Why do people want 8GB RAM in the MBA?

[pgiguere1]

From Wikipedia:

Modules rated at different speeds can be run in dual-channel mode, although the motherboard will then run all memory modules at the speed of the slowest module. Some motherboards, however, have compatibility issues with certain brands or models of memory when attempting to use them in dual-channel mode. For this reason, it is generally advised to use identical pairs of memory modules, which is why most memory manufacturers now sell "kits" of matched-pair DIMMs. Several motherboard manufacturers only support configurations where a "matched pair" of modules are used.

A matching pair needs to match in:

-Capacity (e.g. 1024 MB). Certain Intel chipsets support different capacity chips in what they call Flex Mode: the capacity that can be matched is run in dual-channel, while the remainder runs in single-channel.

-Speed (e.g. PC5300). If speed is not the same, the lower speed of the two modules will be used. Likewise, the higher latency of the two modules will be used.

-Number of chips and sides (e.g. 2 sides with 4 chips on each side).

-Matching size of rows and columns.

and:

These separate channels allow each memory module access to the memory controller, increasing throughput bandwidth. It is not required that identical modules be used, but this is often recommended for best dual-channel operation.

Somebody knows what they mean by "best dual-channel operation"? Is there anything other than the possible compatibility issues if you have different capacities?

 

[chrono1081]

I'm using 700mb for OS, 2GB of active RAM without even trying right now... 8GB of RAM ensures I'll be safe even when working with multiple high memory apps. Also, with the MBA, having soldered on RAM just unnerves me... I'd always feel like I'm running out unless I maxed my RAM for the system.

This.

The system will scale itself to use available resources efficiently. More never hurts. Without having anything running at the moment I am using 6GB of ram. (1 gig is inactive status right now) but I also have 24 gigs of ram in my machine.

When I open all of the programs in my workflow I will generally use around 17 - 20 gigs of ram, sometimes I will get real close to maxing but not often.

Having more ram is always a good thing even if its more than you need.

 

[Oppressed]

That's what you say now. Why contradict yourself after you just pointed out history?

What was true in the past may not be true in the future.

 

[KylePowers]

What's the point of having quad-core CPUs in laptops? What's the point of having 1TB hard drives in laptops? What's the point in having high resolution screens in laptops? What's the point in consistently pushing the limit year after year? What's the point of innovation?

I wish I could have 100GB of RAM in my laptop. And a 100TB hard drive. And a 500 core processor. And everything unimaginable.

... and a friend =(

 

[warfed]

From Wikipedia:


and:

Somebody knows what they mean by "best dual-channel operation"? Is there anything other than the possible compatibility issues if you have different capacities?

And still... 2GB+4GB > 2GB+2GB ...

You're pretty much saying my perfectly tuned civic is better than a slightly out of tune M3.

 

[likegadgets]

As others said, I run Parallels and Windows 7 runs great with 4 GB assigned to the VM. Rarely I run a second instance of Parallels on the iMac. I have 16 on my iMac and 8 on my MBP.

 

[h00ligan]

Because it's 2011, 4 should be standard.

 

[aleni]

i run vmware and working big files with photoshop, 300dpi 5000x6000 px for tshirt design all day long. and i recently bought an ACD 27", so small screen is not an issue now. really wish to sell my big ass 17" to get the new 13" mba with 8gb of ram. please make it BTO steve jobssssss. :/

 

[MartiNZ]

Have you tried playing Starcraft2 , Need for Speed or Black Ops on MBA?

Until you try it , you won't understand why people will want 8 GB RAM.

I play SC2 on my 13" with 4GB RAM and it holds a pretty steady 20FPS on medium settings. This occasionally dips right down for a few minutes, but I've never checked Terminal at those times - perhaps that is when the system is doing heavy paging? Either way, I can happily browse the 'net in the background of SC2 without lag, and that is something that I've seen last year's 15" pros struggle with, so I give up on trying to reason these things out.

 

[theSeb]

"640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, 1981

You do realise that you're arguing against your own original post with this statement, right?

 

[pgiguere1]

You guys want the MBA as a desktop replacement machine. This is not exactly the way Apple markets it as. Not that's it wrong to choose by yourself what you need, but I think most of you guys are power users (obviously, on this kind of site) that don't represent Apple's target consumer demographic with the current MBA.

The Air is marketed as a simple computer for simple tasks. Like the iPad. It's small, lightweight, and boots up quickly. Listen to the MBA video on Apple's website, they keep comparing it to the iPad and say it's "all they learned from the iPad put into a notebook". Like for the iPad, they hoped to target mass market, but it looks like they got the powerusers' attention instead.

Power users want a MacBook Pro that's lighter and thinner, aka what the next MBP could be. Not a totally different product. So they'll complain about the lack of large capacity SSD, large capacity RAM, backlit keyboard, black bezel/glass screen. They basically want a slim MacBook Pro.

