Should I return my M3 MBP with 48GB to get 64GB ram?

[Allen_Wentz]

Try to simulate the most extreme workload you can think of. Open photoshop, Final Cut, lightroom, blender, whatever you use, all at the same time. If the memory pressure graph isn't red I would hold down Cmd+Q until everything is gone, then enjoy your computer.

Wrong-headed thinking. We need to buy RAM in a new box for the future, not simplistically for today.

 

[ultrafiel80]

So there are a few ways to look at it:

1. Order as much RAM (and other upgrades) as you think you'll need for the lifetime of your Mac
2. Order what you need now for your Mac

People will disagree on which is more important, however, there are benefits to either. I'm going to use a Mac Studio as an example, just because it is easier with numbers:

Options for a $6000 computer budget every 6 years:

1. Purchase a base model every 2 years at $1999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Max base for $1999 (512GB Storage, 32GB RAM)
   • 2024: Mac Studio M3Max base for $1999 🤞 (1TB Storage, 36GB RAM—based on what the MBP has)
   • 2026?: Mac Studio M5Max base for $1999 🙏 (2TB storage, 48GB RAM—not based on anything)
2. Purchase a customized model every 2 years at $2999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Max base for $2999 (2TB Storage, 64GB RAM)
   • 2025: Mac Studio M3Max base for $2999 🤞 (2TB Storage, 96GB RAM)
3. Purchase customized model every 6 years at $5999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Ultra base for $5999 (2TB Storage, 192GB RAM—or whatever)

At the end of 6 years (2028), I have to imagine a supposed M7Max is going to be ridiculously better than an M1Ultra and a bit better than an M5Max, although any would probably still be fine. What makes sense for you though? Would you be better served going with what you need at the time and upgrade more frequently or hold off on a higher-specced machine at time of purchase. It depends on what you do. If it is for work it likely makes sense to upgrade specs, but for personal work probably not.

Considering your example has your RAM usage in the green, you probably don't need more RAM. But hey, if you have the budget go for it, or just throw that $200 in savings somewhere and put it towards the next upgrade.

Regardless, Apple is really fleecing us all with their memory and RAM prices. It is ridiculous that Pro machines start so low. Their markups on these are just crazy. Even if the base stays the same it shouldn't cost $400 to go from 1TB to 2TB of SSD storage now! At least with Intel we had a choice to install 3rd party, but now we just have to take it.

Edit: forgot to mention if you upgrade every 2 years (or whatever), you can easily resell your old machine and get a good trade in price for more upgrades. So option 1 is more economical than option 3.

 

[fiberterminal]

This. You got the maxed out M3 Max chip but you stayed with the "base" RAM of 48. Therefore the 64 seem more logical to me.
Personally, I would suggest to consider getting the "lower" M3 Max and take 96GB RAM (which is no option at the "higher" Max that offers only expensive 128 after 64 but not 96). Price should be similar.

I wouldn't do this.

I can understand needing 64GB of RAM instead of 48GB, as it represents a 33% increase in RAM.

However, you'd be reducing your performance cores to 10 instead of 12 (83%), and reducing your GPU cores to 30 instead of 40 (75%). That's a pretty big drop in actual performance to effectively DOUBLE your RAM. I don't think you need to DOUBLE your RAM from 48GB to 96GB. It also costs $100 more than the 16 CPU 40 GPU + 64GB config.

I would stick with the 16 CPU 40 GPU Max chip. You probably have enough RAM. If you wish to really go without a machine for a month+, you can upgrade to 64GB for $200+tax.

