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What to do: 14" M1Pro with 16 or 32 Gb memory

Metzgermeister

Metzgermeister

macrumors member
Original poster
May 27, 2007
87
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Have been waiting for nearly a year for this new model with a higher end CPU, and there it is! I already made up my mind, a 14" M1Pro with 1 TB. So far it was easy. But central memory...what to take? 16 or 32 Gb?

I know 32Gb would be the first choice, but it does cost €460 ($530) for a total of €3209 ($3725). Then I wonder if I really need 32Gb? No heavy apps are used, sometimes a bit of movie or photo editing, but nothing professional. For this a 16Gb would be sufficient. But on the other side my current 2015 MBP also has 16 GB, so after 6 years I would have the same memory as the last 6 years.

I'm confused, what to do? Pick the 16GB and safe some serious money. Or just go for the 32Gb, pay quickly and be well prepared for the future...
 
I had the exact same conundrum, that kept me waffling back and forth on the Apple Store app... I was set on 14" M1 Pro (don't need GPU really) with 1TB SSD. I also had upgraded to the 16gb memory on my 2016 13" MBP.

It would've been a much easier choice if the upgrade price from 16g > 32gb memory wasn't so egregious ($400 here in the US, your E460 is even crazier...) I know it's not quite the same upgrade as we typically think of memory, given it's all onboard / unified memory now with Apple silicon architecture vs discrete memory sticks. Still, it seems like this is probably in the later innings where Apple can continue to get away with this memory upgrade pricing.

All that to be said, I just went with the 32gb upgrade. Peace of mind for a machine I'll keep at least 4-5 years. But I could easily have been convinced the other way...
 
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I am sorta in the same boat. Coming from a 2011 MacBook Air. Either is going to be a significant upgrade and I don't do anything intensive. That being said, based on my purchase history, will be keeping this thing 10+ years.
 
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Got the 16“ base model, which comes with 512GB of storage and 16GB of RAM.
i don’t use any professional apps, I guess I’ll be fine. My current 13“ Touch Bar MBP 2019 only has 8GB…
 
Well, in the end I ordered the 32GB version. Just to be on safe side for next years. The final decision was made based on use of VMware running Win10 and later Win11. I can give it easily 16GB to run properly without affecting the rest of the MBP.
I think I made the right choice (if I don’t look at the total price)
 
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I'm debating between this as well.
Will primarily use the laptop for e-mail, webbrowsing and Football Manager.
But because the unified memory is different than the "normal" memory usage/allocation on previous laptop.. I don't know if the upgrade to 32GB is that significant? Or will 16GB also be enough on the long term.
 
Rivanov said:
I'm debating between this as well.
Will primarily use the laptop for e-mail, webbrowsing and Football Manager.
But because the unified memory is different than the "normal" memory usage/allocation on previous laptop.. I don't know if the upgrade to 32GB is that significant? Or will 16GB also be enough on the long term.
Click to expand...
Honestly the 16gb would be fine. I have an M1 MBA and I have thrown some very intensive tasks at it and it has held up just fine, you will be thrilled.
 
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Metzgermeister said:
Well, in the end I ordered the 32GB version. Just to be on safe side for next years. The final decision was made based on use of VMware running Win10 and later Win11. I can give it easily 16GB to run properly without affecting the rest of the MBP.
I think I made the right choice (if I don’t look at the total price)
Click to expand...
With these new chips being so good, I think the base M1 Pro will be good enough for years unless you are doing video rendering etc (which I am not). But I think the RAM slowish the machine down with heaps of apps open is the part that could throttle an otherwise amazing machine. An A$600 "just in case" insurance policy is hard to swallow but it would kill me to run out memory with heaps of apps open on a machine like this. Do I need to up the chip to 10 core if I am juts doing Office, browsing and maybe Logic Pro X? I am not sure I can justify the price of doing both...so which one? I think RAM.
 
Until last week, all of MacRumors was saying that 8GB was enough.
So you'll have to ask for an 8GB version of the new Pro.
Apple must have made a mistake somewhere.
 
I personally went for 16GB RAM. I am mostly using the MacBook Pro for surfing, writing articles and rarely Windows 11 in Parallels. But I more often use Remote Desktop and run things on my server at the datacenter :)

Moreover, I will use my MacBook Pro for 2-3 years and then it will be replaced. So if I would need more RAM, it will be probably so in a few years when I would buy a new MacBook Pro anyway. If I really run against limites regularly, we will see then. But on my M1 Mac Mini I have 16GB and never had any issues with RAM.
 
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Lihp8270 said:
Take the 32gb. Don’t forget memory is unified.

Considering that modern gpus of similar performance are running on 8-12gb+ of vram.

