Max RAM limited to 16 GB?

[Jouls]

It looks like on the DTK they have safari open and on intel, they don’t.

Likely you need to scroll down to see it. Bummer the lists are not sorted in a meaningful way.

 

[bluecoast]

Even if only the M1 MBA was launched, it would've been a great start. They only said that one computer was coming this year, so they didn't have to launch with three.

You'd have to imagine that Apple are confident that 16GB of RAM is going to be enough for (most) of the kind of people that buy the 13 inch MBP - I doubt that they want to tarnish its name after the butterfly key debacle.

I'm intrigued that FCP is a pre-installation option - FCP on a notebook without a fan? Apple must be confident.

 

[satchmo]

I didnt wanna post a new thread but what do you guys rec I get. I only use the comp for movies, shows, streaming, facebook games, iMessage, word, safari and thats it. Should I get 8 or 16gb ram?

I think 8gb should suffice for your needs.

 

[LonestarOne]

Or, now hear me out, just don't charge $200 to go from 8gb to 16gb memory. I would accept $100 as Apple tax, given they just use the same bog standard memory as everyone else.

They don’t. I made the same mistake yesterday by not reading thoroughly. The RAM is now built directly into the SOC.

 

[tjtj]

They don’t. I made the same mistake yesterday by not reading thoroughly. The RAM is now built directly into the SOC.

Almost right, it is not part of the SoC, it is part of the same package as the SoC though.

 

[polyphenol]

Speed does not substitute quantity.

Find it difficult to understand the many comments which, possibly inadvertently, seem suggest that it does.

However, the speed of transfer to/from the swap media, and ways of avoiding actual transfers, can make a huge difference to how much you notice the effect of lower amounts of RAM. No doubt at all, too little memory for the usage is not good news.

 

[theluggage]

You'd have to imagine that Apple are confident that 16GB of RAM is going to be enough for (most) of the kind of people that buy the 13 inch MBP - I doubt that they want to tarnish its name after the butterfly key debacle.

The Intel Air and "2 port" 13" MBP - which is what the new MBP replaces - maxed out at 16GB, too (without the promised speed payback of unified memory) so it isn't really a big deal.

The "downgrade" in terms of RAM (and I/O) is the Mac Mini - but then people needing 32+ GB RAM would probably also be going for the 6-core options which are still "on intel".

16GB max is... tolerable for what is probably going to be the low-end of maybe 3 M-series processors. Whatever ends up in the 16" MBP, iMac, Mythical Mini Mac Pro and/or Mythical Mac Mini Pro will need more RAM and I/O.

 

[user1234]

Find it difficult to understand the many comments which, possibly inadvertently, seem suggest that it does.

However, the speed of transfer to/from the swap media, and ways of avoiding actual transfers, can make a huge difference to how much you notice the effect of lower amounts of RAM. No doubt at all, too little memory for the usage is not good news.

Absolutely. Sure, ARM is more RAM efficient in most cases, but that doesn't apply to everything.
With fast SSDs swap has become much faster and less noticeable in day to day use, but apart from putting unnecessary wear on the SSD is also not helping with things like RAM heavy photo and video work where it will be noticeably slow, or even realtime audio with big sample libraries and other time sensitive things where it just won't work at all.

Hopefully they have some more models to announce this spring with more RAM options. 16" with 128 GB RAM option may be wishful thinking but a 13" Pro with 32 GB should be a realistic expectation.

 

[Boil]

I am excited for 2022, when we might see the real Pro models of the M1 family...

I would hope those have HBMnext (the RAM formerly know as HBM3), but I would see 128GB or maybe 256GB as the maximum...? With the RAM on the package, Apple cannot afford to have a bunch of SKUs sitting around waiting for the whales who want 1TB of RAM to come along...!

Me, I just want that Gen 3 Mac Cube with a M1Z ( 32 Performance cores / 6 Efficiency cores / 64 GPU cores / 96 Neural Engine cores / 128GB HBMnext RAM / 4TB storage...! ;^p

 

[MacBH928]

This is an entry level chips for entry level models, so 16GB cap makes sense. It's most likely limited by the package technology. I'd expect this RAM to be faster than what you usually get.