 

[Allen_Wentz]

So there are a few ways to look at it:

1. Order as much RAM (and other upgrades) as you think you'll need for the lifetime of your Mac
2. Order what you need now for your Mac

People will disagree on which is more important, however, there are benefits to either. I'm going to use a Mac Studio as an example, just because it is easier with numbers:

Options for a $6000 computer budget every 6 years:

1. Purchase a base model every 2 years at $1999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Max base for $1999 (512GB Storage, 32GB RAM)
   • 2024: Mac Studio M3Max base for $1999 🤞 (1TB Storage, 36GB RAM—based on what the MBP has)
   • 2026?: Mac Studio M5Max base for $1999 🙏 (2TB storage, 48GB RAM—not based on anything)
2. Purchase a customized model every 2 years at $2999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Max base for $2999 (2TB Storage, 64GB RAM)
   • 2025: Mac Studio M3Max base for $2999 🤞 (2TB Storage, 96GB RAM)
3. Purchase customized model every 6 years at $5999
   • 2022: Mac Studio M1Ultra base for $5999 (2TB Storage, 192GB RAM—or whatever)

At the end of 6 years (2028), I have to imagine a supposed M7Max is going to be ridiculously better than an M1Ultra and a bit better than an M5Max, although any would probably still be fine. What makes sense for you though? Would you be better served going with what you need at the time and upgrade more frequently or hold off on a higher-specced machine at time of purchase. It depends on what you do. If it is for work it likely makes sense to upgrade specs, but for personal work probably not.

Considering your example has your RAM usage in the green, you probably don't need more RAM. But hey, if you have the budget go for it, or just throw that $200 in savings somewhere and put it towards the next upgrade.

Regardless, Apple is really fleecing us all with their memory and RAM prices. It is ridiculous that Pro machines start so low. Their markups on these are just crazy. Even if the base stays the same it shouldn't cost $400 to go from 1TB to 2TB of SSD storage now! At least with Intel we had a choice to install 3rd party, but now we just have to take it.

Edit: forgot to mention if you upgrade every 2 years (or whatever), you can easily resell your old machine and get a good trade in price for more upgrades. So option 1 is more economical than option 3.

You suggest two options:
----------
So there are a few ways to look at it:

1. Order as much RAM (and other upgrades) as you think you'll need for the lifetime of your Mac
2. Order what you need now for your Mac

----------
But I say it remains only your #1, and the only thing one does is change the planned life cycle. Only if one intends zero changes over the life cycle is #2 appropriate.

 

[maerz001]

The OP doesn’t even mention what programs he’s using. So all RAM discuss is baseless.

The only one in the screenshot is office. So i guess based on that a base Air 8GB will be fine

 

[zach-coleman]

Wrong-headed thinking. We need to buy RAM in a new box for the future, not simplistically for today.

How often do you have every single program you use open at the same time? I’m going to be honest, I find the chances OP will even need 48GB in 2028 to be near zero. You can develop extremely complex software with 16, and edit production quality 4K video with 32. And the requirements aren’t going up that much year over year.

You couldn’t even get this much ram in a Mac laptop until recently, is OP a up and coming professional 8K HDR video editor?

 

[watchmainspring]

One should buy for life cycle RAM needs, not for today. So think about how much RAM OS and apps may be able to take advantage of over the expected life cycle of the computer rather than about memory pressure today. The fact that Apple now options up to 128 GB in MBPs (a huge increase over Intel MBPs) probably gives us a good clue as to where Apple thinks RAM usage is going.

Why limit an expensive computer by installing less than optimum RAM for the life cycle? Personally I would prefer M2 Max and more RAM over M3 if price is limiting the purchase. Plus M2 Max is stronger than M3 Pro. Personally I would get M2 Max MBP with 96 GB RAM (and I did).

Thanks for the input. Doesn't the "top" max have faster read & write speeds than the lower-tier max? I kept my last two MacBook Pros for only 2 years because the performance gains were worth it.

The hassle of returning and reinstalling etc will cost me $200 and hours of time. I am thinking about it...

 

[Beau10]

Thanks for the input. Doesn't the "top" max have faster read & write speeds than the lower-tier max? I kept my last two MacBook Pros for only 2 years because the performance gains were worth it.