Maybe Apple predicted wrong the direction the MacBook Air was going to. When they created the 11", they probably wanted to make it the "default laptop" for the mass market, aka families, students and such. The price was still too high. Look at how successful the iPad is. I don't think it's any better than the 11" Air in many aspects, maybe just for simple games and reading books. The 11" Air gets you to do so much more things, yet it's not nearly as popular.

They now need to merge the MBA and MBP ASAP, so all of you guys are happy, and the average people who want to do simple tasks on a simple machine will stay with their iPad.

You guys aren't complaining about how the iPad doesn't have 4GB RAM and can't run multiple operating system at the same time, can't run intensive video games, and can't let you edit high resolution images in Photoshop, are you?

It's really a matter of how you perceive the product. You guys want something that doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist the way Apple want it to. I guess it will change soon though. We all see it coming. "The next generation of MacBooks". They just can't force it to soon though.

 

[aleni]

You guys want the MBA as a desktop replacement machine. This is not exactly the way Apple markets it as. Not that's it wrong to choose by yourself what you need, but I think most of you guys are power users (obviously, on this kind of site) that don't represent Apple's target consumer demographic with the current MBA.

The Air is marketed as a simple computer for simple tasks. Like the iPad. It's small, lightweight, and boots up quickly. Listen to the MBA video on Apple's website, they keep comparing it to the iPad and say it's "all they learned from the iPad put into a notebook". Like for the iPad, they hoped to target mass market, but it looks like they got the powerusers' attention instead.

Power users want a MacBook Pro that's lighter and thinner, aka what the next MBP could be. Not a totally different product. So they'll complain about the lack of large capacity SSD, large capacity RAM, backlit keyboard, black bezel/glass screen. They basically want a slim MacBook Pro.

Maybe Apple predicted wrong the direction the MacBook Air was going to. When they created the 11", they probably wanted to make it the "default laptop" for the mass market, aka families, students and such. The price was still too high. Look at how successful the iPad is. I don't think it's any better than the 11" Air in many aspects, maybe just for simple games and reading books. The 11" Air gets you to do so much more things, yet it's not nearly as popular.

They now need to merge the MBA and MBP ASAP, so all of you guys are happy, and the average people who want to do simple tasks on a simple machine will stay with their iPad.

You guys aren't complaining about how the iPad doesn't have 4GB RAM and can't run multiple operating system at the same time, can't run intensive video games, and can't let you edit high resolution images in Photoshop, are you?

It's really a matter of how you perceive the product. You guys want something that doesn't exist, or at least doesn't exist the way Apple want it to. I guess it will change soon though. We all see it coming. "The next generation of MacBooks". They just can't force it to soon though.

you are right, but in my case, the new sandy bridge in the next mba will be faster than my current 2.66ghz core 2 duo which is currently enough power for my job, and about the rest of my setup is 8GB of ram, 128GB SSD.

so now, 128GB fits my need, the new sandy bridge fits my need, only 8GB is mystery, hope the new mba will have 8GB of ram as BTO so i can finally convert to the sexy mba.

now with illustrator, photoshop each with 5000x5000 px 300dpi images open, iTunes, safari (only one tab), reeder, mail, 1password and activity monitor open it's currently using 4.6gb. so i don't think 4gb will be enough and even the mba will take 256mb for the VGA.


hope apple will ditch the superdrive soon and make mbp thinner, so brings joy to all people.

those who need superdrive just get the damn external superdrive.

 

[pgiguere1]

You do realise that you're arguing against your own original post with this statement, right?

I'm not. I'm not saying all computers will never need more than 4GB. I'm talking about specifically the Air, a computer in a special category. Of course it will need more RAM as time progresses. But still less than the MBP if it's not aimed at the same people, aka, mass market, not powerusers. See my previous post.

My point was more "The MacBook Air isn't a MacBook Pro and doesn't have the same specs and the same target demographic and it's okay." rather than "Nobody needs anymore RAM than what we have right now."

I'm all for the evolution of the amount of RAM in Pro machines. Get 64GB in your MBP if you need to. I'm sure some people do. The Air just isn't made for that type of work in mind and Apple always want to differentiate their computers. If the Pro gets more like the Air, the Air will get more like the iPad, like by running iOS and using the iPad's CPU.

 

[theSeb]

I disagree and agree with you. Whilst not everyone needs a gajillion GBs of ram, I do find that 8 is the sweet spot right now. Even without using any intensive apps I have a few page outs with 8 GBs. The whole system runs a lot better than it uses to with 4 and there is no technical reason for Apple not to offer 8 GBs as BTO.

 

[roseanne]

Is their some type of RAM usage I'm not aware of, or are people just not aware of their RAM usage?

For me, it's virtual machines. I use them for work and I am on the road a lot. It would be nice not having to carry an MBP!

 

[racketeer71]

I just looooove these threads, where the OP basicly states:

"Since I don't see a need for a specific feature, and I'm so narrowminded that I cannot relate to other peoples needs, I'm going to make a post to show the whole world that they simply don't understand the facts as well as I do"

(Another example is the "why would anybody want an 11" MBA?" thread)

When viewing the thread titles in the MBA forum, it's quite obvious that a lot of people wish to use the MBA as their primary machine (Photoshop, video editing, etc). For me it's a matter of VMWare Fusion and that I would have to "go backwards" compared to my current machine in both CPU, RAM and GPU if they don't add a 8GB BTO option.