"Real" pro-level Apple Silicon will be released over the next few years. This right now is only entry-level consumer stuff.

Whats package technology? does this mean thr chip cant handle more than 16GB?

I agree its consumer stuff but what irritates me they call it Macbook "PRO". Should have been Air and MB only not PRO

 

[JW Pepper]

Did anyone consider that you might not need the higher ram. These machines might be faster than the old machines with 64gb?

 

[Robert Dupuy]

...and if the "pro" Apple Silicon Macs released sometime in the next 18 months also max out at 16GB RAM (and have the same I/O bandwidth limitation) then you have a problem.


Ans: 64

If you actually need 64GB of RAM then this first batch of systems are not for you. There's a lot of nonsense being talked about the magic Apple Silicon fairy making your RAM go further at some fundamental, general level - but 64GB of data is still 64GB of data, and if your workflow runs out of RAM on a 16GB Intel machine, it will run out of RAM on a 16GB Apple Silicon machine too.

If anybody thinks they need 64GB RAM because a bloke in the pub said you need a bare minimum of 32GB RAM to run Adobe CS then it is worth doing a bit of investigation to see if that actually applies to your workflow. "Run Adobe CS" (or Lightroom, or Logic, or FCPx...) is a piece of string depending on exactly what you're doing. 16GB will easily edit your YouTube posts, mix the stylings of your 4-piece band and re-touch your photos - but some people need to composite hundreds of layers of high-res bitmaps, load 100 digitised instruments into their music software or run a dozen virtual Linux machines...

There may even be some cases where the new chip lets you change workflow and reduce RAM demands (e.g. something in the new GPU or neural engine may work in real time and need less buffering) but that is going to be case-by-case, depending on what software, file formats etc. you are using. Also, the faster SSD may reduce the impact of running out of RAM and swapping (but Macs have had pretty fast SSDs for a while now). Those questions will have to wait for real-world, like-with-like tests that we have yet to see, but it would be very, very

 

[warp9]

so how many gb of the new ram is equal to 64.... until I have this info I cant purchase

64.

Don't listen to all the ridiculous claims being made here. You can't take an 8GB file and magically turn it into a 1GB file and swapping to storage is not an option.

If you need 64GB now, this machine is not for you.

EDIT: I see I'm late to the dog pile.

 

[leman]

Whats package technology? does this mean thr chip cant handle more than 16GB?

I agree its consumer stuff but what irritates me they call it Macbook "PRO". Should have been Air and MB only not PRO

With “package technology” I mean that the RAM is placed on the same substrate as the system chip and connected to it via a wide data interface. Basically, the RAM and the processing units are very closely integrated, which allows higher performance and better efficiency.

As to the “pro”, I kind of agree. This is really more it a consumer level laptop. But the two-port Pro has existed for a couple of years now and it was always limited to 16GB RAM, so it’s not like they took something away.

 

[whitedragon101]

Uhm, why would those people buy an entry level device?
The Pro customers that you're talking about didn't buy the Macbook Pro that this one replaced either.

I use a Mac mini with 32GB for software development. A very popular customer type for the mini.

I need to have so many things open my baseline RAM is 20GB plus before I even hit it hard with compiling or anything taxing. M1 chip looks perfect for my needs except the 16GB ram limit. Don’t need a Mac Pro to write software. Just need a midrange chip with 32GB RAM and good thermals.

 

[revs]

Did anyone consider that you might not need the higher ram. These machines might be faster than the old machines with 64gb?

Thats now how RAM works. RAM is storage.

It's like saying 'Maybe you don't need a 512GB hard drive for all your files, if you had a faster computer they might fit on 256GB'....doesnt make sense

 

[wyrdness]

My job is as a software developer targetting ARM platforms. In my experience, the CPU architecture is not the deciding factor in memory usage. That's down, partly, to the operating system and, mostly, to the applications. I can't see OS X on ARM being much different at all to OS X on Intel in this regard.
I'm planning on buying an Apple Silicon Mac soon and I'll certainly be going for 16MB.

