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

[maldahleh]

I guess it’s a good move to pre order this now through apple’s edu page for automatic discount and wait till December for M1 max 64gb? I’ve been looking at bestbuy constantly and pickup option never becomes available for m1 max 16” 32gb. Was gonna wait till release day if stores will have some or store pickup would be available but I guess they’ll be oos and forever be shipping only until next year? I’ve never really bought a MacBook before on Black Friday but I’m guessing they don’t really do discounts, instead do bundles or free gift card? I heard 64 ram could help with windows emulation for games so I’ll go for 64

Stores won’t carry M1 Max + 64 GB, it’s a custom spec. You may find the base M1 Max/32GB/1TB in probably very limited quantities if you get lucky on launch day.

 

[aevan]

Well, my workload is 80% browsing (Chrome, Safari, trading sites, discord, kinda heavy google docs), heavy email client, Telegram, Figma, sometimes heavy PDFs, Xcode (not much) and Docker(not much). I guess it's worth waiting for 64Gb an extra month?

For your workload, 32 is overkill, if you ask me - let alone 64. But this forum claims you need 32 just for web browsing, so in this universe: you probably need 256Gb for future proofing Netflix watching.

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

Are you using a lot of VMs? Are you rendering super-complex scenes in 8K? Are you producing music with a ton of instruments and effects and whatnot? Are you editing 8K ProRes RAW videos? Because that's what you need 64Gb for. Honestly, for what you wrote above, I would suggest an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air.

So, I guess - buy whatever you can afford and enjoy, but.... yeah - you can do all that with a 32Gb MBP.

 

[slowloris615]

For your workload, 32 is overkill, if you ask me - let alone 64. But this forum claims you need 32 just for web browsing, so in this universe: you probably need 256Gb for future proofing Netflix watching.

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

Are you using a lot of VMs? Are you rendering super-complex scenes in 8K? Are you producing music with a ton of instruments and effects and whatnot? Are you editing 8K ProRes RAW videos? Because that's what you need 64Gb for. Honestly, for what you wrote above, I would suggest an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air.

So, I guess - buy whatever you can afford and enjoy, but.... yeah - you can do all that with a 32Gb MBP.

I've been editing major TV shows during covid on my 2018 21.5 inch imac with an ultrawide. It has 6 cores and 16gb of ram. The only issues I ever ran into was having word open with scripts sometimes and too many other things, but even then everything was totally fine. I went with 32 on this machine, it will be more than enough for my workload and then some.

 

[MrGunnyPT]

For your workload, 32 is overkill, if you ask me - let alone 64. But this forum claims you need 32 just for web browsing, so in this universe: you probably need 256Gb for future proofing Netflix watching.

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

Are you using a lot of VMs? Are you rendering super-complex scenes in 8K? Are you producing music with a ton of instruments and effects and whatnot? Are you editing 8K ProRes RAW videos? Because that's what you need 64Gb for. Honestly, for what you wrote above, I would suggest an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air.

So, I guess - buy whatever you can afford and enjoy, but.... yeah - you can do all that with a 32Gb MBP.

Great comment. 16GB is the sweet spot

 

[ducati1212]

Don't forget that the 32 or 64gb is unified memory, so it's a single pool of RAM that gets used for both CPU and GPU. If an app/game uses 12gb of RAM, then the rest of the system would hypothetically have 20gb left for everything else. Even though it's total overkill, my last iMac from 2012 had 32gb or ram, so almost 10 years later I figured I should get something with more ram as a means of future proofing. It's not often that such a radical change in laptop comes around...

Future proof with a mac is 3 years. The M2 will be out next year within 3 years we will have the 100 core 192 GB Ram M3 Max and no matter how fine our first gen M1 Max is we are all getting one.

 

[wilberforce]

Well, my workload is 80% browsing (Chrome, Safari, trading sites, discord, kinda heavy google docs), heavy email client, Telegram, Figma, sometimes heavy PDFs, Xcode (not much) and Docker(not much). I guess it's worth waiting for 64Gb an extra month?

For that usage 16GB would likely be fine, so 32GB would likely be more than enough. 64GB if you like making donations to Apple.