The hassle of returning and reinstalling etc will cost me $200 and hours of time. I am thinking about it...

I have the stock unbinned 16" Max and have considered replacing for the one w/ 64 as it's just a 5% increase in the cost of the computer, but ultimately probably won't.

In my case I haven't pushed memory consumption much above 50% yet based on iStat usage over the past 7 days, and my usage really doesn't vary much. I'm a dev that may occasionally play AAA games (ie. BG3) and work w/ local LLM training/inference, moderate docker usage. Don't do anything in video/photo/audio production space. I also will almost certainly upgrade when there is a substantial enough difference - redesign, OLED upgrade, performance in compute is up 50%+, etc, so likely in another 2-3 generations.

You're pushing things a bit more so I could see more of a case, but it also seems you're like me and will probably upgrade again by the M6 release... so probably not going to make any difference in your lifetime ownership. If you do choose to spring for it you can avoid the setup effort by getting the new machine first, doing a transfer, and then returning the first machine.

 

[watchmainspring]

I have the stock unbinned 16" Max and have considered replacing for the one w/ 64 as it's just a 5% increase in the cost of the computer, but ultimately probably won't.

In my case I haven't pushed memory consumption much above 50% yet based on iStat usage over the past 7 days, and my usage really doesn't vary much. I'm a dev that may occasionally play AAA games (ie. BG3) and work w/ local LLM training/inference, moderate docker usage. Don't do anything in video/photo/audio production space. I also will almost certainly upgrade when there is a substantial enough difference - redesign, OLED upgrade, performance in compute is up 50%+, etc, so likely in another 2-3 generations.

You're pushing things a bit more so I could see more of a case, but it also seems you're like me and will probably upgrade again by the M6 release... so probably not going to make any difference in your lifetime ownership. If you do choose to spring for it you can avoid the setup effort by getting the new machine first, doing a transfer, and then returning the first machine.

Thanks. This is super helpful. Unfortunately the delivery date is 3 weeks out so I'd be without a mbp for a couple weeks, when work gets pretty important at year's end.

I just placed an order though and let's see what happens. I can always cancel.

 

[Beau10]

Thanks. This is super helpful. Unfortunately the delivery date is 3 weeks out so I'd be without a mbp for a couple weeks, when work gets pretty important at year's end.

I just placed an order though and let's see what happens. I can always cancel.

I believe all new MBPs are in the holiday return window of Jan 8th, so no need to be without a machine. You can confirm online by going to your order history, it will say when your return window closes.

 

[henrikhelmers]

One should buy for life cycle RAM needs, not for today. So think about how much RAM OS and apps may be able to take advantage of over the expected life cycle of the computer rather than about memory pressure today.

Without numbers this makes little sense. Why would memory requirements double in ten years? Ten years ago I thought 32 GB was reasonable. These days I can work comfortably on 16 GB, and if I didn't care about the SSD wearing out I'd be just fine with 8 GB.

Some applications need a large data model stored in RAM. If you use one of those, you probably are aware. Like the OP has a virtual machine going. Or when I was compiling chromium on a daily basis. Then you do the math and get what you need. But if you have such needs, you probably know? It's quite easy to spot in the Activity Monitor.

Based on the screenshot from the OP I'd say 16 GB + an extra ~8 GB for the VM. That makes 24 GB. 48 GB leaves a ton of headroom.

 

[ascender]

Thanks for the input. Doesn't the "top" max have faster read & write speeds than the lower-tier max? I kept my last two MacBook Pros for only 2 years because the performance gains were worth it.

The hassle of returning and reinstalling etc will cost me $200 and hours of time. I am thinking about it...

I bet the vast majority of people worrying about the read & write speeds of SSDs in these things will never notice the difference in their use of the machine day to day.

Like others have said, memory pressure is a good indicator of health, it's low and green. Unless you know your workflow needs a massive amount of memory for things like virtual machines, dealing with large files, loading sample banks into RAM etc, there's no need to go overboard.