That might not be the way Apple or the OP think the MBA should be used. But who really cares about their opinion - and why should it matter? I couldn't care less about how Apple showcases the MBA in a video on their website. If the MBA is suitable as peoples primary machine, should they not be allowed to use it as such? And if 8GB is a requirement for a lot of users, why should they not voice their desire for this?

That the OP believe that opening tabs in Chrome is the ultimate metric on how much RAM anybody would need says everything.

 

[natethomas1]

I occasionally wonder if RAM is eventually going to disappear. At some point, we'll all have 32GB of RAM, and then next year, there'll be no ram at all, as SSD has sped up so significantly that RAM becomes redundant. Then that 640k statement will be funny in a reverse way.

 

[halledise]

Have you tried playing Starcraft2 , Need for Speed or Black Ops on MBA?

Until you try it , you won't understand why people will want 8 GB RAM.

gaming is not what the Air is designed for.

to play those games, you'd need ideally a high-end iMac or even a Mac Pro - then you can stick as much memory into them as you like.

maybe a MacBook Pro with the 'AMD Radeon HD 6750M GPU with 1GB GDDR5' as a minimum - but then isn't that what those PS3, Xbox, and all the other thingummies are for?
computers are for real work+play stuff, man - not games

 

[2IS]

Dual channel doesn't make that much of a difference. Depending on what you're doing, 6GB in single channel can be much better than 4GB in dual channel.

On that same note, dual channel can make a pretty significant difference depending on what you're doing. In fact, I'd say most people will take advantage of dual channel bandwidth well before they will exceed 4GB of RAM usage. I'll give you an example. Watching a Netflix HD stream on my media center box. I originally had it configured with a single 2GB stick of ram. During the first couple minutes network bandwidth usage is quite high as it's buffering, during this time, memory utilization is also steadily climbing (though never exceeding 2GB). With the single 2GB stick, the video would be choppy during this buffering phase and CPU utilization was 100% (dual core cpu, maxed on both cores).

Swapped out the 2GB stick with two 1GB sticks. Video is nice and smooth during the buffering stages and I have not seen CPU utilization go past 80%

 

[bchreng]

Have you tried playing Starcraft2 , Need for Speed or Black Ops on MBA?

Until you try it , you won't understand why people will want 8 GB RAM.

Hopefully the CPU upgrade will allow the game run a bit smoother too. If it can run a 2v2 game at native res, with low settings at a consistant 30+fps, I'd be sold.

 

[moxxey]

It seems overkill for such a small machine. I mean, I bet most people wouldn't even use half of this....

You bet wrong.

You've forgotten that a lot of people, like me, have to use a Windows app, thus use Windows, virtually. Windows really needs 1.5-2GB to make it usable. If you've "only" got 4GB, then you are starting to push your luck a bit.

6GB would probably be sufficient, but 4GB is on the edge of being "not enough" to run OS X and Windows, virtually, on the same machine.


BTW I'd love to have a reasonably powerful Air, enough memory, connect to a 27" Cinema Display, plus be able to take it out on the road to meetings. At the moment, even the fastest Air isn't quite good enough for this purpose and I'd prefer the Air over the MBP 13".

 

[jimboutilier]

People want more memory because they perceive they need it. I upgraded my uMB to 8gb of ram because I needed it. Some database, virtual machine and spreadsheets I was using pushed well beyond 4gb.

And while monitoring your RAM use is part of what you need to do to determine if you are RAM constrained you also have to look at swap file size and use. OSX will begin to make use of swap files before it completely consumes ram.

I did an experiment once with 1gb, 2gb, and 4th of ram. With 1gb the machine was slow but still showed free ram. When I put two in the machine was much faster and base memory usage increased to over 1gb. When I went to 4gb the machine was a bit faster and battery life went way up (swapping pretty much ceased). But that was years ago.

Today 2gb is not enough for my routine use. 4gb is but is not enough for my peak use. So 6 or 8 gb would be a compelling feature for me.

Just because someone drives a compact car doesn't mean they won't appreciate or need a big trunk. Hatchback?

 

[ratzzo]

With a 64bit system, Windows, and heavy apps, 8 GB is not really that much. And besides, RAM is the cheapest thing to upgrade.

 

[reputationZed]

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"640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody."
-Bill Gates, 1981

Urban myth. I've heard the same Bill Gates 640K a hundred times but no one can cite a reliable source for the quote.

 

[tbobmccoy]

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Urban myth. I've heard the same Bill Gates 640K a hundred times but no one can cite a reliable source for the quote.

It honestly don't matter anyway; back in 1981, I would have agreed with Bill Gates. Software at the time hadn't advanced to need much more than that. More RAM= future proofing your computer. With a computer as expensive as the MacBook Air, you can bet I'll be putting as much future-proofing into it as possible, especially if it's something that I can't (without voiding the warranty) upgrade later on.