m1 base ... 7 core vs 8 , 8vs 16gb .... mostly adobe stuff and web browsing.

[enthawizeguy]

so I thought I would get an MacBook Air.... more for portability . I have a 16 inch mbp with 64gb ram but its hot and the fans drive me crazy ( might upgrade as soon as I can ) but I figure I would just get the AIR for around the house stuff . I mostly use light room , photoshop, illustrator , in design and would be surfing the web. I was thinking about just getting the base model with 8gb ram and 512 and7 core to keep it cheap.


7 core vs 8 gpu for adobe apps?
8gb vs 16gb ram...


help me decide. If I got base id prob trade it in like a year to 2 like iPad.

 

[Malus120]

Easy.
7 Core GPU, 16GB Ram.
The extra ~9% or so the extra core gets you (its not linear scaling) is unlikely to be noticeable for most people in most use cases, but 8GB of ram, (especially if paired with the 256GB base SSD) will easily bottleneck even a lot of lighter users IMHO. I've made the 8GB MBA absolutely chug from memory pressure.

Honestly speaking be prepared for the M1 MBA to embarrass your 16MBP in native apps (not saying it will be faster but the speed combined with absolute silence really is something else).

 

[enthawizeguy]

Easy.
7 Core GPU, 16GB Ram.
The extra ~9% or so the extra core gets you (its not linear scaling) is unlikely to be noticeable for most people in most use cases, but 8GB of ram, (especially if paired with the 256GB base SSD) will easily bottleneck even a lot of lighter users IMHO. I've made the 8GB MBA absolutely chug from memory pressure.

Honestly speaking be prepared for the M1 MBA to embarrass your 16MBP in native apps.

ya I was thinking bout getting 16 ... I dunno.

 

[vigilant]

ya I was thinking bout getting 16 ... I dunno.

Really take performance into consideration.

What I’d tell you is that when I lived in the Adobe world, it can be taxing. You’ll be far happier with an M1 MacBook Air compared to any Intel MacBook Air.

The M1 MacBook Air, is an astounding performance machine. But when it gets hot, it drops in speed with just the heat spreader. Thats the reason why I got myself a MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro M1 does little to no performance drop due to heat. At least thats been my experience.

Depending on what you do, you maybe fine with 8GB. I’m not gentle with my new MacBook Pro, but I’ll tell you that it does seem to take a beating on RAM, and reply back with “Is that all you got, I thought you were a Pro” with 16GB.

 

[jdb8167]

I don't generally do video production and my use of video compression is limited to personal use. I don't play many games though I did play one game from Apple Arcade to completion since I have 3 free months. Playing the Apple Arcade game was the only time I've felt any real warmth on my M1 MacBook Air. It wasn't a particularly graphically intense game either (called Beyond a Steel Sky). Even doing very long video compression didn't really warm up the MBA. For most people, the M1 MacBook Air will never get particularly hot nor are they likely to really notice any throttling.

 

[armoured]

so I thought I would get an MacBook Air.... more for portability .

7 core vs 8 gpu for adobe apps?
8gb vs 16gb ram...

16 gb ram for adobe stuff. 7/8 core is a difference of only $50 (US prices), more a matter of taste (small speed benefit, but only fifty bucks).

As others noted, if you're going to be doing long sessions that are time-sensitive, you will see some slowdowns for fanless as processor scaled down a bit.

But for a portable machine, sounds great. To me fanless and battery life huge advantages over what you have now (and over what I have now).

 

[Paul1980]

In my opinion if you are actually needing to use more than 8gb then the Air isn't for you. If you want performance then the Pro is the way to go with 16gb. No point having the memory if its thermal throttling under intense loads because of the lack of fan.

As far as people saying 8gb will bottleneck even lighter users is absolute nonsense.

Ive actually just returned my MBA 16gb and got a MBP pro 8gb.

 

[russell_314]

 

[dmccloud]

I went with the 8GB/512GB SSD MBP. So far, I haven't run into any memory issues, even when running Photoshop and/or Lightroom. I have also played some WoW (since it's now native for the M1), and even streamed some games off my Windows PC via Steam (None of which had Mac versions, let alone M1 native builds). Right now, I'm on day 4 without charging this Mac, and I still have 60% battery left. I've also run XCode, NetBeans, Brackets and Atom without any problems.

 

[shoppy]

I have a 16" same as you and got the air till the new silicon 16" MBPs come out. I went for the 512gb air as I needed the storage and just upgraded ram and purchased apple care as it negates the question you are having. It is on par with my 16 pretty much most of the time, only thing that is better is that it just so quiet. The only noise now is my fingers on the keyboard typing.