 

[arvinsim]

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

I can clear the confusion for you. You didn't have Chrome open!

 

[Juraj22]

Please stop with these claims. It's been incorrect since day one and it's still incorrect. It's not about access, its about how much space data takes up in memory. 1 GB is 1 GB, whether the architecture is Intel, Arm or something different. While there can be smaller differences between how efficient certain architectures are in loading, compressing and offloading memory - A certain amount of data takes up the same amount of space.

Developer perspective: Well, Not completely true. Unified memory is better, much better. If you work with graphics, you don't need to copy data from main memory to video memory and back. Many algorithms are using GPU for compute intensive task and copy result back. Copy back is slow on traditional PC architecture. This is why game consoles are using unified memory. So as a developer I would choose unified over split memory. And as time goes on, developers will just expect that RAM is unified and new apps will run significantly better on unified and significantly worse on traditional architecture. Even if Intel makes faster CPU, it is still "slow" comparing to GPU. And if part of computation is done on GPU without copy, simply you have no chance.

 

[soulreaver99]

64GB will let you browse through Reddit, twitter and these forums 2X faster ?

 

[Appledoesnotlisten]

For your workload, 32 is overkill, if you ask me - let alone 64. But this forum claims you need 32 just for web browsing, so in this universe: you probably need 256Gb for future proofing Netflix watching.

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

Are you using a lot of VMs? Are you rendering super-complex scenes in 8K? Are you producing music with a ton of instruments and effects and whatnot? Are you editing 8K ProRes RAW videos? Because that's what you need 64Gb for. Honestly, for what you wrote above, I would suggest an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air.

So, I guess - buy whatever you can afford and enjoy, but.... yeah - you can do all that with a 32Gb MBP.

I am running my 15" at 3840*2400 in addition to what I wrote. maybe that is taxing the system.

And btw, I maintain approx the same workload on my 27" iMac (7680*4320). iMac is SO much more comfortable to work with after going from 32Gb to 48Gb. It's little but very noticeable. The system was swapping memory with 32Gb and is NOT swapping with 48Gb. It appears that swapping is what causes the little annoying delays... I am really tempted to go with 64Gb to get a very fluid machine.

 

[patrick.a]

For your workload, 32 is overkill, if you ask me - let alone 64. But this forum claims you need 32 just for web browsing, so in this universe: you probably need 256Gb for future proofing Netflix watching.

Just for reference, I opened a 60 million polygon model in Zbrush, an 8K PSD file with 15 layers, 2 4K PSD files with 40 layers, Notes, Bear Notes, Spotify, Microsoft Word, one large PDF document, Discord, Safari with 15 tabs each containing a graphics-intensive page.... and my memory pressure was in the green and the computer was just as responsive. And the computer is a 15" MacBook Pro 2016, with 16Gb RAM. When I come here and see people buying 64Gb RAM for.... browser tabs....

I am really confused, honestly.

Are you using a lot of VMs? Are you rendering super-complex scenes in 8K? Are you producing music with a ton of instruments and effects and whatnot? Are you editing 8K ProRes RAW videos? Because that's what you need 64Gb for. Honestly, for what you wrote above, I would suggest an 8Gb RAM MacBook Air.

So, I guess - buy whatever you can afford and enjoy, but.... yeah - you can do all that with a 32Gb MBP.

Thank you! I got really confused reading some of the comments. If you spend your day browsing the web you really, really don't need a maxed out Macbook Pro. That's not what this machine is designed for. We run a Mac Mini M1 with 16GB of Ram in the office and use it for rather complex CAD-, PS, and 3D-work. It's holding up surprisingly well! So I'd say 16GB should be enough for most people and I'm even considering replacing my 2018 MBP 32GB with a M1Pro and 16GB. SSDs are so fast now that swapping should not be a problem anymore anyway.

 

[aevan]

I am running my 15" at 3840*2400 in addition to what I wrote. maybe that is taxing the system.

And btw, I maintain approx the same workload on my 27" iMac (7680*4320). iMac is SO much more comfortable to work with after going from 32Gb to 48Gb. It's little but very noticeable. The system was swapping memory with 32Gb and is NOT swapping with 48Gb. It appears that swapping is what causes the little annoying delays... I am really tempted to go with 64Gb to get a very fluid machine.

