M1 Max 32GB vs 64GB RAM? Use cases for each

[frutiger75]

This is truly the ultimate question. I had a hard time deciding , but in the end, I decided to buy 32GB RAM, and configure up to a 2TB SSD for a 16 inch MacBook Pro M1 Max. One reason is that I currently have the 2019 16 inch Intel MacBook with 32GB of RAM and a 2TB HD. I edit video, do some color grading and color correction for video and a lot of photo editing in Adobe Lr, Adobe Photoshop and Capture One. My use case, requires mostly CPU, and GPU instances. In video, I use Davinci Resolve and sometimes FCP or Adobe Premiere. These applications rely a lot on CPU and GPU, so that's why I went for the most CPU and GPU you I could get. Although these applications can take up a lot of RAM, I have rarely needed more than 32GB of RAM. I would often run into bottle necks in CPU and GPU before I would ever run into issues with RAM.
With my photography work, its a bit of the same thing for my use case. I don't do heavy design work, so most of my photography work is heavy color correction and editing. And 32GB of RAM in my past experience has always been more than sufficient even with heavy Photoshop workflows. My wife is a print designer, and utilizes only 16GB of RAM, and she often hits her max in RAM, but not by that much and not often, so 32GB would be game changing for her.
I opted the funds I would have spent upgrading to 64, into storage space. Because I tend to run out of storage more often. I looked at my usage on my existing 2TB storage and it looks like I'm always close to about 1TB utilized, and I don't like to have a 3/4 full storage drive, so 2TB has become a sweet spot for me, where I have enough room to play, edit internally if I need to and don't feel like I'll run out anytime soon.

I also will note that I see massive performance gains, with this new unified RAM architecture. I also own a Mac mini M1, and have seen it perform in ways that are comparable to my 2019 MacBook Pro with 32GB of RAM, so there is definitely effieciancies I've seen. I almost feel like the RAM equivalencies are slightly different in the new M1 architecture. For example, a 16GB RAM M1 system "feels" more like a 32GB Intel system to me, as does a 8GB M1 system (which is what I have in the Mac mini) felt and performed similarly to a Intel based 16GB system. This is just based on tests utilizing my stack of applications above.

So with all that said, 32GB of RAM should be more than enough for most applications, and I would segment 64GB of RAM as a need for people utilizing high performance computing tasks, designed to utilize the maximum output of a system, which could include high performance computational "number crunching" (scientific computing), visual FX and gaming development, and heavy and I mean heavy motion graphics work. One other use case I might include is music synthesis and audio. Many of those applications require good amounts of RAM as it loads a lot of audio samples into RAM Cache for virtual instruments in music and sound design applications. If you load up a ton of tracks, that all loads up into memory, while the audio plugins utilize processors. So if you have heavy track counts with a lot of virtual instruments than 64GB might also be a justification.

The rest of the bunch wanting 64GB of RAM are folks that want it and can afford it, and that's perfectly good as well. After all, if you compare how much it would have cost you to upgrade to 64GB of RAM in an intel machine, you will quickly see that the system last year was more expensive. So the value in these new M1 systems are quite compelling when you do the math.

So that's my 2-cents on the use cases and the comparison/justifications of 32GB vs 64GB

so i run logic with many virtual instruments, have about 150 tabs open across 4 web browsers, do word processing during the day, use photoshop occasionally, excel constantly, and a few other apps. is 32 enough or should i spring for 64? currently running a 2013 with 16 and...it's bogging me down. is doubling the RAM to worth the extra $400 or is that overkill?

 

[MrGunny94]

I'm a cloud engineer and ordered 16GB of RAM. Already using my MBA M1 and it runs "fine" on 8GB, sure I got 10gb of swap every day but I think the 16GB is enough in my use case... Since you know I can make it happen on a MBA base model.

 

[jdanield]

so i run logic with many virtual instruments, have about 150 tabs open across 4 web browsers, do word processing during the day, use photoshop occasionally, excel constantly, and a few other apps. is 32 enough or should i spring for 64? currently running a 2013 with 16 and...it's bogging me down. is doubling the RAM to worth the extra $400 or is that overkill?

I'm wondering the same thing - I run ProTools & Logic, use a lot of virtual instruments like Omnisphere and Keyscape and wondering if the 32GB is worth it.

 

[adamjackson]

what do you use it for?

Adobe Creative Squite, Final Cut Pro, Compressor, Project Management, Real Estate, Wedding Photography, YouTube, Podcasting and I'm a data hoarder so I'm often moving a lot of stuff around, running hand brake or ripping disks for archival. I run a few web sites too...nothing serious.

MacOS will use what you give it:

and this is me doing my evening stuff nothing power user. Just 'normal' night time forums reading.