 

[Sheppard]

Cannot wait to run a Chrome tab test!

 

[dmccloud]

16GB cap seems a bit low for MBP and Mac Mini type of devices. I wonder if the so called High Bandwidth memory is HBM2(e) or LPDDR4x/LPDDR5

I'm waiting for iFixit to do their teardowns, since we all know they'll do that the moment they get some of the new Macs in their studios.

 

[dmccloud]

Or, now hear me out, you could remember that Tim said this was the FIRST of a family of Apple Silicon Mac chips...

There will be more M1 variants, with higher performance & larger amounts of RAM...

Will they still be called the "M1", or will Apple use a different naming convention for the pro-class SoCs?

 

[dmccloud]

Someone posted screenshot of ram usage of a Mac mini 16GB vs the DTK somewhere in the forums. Unfortunately I didn’t bookmark it and I can‘t find it. Both systems where freshly booted and run the same programs. The DTK used more memory than the Intel mini. However, I can’t recall, if they both used the same OS.

It's not surprising that the DTK would be using more RAM, especially given its status as a development machine loaned out to developers. Part of that RAM is probably used for additional diagnostic and telemetry data that Apple collects to analyze overall performance on those machines. I believe that the difference between the two was only around 1GB RAM, yet the DTK actually showed slightly less memory pressure than the Intel machine, which would indicate that it was using the RAM in a more efficient manner.

 

[Birkan]

I'm waiting for iFixit to do their teardowns, since we all know they'll do that the moment they get some of the new Macs in their studios.

Normally, I would say yes. However, since the DRAM is inside the SoC this time, I don't think it will be easy to see the type from a physical analysis. It might show up in System Information or in other types of software. We'll have to wait for the reviews either way.

 

[Fomalhaut]

I use a Mac mini with 32GB for software development. A very popular customer type for the mini.

I need to have so many things open my baseline RAM is 20GB plus before I even hit it hard with compiling or anything taxing. M1 chip looks perfect for my needs except the 16GB ram limit. Don’t need a Mac Pro to write software. Just need a midrange chip with 32GB RAM and good thermals.

Your baseline usage will vary depending on how much RAM you have. With 16GB, You would also have about 40% free RAM . MacOS just uses more cache, compresses less, and does less paging if you have more RAM. I’ve moved from 8 to 16 to 32GB and observed this. More is better, sure, but may not actually be necessary for most development. If you use containers vs VMs, you can stretch out your memory a long way!

 

[petvas]

On the low end you will never need more than 16GB of RAM. Pros however will require 32 or even 64GB of RAM and maybe that is one reason we didn't see any high end Macs with Apple Silicon running. Apple is just not ready to completely leave Intel.
I am really wondering how Apple will replace the Xeon based Macs. I really don't think that it will be a M1. Especially the Mac Pro needs to be expandable, especially in the RAM and storage department.

 

[D.T.]

I use a Mac mini with 32GB for software development. A very popular customer type for the mini.

I need to have so many things open my baseline RAM is 20GB plus before I even hit it hard with compiling or anything taxing. M1 chip looks perfect for my needs except the 16GB ram limit. Don’t need a Mac Pro to write software. Just need a midrange chip with 32GB RAM and good thermals.

Sounds like we have a bit of the same use case.

I'm also going to be waiting for a 32-64GB "Mini-like" machine, with the next iteration of the M (M1X, M2, M-MMM-GOOD ...). I __love__ what I'm seeing about performance on the new M1 machines with the 8+4/8 config, so I'm stoked about the idea of 16+4/16 (or whatever the core count on the next performance tier looks like). My current machine is an '18 Mini i7/32GB/512, it runs two 25" QHD decently well, but would the kind of GPU boost we're seeing on the M1 machines is really exciting.

FWIW, I'll probably be picking up an MBA 16GB, 8-core GPU for our little G around Christmas, that I'll also use on occasion, but it won't do that much heavy lifting.