As far as I know, macOS ALWAYS writes swap. Swap is not what it used to be - even with insane amounts of RAM, system intelligently decides what to put in swap (less used apps, for example) - just to have things on standby. I've seen posts on this forum where people have 64gb RAM and talk about having swap. So - I am honestly surprised your iMac does not swap with 48Gb RAM (if you could post an Activity Monitor picture, I'd love to see it - I've seen many Macs, but I never saw a 0Mb swap in the Activity Monitor).

As long as memory pressure is in the green, you should not have delays. Are you sure the delays are related to RAM and not something else (perhaps a coincidence that you added RAM and they were gone)? A modern Mac should be very fluid with 32, 16 and even 8Gb RAM.

Either way, hey - I'm just a random guy on the forums. If you believe you need 64Gb RAM to get a "very fluid machine" and if you think some of these new MacBook Pros won't be very fluid (unless you max out the memory) - then you believe it and enjoy your purchase. You did ask - so I told you my opinion. Based on the workflow you mentioned, I'd say to get the 16Gb RAM model and the M1 Pro. Use the rest of the money to buy, like, I don't know - whatever else you need. That's just my opinion, which I'm giving just because you posted a question - otherwise, I would never suggest anything, it's your choice. Certainly, if you can comfortably afford it - maxing out the RAM certainly won't do you any harm, so might as well do it. Enjoy your Mac!

 

[aevan]

So I'd say 16GB should be enough for most people and I'm even considering replacing my 2018 MBP 32GB with a M1Pro and 16GB.

But how will you open browser tabs with measly 16Gb??!!

Just kidding, yeah, depending on your usage, a 16Gb M1 Pro will probably be much faster than your 2018 32Gb MBP.

 

[Appledoesnotlisten]

As far as I know, macOS ALWAYS writes swap. Swap is not what it used to be - even with insane amounts of RAM, system intelligently decides what to put in swap (less used apps, for example) - just to have things on standby. I've seen posts on this forum where people have 64gb RAM and talk about having swap. So - I am honestly surprised your iMac does not swap with 48Gb RAM (if you could post an Activity Monitor picture, I'd love to see it - I've seen many Macs, but I never saw a 0Mb swap in the Activity Monitor).

As long as memory pressure is in the green, you should not have delays. Are you sure the delays are related to RAM and not something else (perhaps a coincidence that you added RAM and they were gone)? A modern Mac should be very fluid with 32, 16 and even 8Gb RAM.

Either way, hey - I'm just a random guy on the forums. If you believe you need 64Gb RAM to get a "very fluid machine" and if you think some of these new MacBook Pros won't be very fluid (unless you max out the memory) - then you believe it and enjoy your purchase. You did ask - so I told you my opinion. Based on the workflow you mentioned, I'd say to get the 16Gb RAM model and the M1 Pro. Use the rest of the money to buy, like, I don't know - whatever else you need. That's just my opinion, which I'm giving just because you posted a question - otherwise, I would never suggest anything, it's your choice. Certainly, if you can comfortably afford it - maxing out the RAM certainly won't do you any harm, so might as well do it. Enjoy your Mac!

Requested printscreen is attached
I suspect that it's putting to swap less used apps (and taking them back) is what causes those little annoying delays. If that is true, would be great to find a way to disable swap for certain apps or Safari? Because adding more RAM just to prevent swapping is overspending, I mean it fixes the problem but there must be smarter ways of achieving that goal.

 

[aevan]

Requested printscreen is attached
I suspect that it's putting to swap less used apps (and taking them back) is what causes those little annoying delays. If that is true, would be great to find a way to disable swap for certain apps or Safari? Because adding more RAM just to prevent swapping is overspending, I mean it fixes the problem but there must be smarter ways of achieving that goal.

I don't see the screenshot in your post for some reason ?

As for disabling swap, I think there is a Terminal command, though I have to say - you shouldn't do it. macOS is a very smart, Unix-based OS that does these things well. Computers and computer OS-es have changed a lot in years, and while swap was once something to fall back on when users run out of memory, these days (especially with SSDs) it's more a method of making your computer faster, not slower.