 

[MacModMachine]

Really take performance into consideration.

What I’d tell you is that when I lived in the Adobe world, it can be taxing. You’ll be far happier with an M1 MacBook Air compared to any Intel MacBook Air.

The M1 MacBook Air, is an astounding performance machine. But when it gets hot, it drops in speed with just the heat spreader. Thats the reason why I got myself a MacBook Pro. The MacBook Pro M1 does little to no performance drop due to heat. At least thats been my experience.

Depending on what you do, you maybe fine with 8GB. I’m not gentle with my new MacBook Pro, but I’ll tell you that it does seem to take a beating on RAM, and reply back with “Is that all you got, I thought you were a Pro” with 16GB.

have you ever even got the air hot ? i mean i have tried but it seems to never get even warm at full load for me....

 

[vigilant]

have you ever even got the air hot ? i mean i have tried but it seems to never get even warm at full load for me....

I can, but it’s not easy. This is the reason why I’m suggesting doing Pro with 8GB instead of MacBook Air with 16GB.

If I’m on Microsoft teams, and the call last about an hour, there is this weird wall the MacBook Air hits where as soon as I hang up, it’s begging me to give it a sec. If you do anything longer than an hour, I expect that the performance wall would hit hard. It takes a few minutes to collect itself and stabilize.

Again, if you’re doing many bursts of high utilization you will probably never notice it on the Air.

I also think it’s worth clarifying SEVERAL things having used the Intel MacBook Pro line, and 2 M1 MacBooks.

The performance characteris are just different. You can feel an Intel starting to get REALLY warm with light load, and as more applications get turned on, you’ll end up with a couple GBs free of RAM, and at least on my now sold MacBook Pro 16 every little thing I do

I can do this exact same thing on my MacBook Pro M1, and it’s seriously not breaking a sweat.

I don’t know if I put this up on here, but there are things that I know if I did with my MacBook Pro 16 it would be miserable. Like if I were to start up a Windows VM give it 4 vCPU, and 6GBs of memory, than install Visual Studio for Windows my laptop is going to be very loud, and other applications will be less responsive. I can do that while on a conference call, take notes, and give a presentation and be very happy with the performance on the M1. I did this very thing on Friday, and was shocked to see 6GBs of memory available, with swap running at 12GB on a 16GB machine.

What is very apparent to me right now, and all I have are theories… but it’s like the Xbox Series X effect of jumping from game to game. On the Xbox One X it’s just pulling the full game page and loading that up takes literal minutes. On the Xbox Series X it’s more like “don’t pick up your phone to check your email, the game is about ready”. I think Apple is doing something very similar for Applications on M1. I know they’ve been KINDA doing this on Intel for years. But I haven’t see it where a 16GB of memory effectively seems to have 24GBs of memory, and the system is prioritizing to have about 5GB free at any given time.

My rough order of magnitude. (ROM) is that because of the data paths on the M1, Apple can use Swap more liberally, to emphasize doing work and doing more tasks. Creative utilization of Swap gives the impression of just MORE headroom than what you can get away with on Intel.

Someone is probably going to make fun of me for saying this, and maybe the implementation details are slightly scewed, but I’m telling you… I probably still would have gotten the Pro, but knowing it took me a month to get it with 16GB of memory if I knew then what I know now I probably would have saved the money and just gotten the 8GB. I would probably complain every now and than, but it truly is astounding what I’m seeing to me.

“Hot” on M1 is also very different. Hot M1 is like “just started up an Intel Mac and your reading a few web sites.

 

[enthawizeguy]

16 gb ram for adobe stuff. 7/8 core is a difference of only $50 (US prices), more a matter of taste (small speed benefit, but only fifty bucks).

As others noted, if you're going to be doing long sessions that are time-sensitive, you will see some slowdowns for fanless as processor scaled down a bit.

But for a portable machine, sounds great. To me fanless and battery life huge advantages over what you have now (and over what I have now).

isnt 7 or 8 core a 300 dollar difference

 

[enthawizeguy]

In my opinion if you are actually needing to use more than 8gb then the Air isn't for you. If you want performance then the Pro is the way to go with 16gb. No point having the memory if its thermal throttling under intense loads because of the lack of fan.

As far as people saying 8gb will bottleneck even lighter users is absolute nonsense.

Ive actually just returned my MBA 16gb and got a MBP pro 8gb.

ya I dont need another pro I have the 16

 

[enthawizeguy]

I went with the 8GB/512GB SSD MBP. So far, I haven't run into any memory issues, even when running Photoshop and/or Lightroom. I have also played some WoW (since it's now native for the M1), and even streamed some games off my Windows PC via Steam (None of which had Mac versions, let alone M1 native builds). Right now, I'm on day 4 without charging this Mac, and I still have 60% battery left. I've also run XCode, NetBeans, Brackets and Atom without any problems.

