M4 Max 36GB for music production (Logic/MainStage), some "moderate" 4K video editing (around 4 simultaneous 4K streams w FX/grading) and "light" photo editing in Lightroom (24MP images) and it's handling all of this wonderfully.

Was originally planning to go with an M4 Pro (unbinned) w 48GB RAM, but really wanted the extra encoding/decoding engines for FCP which have proved very handy and cut down export/background rendering times substantially.

I'm not even tickling the binned CPU and (during rendering only), memory pressure never gets above 50% while staying well in the green. To get it into yellow and start using swap, I had to simultaneously render 11 layered 4K files in FCP, while using Logic, having MainStage, Lightroom and Photoshop open and a bunch of web pages - far beyond my usual workflow and just a test of the machine.

I don't want to have to upgrade to the unbinned chip as I'm not even close to using the full power of this one, but don't want to step down to the Pro just to get an extra 12GB memory and lose the extra video cores and encoders. So my question is - is 36GB RAM likely to start running out of puff in say, 4/5 years? Aside from what Apple includes w Apple AI, I have no intention of running LLMs/VMs or doing any 3D rendering etc. Thank you for your thoughts!

I'm running the M2 Max equivalent of your model (32GB RAM instead of 36GB) and I have yet to encounter a scenario where RAM is limiting the performance of my machine, even when running the occasional VM. I think most photo/video editing, coding, and web development will run comfortably on 32 or 36GB RAM, and the only area where more RAM would be beneficial at present is when running local LLMs. If even your test workload didn't red line the memory pressure, then you should have no issues with your actual day to day workload.

 

[fessura]

... memory pressure never gets above 50% while staying well in the green. To get it into yellow and start using swap, I had to simultaneously render 11 layered 4K files in FCP, while using Logic, having MainStage, Lightroom and Photoshop open and a bunch of web pages - far beyond my usual workflow and just a test of the machine.

Perhaps someday your usage of apps will change. You may for instance decide to keep all those apps open all the time, experimenting or working something here or there, playing around, or who knows. You may later decide to always keep Photoshop open, always keep Lightroom open such as if you move your photo collection to it, or something. You may find new ways of efficiency or doing things.

Mail, calendar, task list, address book, browser tabs, dictionaries, pdfs, ebooks, notes, text editor, writing apps, VMs, Terminal, various utilities, and so forth. I like to keep everything open and so for me 36 GB would be enough but I wouldn't be able to have everything open as such and ready all the time.

You may find that or some other way of using your Mac where you find you wish you had more. Maybe you never know. How I use my computer changes and now moving from a 32 GB M1 Pro to 48 GB on the M4 Pro, I can do such. With numerous apps open, and the only heavy one a Windows VM (12 GB RAM, plus a few apps that use 1-3 GB), I already see 32-36 GB RAM usage. It's cool having anything I might use once or a few times a day ready and easy to switch to.