There's nothing wrong with wanting to buy the fastest, most powerful Mac, whether you actually need it or not. And if you have the money spare then go for it.

Just be wary of spending money you don't need to - its not a new thing, but there's so much info now, especially on YouTube that I do see a lot of posters reacting to the headline without understanding the nuance of it and suddenly convinced they need a fully loaded M3 Max machine to do their workload which I bet would run just fine on any Mac laptop.

 

[canadianreader]

I would increase memory because some of it is shared with the iGPU. 64 or 96 would be a good thing especially when you have time to return it because you can't upgrade after that.

 

[HawkTheHusky1902]

Should I return my 48GB for 64GB M3 Max?

I upgraded from the 16GB M1 pro MBP because my memory pressure was too high and the performance was slacking. Right now I'm seeing the memory getting gobbled up but performance is decent. However, my M1 was also fine at first and then slowed down as my use increased.

View attachment 2313513

you are using the two worst memeory hogging softwares, microsoft stuff, and CHROME!!!

 

[maerz001]

I would increase memory because some of it is shared with the iGPU. 64 or 96 would be a good thing especially when you have time to return it because you can't upgrade after that.

This is a pointless recommendation. You don’t even know the OPs needs. Why not 128GB?

 

[Matck06]

As for me, I'm a photographer and I have the m3 max 16/40 48Gb version and I really think it's not bad at all! anyway, the more ram you have, the more the system memory expands, just to give you an example, Lightroom ran perfectly and didn't consume much ram on my M1 Pro 16gb then on my other M1 Pro 32gb it consumed more than twice as much without me seeing any difference and now it consumes even more on my M3 max 48gb and it'll be the same for the 64 or 96 gb ram version.

 

[Matck06]

This is a pointless recommendation. You don’t even know the OPs needs. Why not 128GB?

unfortunately there are many who have switched to 64 or 96gb of rom without knowing how to use them, on the max tech channel it shows the M1 Max 32 vs 64 gb version running an insane number of programs and the difference is just minimal and the swap on the 32gb version was really low.

 

[canadianreader]

This is a pointless recommendation. You don’t even know the OPs needs. Why not 128GB?

I love when computers are maxed out or close to maxed out.

 

[mecloud]

It would be interesting to see what the CPU/GPU usage is. As others mentioned, memory usage doesn’t look “bad”. More RAM will reduce swapfile use, so if you‘re okay with dealing with the logistics of swapping the new computer (and if the screenshot you provided actually represents your real-world use), I see no flaw in the idea of spending $200 more to get a 64gb configuration. This especially if you tend to hang onto computers for awhile. Future versions of software will probably use more RAM. Less swapfile use lowers the read/write cycles on the internal SSD.

I would agree with the advice to not downgrade the CPU specs to offset the price of more RAM. That would be basically trading one performance limitation (one you are likely not even noticing now) for other performance limitations IMO you‘d be more likely to notice. Besides less CPU/GPU cores, the lower spec of the M3 Max has a slower memory bus (300gb/sec compared to the 400gb/sec you have now).

 

[raythompsontn]

So many people willing to spend other people's money.

On my M2 Air I had Photoshop, Lightroom, MSWord, MSExcel, PowerPoint, OneNote Pages, Numbers, KeyNote, DaVinci Resolve, Photos, Notes, Text, Mail, Contacts and Maps open at the same time. I was using about 9 Gig of memory and 0 SwapFile. I have 16 Gig of memory and a 1 TB SSD.

48 Gig is probably more than adequate for most mortals. A very select few would require more memory and they would know who they are. Rendering large 4K video with CGI would require large memory. If a person is into that, whether to purchase the maximum configuration is not even considered. They just do it.

If the buyer can afford the additional memory, and wants the additional memory, don't be asking for advice here. The buyer already knows the answer.

 

[Isamilis]

Should I return my 48GB for 64GB M3 Max?