You may as well get the larger memory option
Click to expand...
This.

I was completely on the fence as well, even cancelling my original order. In the end I went for 32GB, reason being that I currently use around 12GB with my existing MacBook Pro, coupled with the unified architecture and estimating what the GPU would be using for regular use, as well as a bit of headroom for the future as apps utilize more RAM, I at least have piece of mind now.
 
Went with the 16gb, first of all apple's ram upgrades are expensive, 2nd I just use my mac for surfing the web and watching youtube, checking email...I'll use this for 4-5 years then upgrade again.
 
16 is "the new 8".

I reckon 16gb will be fine for the base configuration, unless one intends to do HEAVY video editing (4k multiple streams or 8k).

I usually order "the base configuration" since my needs aren't too great. I've never had problems with them over the useful life of the Mac. My 2015 MBP is still running fine with 8gb of RAM...
 
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gpat said:
Until last week, all of MacRumors was saying that 8GB was enough.
So you'll have to ask for an 8GB version of the new Pro.
Apple must have made a mistake somewhere.
Click to expand...
I assume since more than 1 external monitor is supported, then more ram is needed on the minimum end.
 
From what you wrote, you don't even use 16GB, so why would you get more? I wouldn't and didn't...and I have a 50mp camera.
 
DennisdeWit said:
I personally went for 16GB RAM. I am mostly using the MacBook Pro for surfing, writing articles and rarely Windows 11 in Parallels. But I more often use Remote Desktop and run things on my server at the datacenter :)

Moreover, I will use my MacBook Pro for 2-3 years and then it will be replaced. So if I would need more RAM, it will be probably so in a few years when I would buy a new MacBook Pro anyway. If I really run against limites regularly, we will see then. But on my M1 Mac Mini I have 16GB and never had any issues with RAM.
Click to expand...

Likewise, also working on RDS, Citrix and VDI environments ( I do need that 2 external monitor support though) so I don't need any crazy local resources. I don't believe in future proofing either, I rather get what I need right now or in the foreseeable future and save the cash for the next MacBook upgrade in 2-3 years. Its a huge waste of money to overspec and never fully utilise your MacBook.

16GB M1 Air here at the moment of writing, never been stressing my RAM hard enough to consider an upgrade. If the rare occasional swap does happen, the blazing fast SSD will do so unnoticed.

These enthousiast forums are great, but they're also the reason people are overspeccing their machines like crazy.
 
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Ordered a 14" M1Pro 10CPU/16GPU 1TB SSD with 16GB RAM yesterday for me. The only 'high power' things I do are Lightroom, Photoshop, and some models in R.

Also ordered a 16" M1Max 10CPU/24GPU 1TB SSD with 32GB RAM yesterday for my son (The Sims apparently is greedy for power).

Had a moment of buyer's remorse today and wondered about cancelling and ordering a 32GB RAM 14". The shift in the delivery dates persuaded me 16GB RAM would be enough for the next few years: October 26 delivery for my current order, November 26-29 for a revised order.

16GB RAM on a 2017 2.9GHz i7 is mostly OK. I'm expecting the 14" 16GB RAM to perform better despite the shared memory. And be a bit easier to carry around.

I'll be interested to see if there's any real difference between the 2 machines for our day to day things.
 
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Rck1984 said:
Likewise, also working on RDS, Citrix and VDI environments ( I do need that 2 external monitor support though) so I don't need any crazy local resources. I don't believe in future proofing either, I rather get what I need right now or in the foreseeable future and save the cash for the next MacBook upgrade in 2-3 years. Its a huge waste of money to overspec and never fully utilise your MacBook.

16GB M1 Air here at the moment of writing, never been stressing my RAM hard enough to consider an upgrade. If the rare occasional swap does happen, the blazing fast SSD will do so unnoticed.

These enthousiast forums are great, but they're also the reason people are overspeccing their machines like crazy.
Click to expand...
Thanks for being the voice of reason. I have never ever seen a warning that I was out of memory. I am mostly in Safari, Terminal and might compile an app maybe one or two times per month. Mostly I am writing articles in Word or Google Docs. And yes, I do use Media Encoder just to convert some 1080p video’s for my Visual Radio project.

I feel like my idea to go for 32GB is mostly based on FOMO and not common sense. I was perfectly fine with it, until I saw all these people going for 32GB.
 
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I went for the base CPU, 32GB and 1TB. I'm expecting to have the laptop for about 6 years for mostly Logic, Lightroom and Premier very occasionally. I always try and over-spec RAM, even though it's painful, and I've been maxing 512GB for years. I'm hoping the 8 core will still be fast enough for my needs as it's the absolute maximum I could spend.
 
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