Use Cases for 128GB RAM

[Kronsteen]

Having just decided on the configuration for an M3 MBP, I am curious to know what use cases have caused people to specify 128GB RAM.

I could perhaps understand running (large) LLMs, heavy duty video / special effects and high-end music stuff (with many complex tracks)? Although for those sorts of workloads, I wonder if at least a Studio (for better ventilation) or an Ultra CPU might also be needed.

So, if you have ordered a MacBook Pro with 128GB RAM, it would be interesting to know why.

(I'm asking purely out of curiosity, by the way, I have no need of that much memory myself. It also strikes me that an extra £800 (GBP) here in the UK to go from 64 to 128GB is not particularly good value for money, unless it's an absolute necessity.)

Thanks .... Andrew

 

[floral]

...Maybe running virtual machines? Like, with that much RAM, you could hypothetically run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM (if you actually needed to do that)

 

[maerz001]

I just bought it to future proof my safari experience
/s

 

[Kronsteen]

...Maybe running virtual machines? Like, with that much RAM, you could hypothetically run a VM inside a VM inside a VM inside a VM (if you actually needed to do that)

Ah, yes. I suppose an arbitrary depth of VMs might well need an equally arbitrary amount of memory.

As it happens, I did manage to run Gnu APL under Ubuntu/390 running in the Hercules emulator in an Ubuntu VM under VMWare Fusion on my 2019 Intel 32GB MBP. I didn't really need to do that, but it did work, although it was rather slow. (But I suppose emulating a proper instruction set on a toy computer is never going to be that speedy .... )

 

[Kronsteen]

I just bought it to future proof my safari experience
/s

Just as well you don't use Chrome, really ....

 

[DaveOZ]

I work with large 3D CAD files and usually have 3 or more files open at once. The files are constantly getting more complex and it's at the point where 64gb is not enough. I've gone with 128gb. Bear in mind this RAM is shared with the GPU and you can understand why 3D CAD will need more RAM.

 

[ipaqrat]

128 gb is very helpful for certain field activities that use and produce massive, extremely detailed geographical information system (GIS) maps, with some aspects in subgrids of 30cm square (@ a square foot). Particularly if several detailed maps and/or layers are hosted for nearby GIS clients. Hypothetically this might support chemical biological radiological and nuclear (CBRN) incident response. Hypothetically this might support humanitarian de-mining.

I would also run Blender renders until my eyes bleed, even just for 2D Art for graphic novels. Alas, I can't afford even the machine let alone Apple's upgrade prices. So I'll still be struggling with the viewport and rendering over nights.

 

[macduke]

I bought 64GB for future proofing. I have no idea what I would use 128GB for.

Yeah, I've heard that loading an entire AI model into RAM can drastically increase the speed of the model. Probably that large/complex 3D models. I know specialized workstation GPUs will often have a lot of RAM and with unified RAM on Apple Silicon that can be put to good use.

I had upgraded my Intel iMac to 64GB at one point and it very rarely hits 48GB when I'm multitasking hard and even so the actual active memory is lower than that. I figured the extra 16GB would be a good buffer for me to last the rest of this decade. I work Mon-Thurs and the apps and crap build up and usually restart after work on Thursdays which I'm about to do, and currently have 27GB available. Unfortunately the MBP can't be upgraded like this iMac can, and I upgraded this iMac from 32GB to 64GB for $150 in 2020 over three years ago and for the 14" MBP I just bought, Apple charges $300 to upgrade your chip before you even get the 64GB option and then charges $200 to upgrade only 16GB more from 48GB to 64GB.

 

[Schnitzel1979]

I am torn between 48 and 64 Gb on a new macbookpro; i plan to use logic pro and think 128 Gb is too much ram to use for

 

[bobcomer]

My iMac has 128G of RAM, and I use that for running multiple VM's.

 

[jennyp]

How about - just a lot of editing in Lightroom Classic and external image editors (with other stuff open as well)? I use 96GB on my M2 and I'm glad of it for that. If I had known the M3s were coming so soon I would have waited, and yes, probably opted for 128GB.

 

[danwells]

128 gb is very helpful for certain field activities that use and produce massive, extremely detailed geographical information system (GIS) maps, with some aspects in subgrids of 30cm square (@ a square foot). Particularly if several detailed maps and/or layers are hosted for nearby GIS clients. Hypothetically this might support chemical biological radiological and nuclear (CBRN) incident response. Hypothetically this might support humanitarian de-mining.

I would also run Blender renders until my eyes bleed, even just for 2D Art for graphic novels. Alas, I can't afford even the machine let alone Apple's upgrade prices. So I'll still be struggling with the viewport and rendering over nights.

How are you running ArcGIS on a Mac? As far as I know, it's always been Windows-only (or sometimes also available for various Unices, but never the most popular UNIX of all, MacOS). I'd absolutely love it if that had changed! Darned useful piece of software (and the licensing is finally reasonable for smaller-scale users), and it would be a great fit for Apple Silicon, but ESRI has been deaf to Mac user requests for years (they had a Mac version of their "little" product, ArcVIEW, in the early 90s, but I hadn't heard anything about anything else). People used to use Boot Camp, but that no longer exists. According to ESRIs tech support page, it'll run in Parallels on Apple Silicon if you get ahold of Windows 11 ARM???