I honestly don't know why your computer has annoying delays - but I really doubt it has to do with swap. It could be a different issue entirely (have you tried a clean OS reinstall?). I never heard of a computer slowing down due to swap, but I have heard and seen computers slowing down from background processes, memory leaks, app freezes, etc.

Again - please don't take my word for it. If you think this is the cause, you do what you think is best. If you really want, you can try disabling swap and report if the stutters have disappeared. Again, do this at your own risk, I think this is best left to macOS to manage.

I found this article about it (I haven't tried it and I'm not going to - but if you want to have a go at it, here you are):

Prolong lifetime of MacBook's SSD by disabling swap and other minor tweaks - From Y to X

0. Prologue After replacing 128GB SSD with a 500GB one in my 7 year-old MacBook ... Read More Read More

windsketch.cc

 

[DogHouseDub]

I've used my last MBP for almost 10 years. Anticipating the same, and knowing the RAM is not upgradeable, I went for 64Gb. As others have mentioned, future-proofing.

 

[MarkAtl]

I went all the way in - 16" Max 64GB, 8TB SSD. My primary use case driving this is orchestral music composition - 100+ tracks in Logic, mostly with high end sample libraries (VSL Synchron, EW Hollywood Opus, Spitfire Audio, etc). I wanted as mush internal as possible both for streaming performance as well as mobility without a bunch of external TB SSD's. I'm currently working on a 64GB 10 core iMac Pro in the studio and wanted to at least beat that with something I could just pick up and go without worrying about synchronizing a laptop and desktop. I have an old Apple Cinema Display I will use with the laptop screen, but I feel a 32" XDR display in my future next year in spite of the crazy price. I'm also a photographer, so ...

This makes total sense. I'm keeping my 8 core Mac Pro 2013 for the foreseeable future (it doesn't go anywhere) but this kind of composition is a great use case for the 16", and you need the Max for the 64GB.

 

[smithdr]

Hi Aevan:

Thank you for your always thoughtful and studied commentary.

As for myself, I have been struggling with whether-or-not I should go with 32 or 64 GB or RAM. My computer is used almost exclusively for generating uncomplicated UHD video content in FCP and Resolve--color grading and few animations. I am certain that 32 GB is more than I need for that.

However, I am anticipating in the next year or so an 8K video camera (I don't need 8K but would like the flexibility of cropping in more) may be in store and I can see the possibility of doing more multicam work. I just don't know. I may require 64 GB RAM for these applications.

I have both a 16" M1 Max in 32 GB and 64 GB configurations on order while I am making a decision.

Avean (and any one else who cares to comment) about 32 or 64 GB for 4K multicam and/or 8K work.

Don

BTW. I currently have a 2016 15MBP with an i9 2.9 GHz quadcore processor and 16 GB of RAM. This machine struggles with optimizing UHD files and very slow at encoding. I tested similar material using an 8 Gb M1 Mac Mini and almost never required to optimize UHD material in Resolve.

 

[Appledoesnotlisten]

I don't see the screenshot in your post for some reason ?

As for disabling swap, I think there is a Terminal command, though I have to say - you shouldn't do it. macOS is a very smart, Unix-based OS that does these things well. Computers and computer OS-es have changed a lot in years, and while swap was once something to fall back on when users run out of memory, these days (especially with SSDs) it's more a method of making your computer faster, not slower.

I honestly don't know why your computer has annoying delays - but I really doubt it has to do with swap. It could be a different issue entirely (have you tried a clean OS reinstall?). I never heard of a computer slowing down due to swap, but I have heard and seen computers slowing down from background processes, memory leaks, app freezes, etc.

Again - please don't take my word for it. If you think this is the cause, you do what you think is best. If you really want, you can try disabling swap and report if the stutters have disappeared. Again, do this at your own risk, I think this is best left to macOS to manage.