Over the weekend, I had a few things going at once

1. Importing 4500 RAW images off the Canon 5D Mark IV from a wedding and applying bath settings and rendering 1:1 previews
2. Importing 2 hours of multi-cam goPro hero 9 content from a motorcycle event
3. Importing 4K, 60FPS dolby vision video off the iPhone 13 Pro

The Core i9 was pegged to the max for 6 hours, the RAM was at maximum usage..I think LightRoom classic and Photoshop combined had grabbed 16GB of RAM. Final Cut had 6-8GB allocated and Photos for Mac was doing facial analysis on 800 30 megapixel JPEGs and that was using a lot of CPU cycles.

As usual, the Radeon Vega 48 sat idle....worst BTO option ever. that GPU almost never does anything. it just sits there eating power.

Here is 30 days of Vega 48 CPU Usage:

 

[ProMod]

I’m looking at the same system as you, with similar design-centric app usage. If I need something more powerful, I’ll just upgrade in a year or two.

Great minds think alike! I went with my gut feeling, and I think it will be sufficient. I am trading in my current 2016 15" to Apple for $700, so the RAM alone would have eaten over half my trade in. That's when I paused and went with the standard config.

 

[Kierkegaarden]

Great minds think alike! I went with my gut feeling, and I think it will be sufficient. I am trading in my current 2016 15" to Apple for $700, so the RAM alone would have eaten over half my trade in. That's when I paused and went with the standard config.

Nice trade in! Have fun creating with your new supercomputer ?

 

[slowloris615]

Great thoughts, i really think 32 will be the sweet spot for almost everyone. Id go with 64 but I wanted to keep my price under 4000 with applecare, and at the moment Ive been editing for tv shows with just 16gb of ram and its been fine, I can't really justify all that memory.

 

[frutiger75]

bit the bullet and went with 64. i hate the 'wheel of death.' ran FCP and Logic tonight and was heavily lagging on rendering/compressing/etc. on 16. it's been 8 years. $400 more is what -- a speeding ticket? overkill it may be, but i'll be okay. still running mavericks, lol, so i think i'l welcome a new workhorse.

 

[gordosuperfly]

I work more with logic, illustrator, photoshop, lightroom, etc... I also do some machine learning stuff but minimal at this point.

I know I don't really need the 64 gb but the main reason why I want it is the 400 gb/s bandwidth (double)... And the fact that I have a billion apps open at once. Do you think the bandwidth plays a role in your decision making or does that only matter for high intensity tasks such as FCP/blender/CAD? Like editing multiple streams of 8k video for example...?

 

[gordosuperfly]

so i run logic with many virtual instruments, have about 150 tabs open across 4 web browsers, do word processing during the day, use photoshop occasionally, excel constantly, and a few other apps. is 32 enough or should i spring for 64? currently running a 2013 with 16 and...it's bogging me down. is doubling the RAM to worth the extra $400 or is that overkill?

I tend to think with that heavy of simultaneous usage you might as well just pay the $400 for the 64 gb. I don't know for sure but that is a lot of multitasking and if you want to ensure max performance go with the max....

 

[gordosuperfly]

very limited data source and this has not been fully confirmed with testing but this m1 max with 64gb slightly outperforms an m1 max with 32gb on multicore score:

m1 max 32gb:

MacBookPro18,2 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a MacBookPro18,2 with an Apple M1 Max processor.

browser.geekbench.com

m2 max 64gb:

MacBookPro18,2 - Geekbench

Benchmark results for a MacBookPro18,2 with an Apple M1 Max processor.

browser.geekbench.com

Wow. This is actually really interesting if confirmed source... The difference is actually pretty minimal. Hmmm.

 

[Hisoka187]

I work more with logic, illustrator, photoshop, lightroom, etc... I also do some machine learning stuff but minimal at this point.

I know I don't really need the 64 gb but the main reason why I want it is the 400 gb/s bandwidth (double)... And the fact that I have a billion apps open at once. Do you think the bandwidth plays a role in your decision making or does that only matter for high intensity tasks such as FCP/blender/CAD? Like editing multiple streams of 8k video for example...?

What exactly does 400 bandwidth do? Does it help in gaming?

also anyone here actually end up using AppleCare? All my Apple products never caused me any issues yet

 

[Mr. Awesome]

Premiere is optimized for M1 and runs GREAT. I don't think AE is yet, but even if it was optimized AE is such a heavy program and sucks on even the best of machines, so you have to take it with a grain of salt. It just eats up RAM so I always go as high as possible when I can. I have a PC I use AE on that I put 128GB of RAM in solely for the purpose of AE and it's wonderful.

