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Is 8gb enough for a 'daily driver' for a lot of tabs, some game dev of ios games, and other stuff?

Zellio

Zellio

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Feb 7, 2012
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I already have a 5800x 2080ti system for gaming, a threadripper 2070 mini system for rendering, and a alienware area 51m 9700k 2080 64gb laptop that I use in the theater and take with me if I need to render on the go, so I'm not hurting for portable power here...
 
I got occasional slowdowns on my M1 Air that I have not noticed so far on my M1 Pro. Light user, mostly just browser, office, citrix, and some misc apps. I got the Air for similar reasons. I have desktops and larger laptops. However, since I use my Mac the most the occasional slowdowns bothered me enough to upgrade.
 
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one thing i would say however is that with lots of tabs then be prepared to see swap used.

With the fast storage then shouldn’t be a problem in terms of performance however if concerned by large disk writes through swap in and out of memory then may want to consider the 16gb upgrade.
 
With that much computing power available. I struggle to see what gains are to be had with the addition of a mac, or is this purely for iOS development ?
 
Lihp8270 said:
With that much computing power available. I struggle to see what gains are to be had with the addition of a mac, or is this purely for iOS development ?
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I already have a mac (The 2017 thing in my sig, as well as the other stuff I have as a collection). I'm upgrading to M1 (Although my current device has 16gb ram...). I've used macs since I got the last plastic macbook around when it came out and found the touchpad to be so so nice...

For laptops I simply prefer osx ?
 
If you can afford 16gb great, otherwise 8gb will work great too, it's not nearly as bad as some people make it seems. Where I live the price of the 16gb model is ridiculous, I can literally buy two Airs M1 8gb for the price of one Air 16gb.
My extreme usage recently was Resolve, Affinity Photo, xcode, vscode, chrome, a docker container running wordpress and safari with a bunch of tabs all opened at the same time, the swap got quite big at 6gb+, but not any noticeable slowdown, swiching between apps on mission control didn't drop a frame. I think most reported performance issues are related to Monterey memory leaks that are getting better on every update.
 
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Zellio said:
I already have a 5800x 2080ti system for gaming, a threadripper 2070 mini system for rendering, and a alienware area 51m 9700k 2080 64gb laptop that I use in the theater and take with me if I need to render on the go, so I'm not hurting for portable power here...
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I’d say you’ll likely be fine, but over the lifespan of your computer, a $250 equivalent isn’t a lot of additional money for peace of mind.
 
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I had to change my Macbook for the 16gb already.
Thing is, these M1 laptops are very snappy compared to intel ones, and it feels like a handbrake when you hit the ram barrier if you like to work fast with your machine, even with the fast SSD swapping.

This is a great laptop and you might end using it for more than you think now.
If you can afford get the 16gb, as you will have a complete and reliable laptop for at least 5 years.
 
Zellio said:
I already have a 5800x 2080ti system for gaming, a threadripper 2070 mini system for rendering, and a alienware area 51m 9700k 2080 64gb laptop that I use in the theater and take with me if I need to render on the go, so I'm not hurting for portable power here...
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I always recommend 16g of ram for anything. May sound harsh but here is why…

Over 5 years, I’ve noted that 90% of users will never close a program, never reboot, and always expect the computer to be functioning. The sample base was pretty varied between demographics.

16g - especially M1 - allows the OS to keep what it wants in ram (and it’s a lot) while offering a smooth buttery experience to the apps people use everyday.

During tests, it was noted that Ram utilization for the M1 stays pretty high. Chrome/Safari, word processors, emails, and file operations may not seem like much but with the demands of every app growing exponentially- 16g will full proof your system for a while.
 
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Zellio said:
I already have a mac (The 2017 thing in my sig, as well as the other stuff I have as a collection). I'm upgrading to M1 (Although my current device has 16gb ram...). I've used macs since I got the last plastic macbook around when it came out and found the touchpad to be so so nice...

For laptops I simply prefer osx
Click to expand...

They call it macOS for a while now
Personally, I’d pick 16 GB but 8 seems to cut if for many folks around here already.
 
I strongly recommend 16GB RAM. With even simple app development, Xcode plus the simulator pushes total memory usage to 12GB+. At least for me, the simulator appears to use 4GB+.If you add many browser tabs to that at the same time… Well, you get the gist. Beyond the general efficiency of M1, it removes the CPU emulation aspect of the simulator. So, that’s a nice perk.
 
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Honestly if you’re planning on keeping the Mac for a while, you should just get the best spec you can comfortably afford. I got the 16gb RAM, which the system does use and it runs great, but I tried to save some cash by getting 256gb storage which I thought I could get away with as I store files on a server.. regretting that now as it’s clear 256 storage won’t last as long as I thought it would due to app sizes. Should have just got the higher spec model with 16GB and 512 or 1TB storage.

Of course a lot simply comes down to budget. If you’re planning on keeping it a while, you’re best speccing it up so it will last, if you will sell on after a short time then you’ll get more of your money back sticking with a lower spec.
 
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Zellio said:
I already have a 5800x 2080ti system for gaming, a threadripper 2070 mini system for rendering, and a alienware area 51m 9700k 2080 64gb laptop that I use in the theater and take with me if I need to render on the go, so I'm not hurting for portable power here...
Click to expand...
With the amount of expensive equipment you have I think the extra $200 for double the amount of RAM shouldn't hurt you too bad. It's worth it in the long run if you plan on keeping it a while. If you're going to sell it next year maybe not.
 
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The golden rule is to get as much as you can stomach.

Apple Silicon doesn’t fall flat on its face when it runs out of RAM, but it’s still a physical limitation.

If you’re making small iOS games and aren’t a tab hoarder then 8 gigs is probably fine. And it sounds like this isn’t your main system so you’re probably gucci with 8 gigs.
 
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