I found this article about it (I haven't tried it and I'm not going to - but if you want to have a go at it, here you are):

Prolong lifetime of MacBook's SSD by disabling swap and other minor tweaks - From Y to X

0. Prologue After replacing 128GB SSD with a 500GB one in my 7 year-old MacBook ... Read More Read More

windsketch.cc

 

[aevan]

Requested printscreen is attached
I suspect that it's putting to swap less used apps (and taking them back) is what causes those little annoying delays. If that is true, would be great to find a way to disable swap for certain apps or Safari? Because adding more RAM just to prevent swapping is overspending, I mean it fixes the problem but there must be smarter ways of achieving that goa

Thanks for the screenshot, see it now.

Hi Aevan:

Thank you for your always thoughtful and studied commentary.

As for myself, I have been struggling with whether-or-not I should go with 32 or 64 GB or RAM. My computer is used almost exclusively for generating uncomplicated UHD video content in FCP and Resolve--color grading and few animations. I am certain that 32 GB is more than I need for that.

However, I am anticipating in the next year or so an 8K video camera (I don't need 8K but would like the flexibility of cropping in more) may be in store and I can see the possibility of doing more multicam work. I just don't know. I may require 64 GB RAM for these applications.

I have both a 16" M1 Max in 32 GB and 64 GB configurations on order while I am making a decision.

Avean (and any one else who cares to comment) about 32 or 64 GB for 4K multicam and/or 8K work.

Don

BTW. I currently have a 2016 15MBP with an i9 2.9 GHz quadcore processor and 16 GB of RAM. This machine struggles with optimizing UHD files and very slow at encoding. I tested similar material using an 8 Gb M1 Mac Mini and almost never required to optimize UHD material in Resolve.

I don’t feel I’m in a position to say as I have little experience with video editing, however, for 8K it is quite possible 64Gb will be nice, though it also depends on the format (is it compressed or ProRes RAW). You could probably get by with 32 as well. 4K would be another story, you’d probably be able to edit this with 16Gb too, but 8K is 4x the image per every frame (it’s not double, it’s actually quadruple - it’s very demanding).

As for encoding, that’s all up to cpu, and any M1 chip should blast past any Intel chip.

 

[Fanboy_]

Not all tech savvy so my question may across as dumb -
I use my MBP 13" 16GB RAM for heavy excel and power points. Occasionally photo editing using photoshop. Running heavy stats model (occasional) and rest for light browsing and stuffs.
Do you recommend M1 Max 64gb or M1 Max 32 GB?
Thanks in advance

 

[UltimateSyn]

Stores won’t carry M1 Max + 64 GB, it’s a custom spec. You may find the base M1 Max/32GB/1TB in probably very limited quantities if you get lucky on launch day.

Stores in Australia are indeed carrying 14" / M1 Max / 64GB / 2TB and 16" / M1 Max / 64GB / 4TB

 

[smithdr]

Thanks for the screenshot, see it now.




I don’t feel I’m in a position to say as I have little experience with video editing, however, for 8K it is quite possible 64Gb will be nice, though it also depends on the format (is it compressed or ProRes RAW). You could probably get by with 32 as well. 4K would be another story, you’d probably be able to edit this with 16Gb too, but 8K is 4x the image per every frame (it’s not double, it’s actually quadruple - it’s very demanding).

As for encoding, that’s all up to cpu, and any M1 chip should blast past any Intel chip.

Hi Aevan,

I record in UHD HEVC generally optimize to ProRes 422. I do this because I tend to keep the originals and do not want the larger ProRes files.

As for 8K I have no idea what the camera will eventually output. Will it be HEVC or ProRes? Not certain.

Most of animations are done ProRes 4444 with alpha.

Don

 

[tCC_]

Thanks for the screenshot, see it now.

0 bytes Swap Used screenshots can only be taken just after restarting macOS. When you run (standby/resume) macOS for a couple of days every MacBook (8GB or 64GB) WILL consume swap like you said

 

[aevan]

Hi Aevan,

I record in UHD HEVC generally optimize to ProRes 422. I do this because I tend to keep the originals and do not want the larger ProRes files.

As for 8K I have no idea what the camera will eventually output. Will it be HEVC or ProRes? Not certain.

Most of animations are done ProRes 4444 with alpha.

Don

Either way, 8K is a lot and if you can afford 64Gb, might be smart to get it. But you could also ask people who did that kind of workflow too.