I don’t use AE regularly, but I do use it fairly frequently for one-off projects. My current MBP has 16GB and it runs okay (with preview set to a third resolution.) Do you think it would run fairly smoothly on 32GB?

 

[Mr. Awesome]

What exactly does 400 bandwidth do? Does it help in gaming?

also anyone here actually end up using AppleCare? All my Apple products never caused me any issues yet

The bandwidth just means how much can be written to and read from the RAM at once. I don’t know how helpful it is for gaming, but it’s definitely going to be nice if you need to edit large files or databases.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

MacOS will use what you give it:

What is this app? I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know what it is. I use eul a lot for monitoring performance, but I’ve never seen this.

 

[MrGunny94]

What is this app? I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know what it is. I use eul a lot for monitoring performance, but I’ve never seen this.

This is iStats menu, the Memory tab widget

 

[januarydrive7]

What is this app? I’ve seen it before, but I don’t know what it is. I use eul a lot for monitoring performance, but I’ve never seen this.

Looks like iStats, which I've used in the past. There's an open-source (swift-based) app called Stats on GitHub that is similar, with a small active dev community. Reasonable feature requests are typically added within a week or so (or sooner, if you implement yourself and submit a PR). Highly recommended: https://github.com/exelban/stats.

Disclaimer -- I'm not affiliated with the primary developer, although I've contributed to the project.

 

[Cybertruck20]

I don’t use AE regularly, but I do use it fairly frequently for one-off projects. My current MBP has 16GB and it runs okay (with preview set to a third resolution.) Do you think it would run fairly smoothly on 32GB?

Yeah for occasional use I’d say 32 is fine. I have AE open 8 hours a day with constant usage so 64 is a must for me. But for the occasional usage, I don’t see any reason to upgrade to 64 unless you see yourself increasing how much you use it down the road.

 

[mrdogcat]

As someone who will be using it for Adobe suites (Print/Web/Video creation) would 64GB Be overkill? I'm on the fence and need a push either way.

 

[Mr. Awesome]

Yeah for occasional use I’d say 32 is fine. I have AE open 8 hours a day with constant usage so 64 is a must for me. But for the occasional usage, I don’t see any reason to upgrade to 64 unless you see yourself increasing how much you use it down the road.

Gotcha! Thanks for the advice! I mostly use AE for animations and the like.

 

[slowloris615]

As someone who will be using it for Adobe suites (Print/Web/Video creation) would 64GB Be overkill? I'm on the fence and need a push either way.

I never see 32 being an issue with premiere. Even with tabs and scripts open its fine. 16 though is a problem, I've had some major issues with running too many things with that. Even with 16 though I've been able to work. 32 should be fine... I am myself wondering if I should of went 64...but alas I don't want to wait 5 weeks now for my machine I want it next week lol

 

[triton100]

I didn't even think twice and went 64 GB. I do heavy video, motion graphics and 3D work between different applications and always have way too many things open at once so the headroom is nice to have, especially with After Effects eating up 75% of it constantly.

Have u not ever considered the Mac pro route so you can get a better gpu for modelling?

 

[Cybertruck20]

Have u not ever considered the Mac pro route so you can get a better gpu for modelling?

I have considered it, HEAVILY, but I love Apple laptops and I'll always have one. For the super intense work, I'll switch over to one of my Windows machines. I have an Intel 9900k with 2080 Super and a 10850k with 3080ti. Those do the trick and it would be overkill to also get a Mac Pro, as much as I'd love it. Someday I may do it... but for now, I'd rather have a MBP around and work off Windows desktop hardware when absolutely necessary.

 

[triton100]

I have considered it, HEAVILY, but I love Apple laptops and I'll always have one. For the super intense work, I'll switch over to one of my Windows machines. I have an Intel 9900k with 2080 Super and a 10850k with 3080ti. Those do the trick and it would be overkill to also get a Mac Pro, as much as I'd love it. Someday I may do it... but for now, I'd rather have a MBP around and work off Windows desktop hardware when absolutely necessary.

Ah ok. Im the one with the Mac Pro and now the M1 max ha. I’ll probably sell the Mac Pro though if I the max runs well with 3d modelling and world building.

 

[Cybertruck20]

As someone who will be using it for Adobe suites (Print/Web/Video creation) would 64GB Be overkill? I'm on the fence and need a push either way.

You should be okay with 32 unless you heavily use more of the graphics/modeling applications like Dimension, After Effects, Animate or Character Animator. Those use a lot more RAM than the other programs. If you use them occasionally you'll be fine with 32 but if you use them all day everyday like I do, you may want to consider 64 or you'll be using SWAP like there's no tomorrow.