My son is heading to college this fall and will be majoring in Graphic Design / Marketing. The university suggests a mac book pro. We are looking at getting a 14" m2 macbook pro with some upgraded storage. His budget allows for 1 more upgrade, we are trying to decide between upgrading the processor to either the M2 PRO 12/19/16 or the M2 Max 12/30/16, or upgrading the Ram to 32GB. I understand the basics of what the benefits of each are but with regards to a college curriculum in his major i am not sure what the software he will be using will best take advantage of. Thanks in advance for any help.
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Need Help with MacBook Pro Purchase
- Thread starter edward-k
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I would upgrade the RAM.
I also recommend upgrading the RAM to 32 GB! The machine will last him longer.
Apple has become more and more dependent on file swapping to the HD or more correctly the SSD. It also has a history of increasing RAM requirements almost annually. As a result I have seen recommendations to maintain as much as 50% of the SSD as free space. Extra RAM should help relieve some of that additional strain on the SSD, and give some leeway for future system updates.
Anyone recommending users keep 50% of the SSD as free space is literally recommending people spend money for something they aren't getting the full benefits from. With that being said, going to 32GB would minimize the amount of swap needed (let alone used), so there would be no need to use 50% or less of the SSD at all times. Right now I have Firefox, VS Code, and Docker running and I'm not using any swap on my Mac.
Memory is a good idea. Why? If the CPU is a bit slow then everything takes longer. But if you run out of memory, the system will grind to a halt. 16GiB RAM are already the lower limit for any professional use, whereas the 10 CPU cores are plenty.
I would also recommend upgrading the ram with one caveat. You didn't mention the storage plan. If you subscribe to Apple's 2TB iCloud plan and he's on your plan, I'd probably keep the storage at 512 GB. If you think he will need more local storage (and graphic design could get into large files), then you might want to go back up to 1 TB or so. I got my daughter max storage of the MBA 24GB and 1Tb so she always had her files locally. I would not upgrade the processor since Silicon is so powerful.
Neither. I'd put that money towards a better external monitor.
If you look at real world benchmarks, the performance difference from 16GB to 32GB is small except for working professionals. Unless you're working with massive 300MP panoramas or running virtualization, that 32GB option won't make a difference. Someone in college simply isn't running those workloads. Keep in mind MacBook Pro already has excellent SSD storage speeds in the unlikely event you exceed physical RAM.
If you look at real world benchmarks, the performance difference from 16GB to 32GB is small except for working professionals. Unless you're working with massive 300MP panoramas or running virtualization, that 32GB option won't make a difference. Someone in college simply isn't running those workloads. Keep in mind MacBook Pro already has excellent SSD storage speeds in the unlikely event you exceed physical RAM.
Get more ram. If you upgrade to the M2 MAX doesn’t it automatically come with 32gb of ram?
Personally I would also recommend
- to go first for the upgrade to 32 GB of memory
- then, in case there is still some budget left, go for the next better SoC configuration (12/19/16)
A bigger SSD may be nice to have, but you always can increase your storage capability later on, if necessary, with a more economical external SSD solution.
Memory and SoC is what you decide for when you buy the computer and there is no way to change or upgrade that later on, except buying another machine.
As of my personal experience: Programs, as they evolve, ask (mostly) always for more memory and more computing power over time. And while I have no idea where all this will go with AI I could imagine it will not be much different.
- to go first for the upgrade to 32 GB of memory
- then, in case there is still some budget left, go for the next better SoC configuration (12/19/16)
A bigger SSD may be nice to have, but you always can increase your storage capability later on, if necessary, with a more economical external SSD solution.
Memory and SoC is what you decide for when you buy the computer and there is no way to change or upgrade that later on, except buying another machine.
As of my personal experience: Programs, as they evolve, ask (mostly) always for more memory and more computing power over time. And while I have no idea where all this will go with AI I could imagine it will not be much different.
Partial list of college Majors where 32GB might be warranted:
Natural Sciences (modeling and computational uses)
Computer Science (virtualization, programming, etc.)
Graphic Design, Architecture
Beyond that, someone might want 32GB as a form of future-proofing, especially as software requirements increase and their usage patterns evolve.
It does, but if you do a BTO config of M2 Pro with 32GB, it comes out to be slightly less than the M2 Max configuration.
Maybe for post graduate programs. At least a third of students change majors, so buying something for the next 5 years isn’t something I would suggest.
Why would you think it’s binary? You can buy something in between, something that lasts the length of an undergraduate program. OP has already chosen the mid-tier MBP. I don’t think anybody would call a $2,499 computer as disposable.
The fact that you don’t even know the curriculum of the program, yet can suggest 32GB is suspect.
Just running office, having messages open, having a few tabs open in safari. I was getting dangerously close to 16gb on an M1 Pro. I don’t think I will ever recommend 16gb to anyone anymore unless they want a computer to only browse the net.
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The fact that you make unfounded assumptions about what I do and do not know is what's suspect.
In natural and social sciences, there are a lot of undergraduate programs and courses that use statistical and probability modeling using programs such as Mathmatica, iStatistica, etc. Graphic Design and architecture should be obvious why 32 GB might be preferred for certain individuals.
For the record, I have been attending school for an IT degree with a focus on digital media and web design. consequently, I have had to take multiple programming courses, including SQL, Java, Javascript, HTML/CSS, graphic design, UI/UX modeling, network administration, systems administration, and other courses, many of which require setting up specific development environments and/or virtual machines. So before you tell me what I do and do not know, perhaps you should actually ASK first instead of making asinine assumptions.
And do we know what programs are being used in this case? What learning outcomes will be achieved in this curriculum?
The fact remains that 16GiB are low or at least the recommended minimum for a lot of professional software. A bit less CPU or GPU power will add a couple minutes, hours or days to the rendering/processing times but running out of RAM can terminate the entire thing.
You can't make sweeping generalizations to support your argument then turn around and try to pin me down to specifics for the same scenario. Given that Graphic Design is part of the major described by the OP, it's a safe bet that Adobe applications or their equivalents will feature heavily in the core courses for the major.
Thanks to everyone for your help - we ended up going with the 32GB ram. I really appreciate everyones feedback. Thanks again
I will add to this list:
- Film/media production
- Screen scoring/music for media
- 3D design/computational fluid dynamics, etc. (probably counts as "computer science" but whatever)