i am a music producer currently using abletonon a base model M1 Mac Mini 8 GB. you can see in these screen shots that my biggest project in ableton is using 10.97 gb. and then theres everything else. memory pressure is constantly in yellow for hours a day as i work on my projects. the biggest project i ever had used 12 gb. I am currently thinking of upgrading to 16 inch M1 Pro macbook pro with 10 core cpu and 16 gb ram. do you think 16 will be enough? frankly i notice NO performance issues right now even with 8gb even though my projects are using 10gb+... M1 is really magical. but i dont want to stress the SSD with swap for years, i plan on keeping the next macbook at least 3 years and it will have 1 TB ssd. obviously 32 gb would be nice but i cant really afford that now so im hoping 16 will be enough. i mean i get by with 8gb just fine right now and have great performance, idk how M1 does it. so twice as much (16) maybe will be fine?
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Look at these pics to help me see how much ram i need please!
- Thread starter kofman13
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My seat of the pants experience would say that 16GB should be plenty and leave room to grow over a few years RAM requirements increase.
Your swap memory usage isn't horrible and your memory pressure looks decent. Compressed memory is reasonable. Given all that I would assume that you are having a good experience with 8GB. Moving to 16GB might not be that noticeable of an improvement unless you're getting a lot of beachballs. The extra RAM might take care of those.
Your swap memory usage isn't horrible and your memory pressure looks decent. Compressed memory is reasonable. Given all that I would assume that you are having a good experience with 8GB. Moving to 16GB might not be that noticeable of an improvement unless you're getting a lot of beachballs. The extra RAM might take care of those.
If budget is a concern then there is no real need to go above 16GB. Matter of fact you could make do with the 8GB mini if you don’t feel the interfacing is slowing you down. Then a few years from now when you eventually move on to a better future machine by then Apple’s offering will probably be much more mature.
And to answer your original question: if one of the machines I manage show this pressure graph I would swap a 16GB ASAP. But that’s because we have the budget for it and this 8GB machine can been handed to some desk with lesser usage. And no this is nowhere near needing 32GB. For someone seriously needing 32GB he would be grind to a halt on a 8GB machine.
And to answer your original question: if one of the machines I manage show this pressure graph I would swap a 16GB ASAP. But that’s because we have the budget for it and this 8GB machine can been handed to some desk with lesser usage. And no this is nowhere near needing 32GB. For someone seriously needing 32GB he would be grind to a halt on a 8GB machine.
I have zero performance issues right now in terms of freezing or beach balls. thanks for the input
THanks! i could get by with this mac mini. but im getting more and more paid projects and i need to be portable sometimes and need my projects with me. when i know im going to be away from home for hours and need my projects, i use my 2018 13 inch macbook pro but its slower than Mac mini but most importantly its a super pain to deal with two computers, some plugins only allow 1 activation at a time, preferences and plugins and presets upto date on two computers, two back ups, its just a pain. so thats why i want to upgrade also move to just using one computer that can do everything. and the latest project i did basically pays for the macbook pro i want to get so it makes sense kind of ( also want to treat myself lol)
P.S. also my mac mini and older macbook pro both have 256gb internal memory and i want to finally stop having external drive hanging off all the time, so 1TB internal on next macbook is another reason
Good deal!
There are some out there that get anxious if there memory pressure is yellow. I view it as if you're making effective use of the RAM you have available. Now if the pressure is in the red, that's a different story. ?
Since you posted the most intensive workload that you're experience, then 8GB is good.
Stop using so many Intel only software! It's well know Rosetta seems to eat RAM! SSO look for only Universal of native Silicon versions first!
how do you know im using so many intel apps. most of mine are M1 except Live lol
If you look at Live is your problem! Like I said before Intel only apps through Rosetta EAT UP RAM! So look at changing your DAW to Ableton sense they went Universal! This should help!
While it's perfectly true that running x86 software on Apple Silicon will perform worse than running native software in all aspects including memory usage, if the OP doesn't have performance issues and enjoys and makes money off of the workflow they are currently utilising, more performance at the cost of changing workflow may not be a valuable trade-off
thats kind of hitting the nail on the head. The new M1 native version of ableton just dropped which is true but it also drops support for VST2 plugins that are not updated and quite a few of my plugins are older. And due to the nature of my workflow working with other producers/artists/clients i need to be up and running all the time and changing or replacing plugins right now would end me. thats why i have to stick with ableton 11 not 11.1 right now.
Okay in this case it may be a good time to jump into and invest in a 16" then:
1) The Apple Silicon transition just happened and it leap forged the Intel generation of Macs (which you know 1st hand, with your mini)
2) The following iterations of M2 on wards probably won't see a change as significant
3) The 14" 16" MBP just received a drastic form factor change that is almost universally regarded as huge improvements (except the notch), again this chassis will carry on for another 2-3 iterations
4) If portability is a huge consideration then you are looking at 14/16" MBP vs 13"MBP vs Air, where the latter 2 are subjected to renew any time within this year
So buying a 16" is a really sound investment at this point in time.
Then as to configs; you have budget concerns, don't get anything more than you absolutely need:
1) 16" is indeed a substantially larger real estate than 14", and it only cost 200 more
2) 1TB over 512GB ask price is reasonable, and you need that space as a long term main machine
3) 32GB RAM has questionable need for your case if not clearly useless
So the mid-tier 16" M1 Pro 16GB 1TB is your sweetspot. It is a standard config so it is easier to score deals on 3rd party store or Apple's official refurb. Wait time is also a lot less than any 32GB BTO for instance.
The only way you can save even more is to config a custom 14" from the very base with the binned chip, but only add 1TB option.
From your stats, it seems like 16GB could be a sweet spot for you. But then again, if 8GB works performance-wise... If you check the output of the command vm_stat in the terminal, it will tell you the number of memory pages written to swap (swapouts) since the last reboot/shut down. Multiply this by 16KB and you will see how much data is actually being written to your SSD due to memory pressure. There was someone in another thread who saw around 1TB SSD swap writes per week under memory conditions that looked worse than yours. But even that excessive usage should still give you at least 7-10 years of SSD (depending of course how much other writes are going on).
It seems to me that a bigger change for going M1 Pro will be the extra performance. But personally, I don't think I would change if I were happy with the current M1 performance.
It seems to me that a bigger change for going M1 Pro will be the extra performance. But personally, I don't think I would change if I were happy with the current M1 performance.
16GB would be the sweet spot for you mate for sure, I also came from a 8GB Air and was doing 10GB of swap every day 
Meh, its fine. Your pressure is only in yellow so it doesn't really matter if your app is Intel, especially since you plan on upgrading to something with 16GB. Keep the Intel version for plugin compatibility with the goal of eventually using the non-intel one.
You def want a larger internal SSD since hanging a drive off your laptop all the time sucks. Swap is faster with a lot of open drive space and wear is also reduced. 16/1TB is what you should go for.
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If a user wants more space then look at the thread Thunderbolt 3 NVMe SSD .... to get the best select at your budget for size!
If you look through that whole thread some users say it's about ⅔ the speed of their internal!
Looks like iStat Menus to me. I personally use the open source Stats instead since it's FOSS and basically offers the same features in a flexible package, but iStat is a good program too
I was using a trial of istat menus it expired i aint buying that haha. is open source stats free? where do i find it?
Stats is free. I found it here. exelban/stats: macOS system monitor in your menu bar - GitHubhttps://github.com › exelban › stats