I upgraded from the 16GB M1 pro MBP because my memory pressure was too high and the performance was slacking. Right now I'm seeing the memory getting gobbled up but performance is decent. However, my M1 was also fine at first and then slowed down as my use increased.

View attachment 2313513

Having 48 GB from previously 16Gb has been very very abundance. This assumed, your VM has been assigned 32GB ram (48-16). Better save your money.

 

[richard371]

I did the same thing. 16 wasn't cutting it on my m2 pro so I went with the m3 max 16/40 48gb. I clearly could have dropped another 200 for 64 but didn't. I'm way too lazy to return and reinstall everything as I'm very happy with my setup now. Going from 16 to 48 if that's not enough I need to find another hobby lol. At this point it won't make much of a difference unless you go 128 gb. 48 will work just fine for me . only thing I would gain is bragging rights but 48 is not too shabby.

 

[macduke]

Regarding getting 96GB on the slower M3 Max, I’ve seen some people in this thread suggest it costs about the same, some say $100 more. It doesn’t. It costs $300 more to get 96GB with a slower CPU/GPU than to get the faster CPU/GPU with 64GB. It’s $300 to upgrade the chip which unlocks a $200 upgrade for the RAM. It’s $800 total to upgrade from 36GB to 96GB on the standard M3 Max.

I know this is the reason why I picked that config, and yes I just checked their website again before posting. It’s worth the $200 to get 64GB. It’s not worth $500 ($300 extra) for this guy to get 96GB that he likely won’t ever use unless maybe he’s keeping it for the entire 8 year service life and even then 64GB should be serviceable near the very end for moderately high multitasking loads. Just don’t suddenly get into editing audio with hundreds of tracks, editing high bitrate 8K video files with several tracks or multicam, or loading high end AI models such as an LLM fully into RAM and 64GB should be great long term.

Truth is, we never know where software is going but I have similar needs and went with 64GB, currently averaging around 40-42GB, peaking at 48GB in severe circumstances, and I’m planning to upgrade in 6-7 years unless my financial situation drastically improves (aka too much money to know what to do with) and they come out with that OLED model. Worst case some apps may slow down a little on swap in 6-8 years, but swap isn’t horrible nowadays with these fast SSDs.

 

[Beau10]

Regarding getting 96GB on the slower M3 Max, I’ve seen some people in this thread suggest it costs about the same, some say $100 more. It doesn’t. It costs $300 more to get 96GB with a slower CPU/GPU than to get the faster CPU/GPU with 64GB.

I just tried this and am seeing $100 diff both for the 16" ($4199 vs $4299) and 14" ($3899 vs $3999) machines in the US store. Are you sure you're not comparing 48 vs 96?

Truth is, we never know where software is going but I have similar needs and went with 64GB, currently averaging around 40-42GB, peaking at 48GB in severe circumstances, and I’m planning to upgrade in 6-7 years unless my financial situation drastically improves

OP indicated he tends to upgrade if performance is meaningful, last 2 machines were only kept 2 years. I do similar so the notion of future proofing really isn't much of a concern. I'd say your case is a no-brainer though.

 

[watchmainspring]

This is a pointless recommendation. You don’t even know the OPs needs. Why not 128GB?

I did the same thing. 16 wasn't cutting it on my m2 pro so I went with the m3 max 16/40 48gb. I clearly could have dropped another 200 for 64 but didn't. I'm way too lazy to return and reinstall everything as I'm very happy with my setup now. Going from 16 to 48 if that's not enough I need to find another hobby lol. At this point it won't make much of a difference unless you go 128 gb. 48 will work just fine for me . only thing I would gain is bragging rights but 48 is not too shabby.

I reordered with 128gb ram. The screenshot I originally posted doesn't show the memory use with the second VM I occasionally run, nor tableau. I also edit 4k and 5k video from time to time and I'm not interested in closing everything down just to edit.