 

[Beau10]

I could perhaps understand running (large) LLMs,

I'd argue it's overkill for that. As powerful as the M3 Max GPU is, it's underpowered for situations where you'd need that much RAM, whether training or inference. These are pretty good though if you want to play with 7B/13B models.

 

[ipaqrat]

How are you running ArcGIS on a Mac? As far as I know, it's always been Windows-only (or sometimes also available for various Unices, but never the most popular UNIX of all, MacOS). I'd absolutely love it if that had changed! Darned useful piece of software (and the licensing is finally reasonable for smaller-scale users), and it would be a great fit for Apple Silicon, but ESRI has been deaf to Mac user requests for years (they had a Mac version of their "little" product, ArcVIEW, in the early 90s, but I hadn't heard anything about anything else). People used to use Boot Camp, but that no longer exists. According to ESRIs tech support page, it'll run in Parallels on Apple Silicon if you get ahold of Windows 11 ARM???

Not ArcGIS. At the moment, it's primarily QGIS, which is full-native, cross-platform (depending on compilers), mobiles too, and python-friendly. This is excellent for integration with Juvare WebEOC, which is mature and particularly well suited to GIS-oriented incident response resources, tasks and personnel. Also, the security guys like open source, which allows screening code and ensuring supply chain compliance. On the other hand, QGIS' UI is not always as polished ArcView.

I have not witnessed it first hand, but I heard that ESRI's products work okay on Intel and ARM VMs, with a few narrow exceptions. Parallels and VMWare both provide pre-built WinARM 11 desktop images that accept enterprise license activation keys. Real ArcGIS/ArcView would be handy to test compatibility and hygiene, as certain map sets might be released as reduced datasets in OSINT channels.

Hypothetically.

 

[somndrom]

Don't feel I have a whole lot to add to the discussion unfortunately but I'm in the same boat. I'm mainly on visual apps like Resolve, Lightroom, Photoshop editing primarily 4K RAW footage. I've also heard (not sure if this is true..?) that people using external display(s) should consider it.

 

[4743913]

Gene sequencing while I eat my cheerios in the morning..

 

[4743913]

I bought 64GB for future proofing. I have no idea what I would use 128GB for.

I stopped at 36GB because in the future I know I will not be able to resist the M5

 

[raythompsontn]

How about - just a lot of editing in Lightroom Classic and external image editors (with other stuff open as well)? I use 96GB on my M2 and I'm glad of it for that

I do that, and more, on my M2 Air with 16 Gig of memory. No problems. System is responsive and just works.

 

[Beau10]

I stopped at 36GB because in the future I know I will not be able to resist the M5

You simply can't proof for that sort of future. It is a bit odd that people are speccing out TOL machines so they can be usable for 6+ years.

If your workflow benefits by a machine that has this type of performance today, then it certainly will benefit that much more by one that has double the performance in another 2-3 generations. Conversely, if you're coming from a 6+ year old machine to get a machine that is 3x the performance at twice the cost of one that is 2.5x the performance makes little sense.

 

[Apple2GS]

When the future requires 128GB it will probably also require a lot more cores and higher clock speeds. The best value is one of the pre-configured models especially if you trade them in as Apple does not give much more for custom configs.

 

[danwells]

There are photo/video tests out already that show that extra RAM makes a huge difference in many operations. The trade-in point is interesting...

I'm deciding between 64 GB and 128 GB for my M3 Max that I'll be ordering soon (still photography, but extraordinarily large image files from a 102 MP medium format camera).

 

[somndrom]

There are photo/video tests out already that show that extra RAM makes a huge difference in many operations. The trade-in point is interesting...

Not doubting you at all, just interested in watching these, any specific ones you can link to? RAMping up to make my order this week and still undecided.

 

[danwells]

I think one of them was MaxTech's Lightroom test video. Lightroom Classic is a notorious RAM hog, and I've seen it bog down due to RAM (doing a huge catalog operation) on a 128 GB Mac Studio a friend has... That experience is one reason I'm leaning towards 128 GB.

 

[somndrom]

I think one of them was MaxTech's Lightroom test video. Lightroom Classic is a notorious RAM hog, and I've seen it bog down due to RAM (doing a huge catalog operation) on a 128 GB Mac Studio a friend has... That experience is one reason I'm leaning towards 128 GB.

Yeah, pretty much all Adobe software is awfully optimised for Apple to be fair. But I do use Lightroom for very complex edits and big libraries with DPX files that has absolutely seen my previous computer (64 RAM) freeze up when using lots of AI masks and local edits. Thanks for reminding me of those situations, would be nice to get rid of. I never knew the RAM was part of that though, I always assumed it was a processor thing, but even though I'm a power user, I'm not too savy on how Lightroom handles resources behind the scenes.

 

[Mr. Dee]

You simply can't proof for that sort of future. It is a bit odd that people are speccing out TOL machines so they can be usable for 6+ years.

If your workflow benefits by a machine that has this type of performance today, then it certainly will benefit that much more by one that has double the performance in another 2-3 generations. Conversely, if you're coming from a 6+ year old machine to get a machine that is 3x the performance at twice the cost of one that is 2.5x the performance makes little sense.

The thing is though, Macs last really long. Case in point, I am playing with a 2003 PowerBook G3 with Panther installed and it still works great. There are still Intel Machines out there doing great, hence why Apple is encouraging them to upgrade to M3. With machines these powerful, Apple gonna have a super hard time getting many users off them when they introduce planned obsolescence. I'm keeping my M1 until 2027 because of what I do on it.