What kind of stuff do you do on the adobe apps?

 

[rui no onna]

isnt 7 or 8 core a 300 dollar difference

Depends how much storage you need.

7C/8GB/256GB - $999

7C/8GB/512GB - $1199

8C/8GB/512GB - $1249

Like for like, the 8C GPU only costs $50 more. That said, if you don't need 512GB then it's $250 more than base MBA.

 

[1240766]

These machines rely heavily on swap. My suggestion is go for 512ssd before 16gb of ram. If you do go for the 512ssd, the price difference between the 7core to 8core is $50.

If you can jump to the 16gb with 512ssd, go for it....if you have to choose between larger ssd vs more memory, for these systems, I would pick more ssd....not because of need to use more space but because of swap.

 

[rui no onna]

Mind, I just had my first glitch on M1 MBA 8C/8GB/512GB.

26 tabs open in Safari, several of which are webpages from Best Buy and Amazon eating ~400-500MB RAM each. When I went back to an older MacRumors thread I was replying to, it was glitching. I couldn't edit my reply, I couldn't select text. I had to reload the tab (thank goodness MR saves drafts) to get it working again.

Memory pressure was green the entire time, memory used was ~6.5GB and swap ~4GB.

 

[armoured]

isnt 7 or 8 core a 300 dollar difference

As another user pointed out, $50 on a like for like basis (comparable specs). But if you were going to get the base model, you can't get the 8 core without getting the 512gb drive (which would be $200 on its own, and $50 for the eighth core).

So it does depend on how you look at it.

 

[johnkree]

I went with the 7/256 and 16 GB RAM. Why?
because of future proofing. When I bought the MacBook Pro 2011 4 GB RAM was enough for everything. But it got old very fast. The difference is that this one you can’t upgrade. I saw all the tests and yea 8 GB may be more than enough for now but will it be enough in 1-2 years? In 4 years? In 8? Just ask yourself: how long will you keep it. And then it’s simple math. I want to keep it at least for 6 years so 200€ / 6 is 33€ a year or 2.75€ a month. Now I don’t know you but I spent 33€ a year on so much crap that this is a no brainer...

 

[pugxiwawa]

These machines rely heavily on swap. My suggestion is go for 512ssd before 16gb of ram. If you do go for the 512ssd, the price difference between the 7core to 8core is $50.

This is why you want 16gb of ram first, to avoid having to swap...but yes I agree 16G/512GB is the sweet spot.

Mind, I just had my first glitch on M1 MBA 8C/8GB/512GB.

26 tabs open in Safari, several of which are webpages from Best Buy and Amazon eating ~400-500MB RAM each. When I went back to an older MacRumors thread I was replying to, it was glitching. I couldn't edit my reply, I couldn't select text. I had to reload the tab (thank goodness MR saves drafts) to get it working again.

Memory pressure was green the entire time, memory used was ~6.5GB and swap ~4GB.

I experienced similar glitches here and there when I had the same 8G/512G. Never seen that again once I upgraded to 16GB. That's why we've been advising people to go with 16GB if they can afford.

 

[1240766]

This is why you want 16gb of ram first, to avoid having to swap...but yes I agree 16G/512GB is the sweet spot.


I experienced similar glitches here and there when I had the same 8G/512G. Never seen that again once I upgraded to 16GB. That's why we've been advising people to go with 16GB if they can afford.

The 16gb uses swap just as much as the 8gb, the chip architect is different, memory management is different, etc

 

[pugxiwawa]

The 16gb uses swap just as much as the 8gb, the chip architect is different, memory management is different, etc

Disagreed. There's much bigger headroom with 16GB so OS doesn't need to swap. Had used both systems side-by-side with same usage pattern and the difference is pretty noticeable.

 

[rui no onna]

I experienced similar glitches here and there when I had the same 8G/512G. Never seen that again once I upgraded to 16GB. That's why we've been advising people to go with 16GB if they can afford.

Oh, I do plan to get 16GB/1TB once wait times aren't so long. I just wanted a new laptop ASAP for WFH and the 16GB were all delayed to late Jan/early Feb.

Alas, software (Microsoft RDP) was somewhat problematic so I actually ended up using my old, loud 15.6" ThinkPad for telework.

 

[1240766]

Disagreed. There's much bigger headroom with 16GB so OS doesn't need to swap. Had used both systems side-by-side with same usage pattern and the difference is pretty noticeable.

Not a question of need to swap or not, the 16gb swaps a much