I dont see any problem wanting a higher spec as that is what the world is doing-improving all the time
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Why do people want 8GB RAM in the MBA?
- Thread starter pgiguere1
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I think the reason an MBA with 4GB of RAM does so much better under heavy loads than an MBP with 4GB or RAM is the MBA's superfast flash storage. Because of the demands I make on my MBA with 4GB of RAM it routinely setsup a 1GB swap file and accumulates a significant number of page outs. All that swapping has no noticeable effect on the MBA's speed. Everything is just as fast as it is under lighter loads when the swap file has only 250MB and there are no page outs. I suspect that I would be a whole less satisfied with the speed of an MBP with a 5400 RPM mechanical drive than I am with the MBA.
After all, 640K should be plenty, right?
Seriously, though, the main benefit of 64-bit architecture is that it handles more than 4GB at a time. A Sandy Bridge-equipped Mac with 8GB should provide plenty of horsepower for the future.
We should be able to choose more than 4 GB of RAM. However:
1. As of today, 4 GB is the sweet spot for me. It has been the case for 2 years (even during heavy video encoding and code compilation). My computer hasn't swapped for a very long time. I rarely reach 3 GB of active RAM usage.
2. More RAM is always better... except when power consumption is taken into account. I may be wrong, but I think RAM chips are always on. That consumes power whether it's filled or not, just to keep data alive. I reckon those extra, unused 4 GB (to reach 8 GB) would account for a matter of minutes of battery life, but still.
1. As of today, 4 GB is the sweet spot for me. It has been the case for 2 years (even during heavy video encoding and code compilation). My computer hasn't swapped for a very long time. I rarely reach 3 GB of active RAM usage.
2. More RAM is always better... except when power consumption is taken into account. I may be wrong, but I think RAM chips are always on. That consumes power whether it's filled or not, just to keep data alive. I reckon those extra, unused 4 GB (to reach 8 GB) would account for a matter of minutes of battery life, but still.
Honestly, I can't imagine owning a MBA WITHOUT 4GB of RAM. Only done it once, and I couldn't believe the difference. It's an absolute no-brainer on any configuration at $100 more.
I wouldn't be so sure about that. I haven't looked deep into the subject, and haven't found much details so far but this thread and this article are both interesting. Both assume that RAM consumes power continuously... At least each RAM module. If there is the same number of RAM modules / chips for 4 GB as for 8 GB, then I don't think capacity alone would impact power consumption.
No, of course it isn't! It runs on pixie dust and fairies. Let me guess: you flip burgers for a living?
Firstly the RAM you find in MacBooks is not static RAM (SRAM) it's dynamic RAM, in particular version 3 double rate synchronous dynamic RAM (DDR3-SDRAM).
Secondly, static RAM is powered, all the time, it just doesn't need to be refreshed like dynamic RAM.
Why do people insist on making claims on subject they have no idea about? Can't you even do a simple google search before you post so as to avoiding posting such BS?
More is always better. If you can afford it, why not? It will just make the machine run that much smoother.
Then it's Non-Volatile RAM which can be powered down!
The MBA has standard DRAM. There's nothing special about it.
Never mind 8GB. In my iMac's I used to put in at least 10 and sometimes the full 16GB of RAM for some of the aforementioned reasons. It allows me to be...free! Free of having to watch my usage. Free to run 15 tabs each per my three browsers that I usually always have open concurrently. Free to keep RAM-intensive video apps open and by the way, there are plenty of high-end notebooks that support 16GB of RAM from Lenovo, HP, Dell and probably others as well. Just because YOU, the OP, can't understand why someone else might need or want more RAM, something that you can only dream about using, doesn't a ridiculous idea make.
If Apple didn't have its hands full with iOS devices and software, being that they amount to almost 2/3 of its revenue, we wouldn't still be using the exact same MacBook Pro and iMac designs since 2009. I certainly don't mind because for one, I'm still a relatively recent Mac convert and just celebrated my one-year "anniversary".. Another reason is the fact that I don't know how they could make these gorgeous devices any prettier, so I'm all for keeping the current designs for at least another year.
Anyway, I have the 17" MacBook Pro and my two 4GB sticks will be coming in before the weekend. Having said that, I, too, am very interested in the upcoming MacBook Air refresh and therefore I've been closely monitoring the memory usage on my MBP being that I only have the base 4GB installed and as I don't really use virtual machines much anymore, I might just be able to get away with only 4GB, because of the SSD-only nature with the Air and the incredible leap that the Sandy Bridge Core i CPU's will represent. Hopefully, there will be a nice and fast GPU involved as well with at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM. Last, but definitely nowhere near least, there is ThunderBolt. I'll have quite a few pieces of electronic goodness hanging from my ThunderBolt port, including more (external) SSD's and a 4-6TB NAS for storage. The last item in the chain will be my new 27" LED Cinema Display.
Gotta love that daisy chain train of
goodness, because the old adage that RAM is always the cheapest and easiest way to bring about a faster system is definitely NOT true with the MacBook Air.
If Apple didn't have its hands full with iOS devices and software, being that they amount to almost 2/3 of its revenue, we wouldn't still be using the exact same MacBook Pro and iMac designs since 2009. I certainly don't mind because for one, I'm still a relatively recent Mac convert and just celebrated my one-year "anniversary".
. Another reason is the fact that I don't know how they could make these gorgeous devices any prettier, so I'm all for keeping the current designs for at least another year.Anyway, I have the 17" MacBook Pro and my two 4GB sticks will be coming in before the weekend. Having said that, I, too, am very interested in the upcoming MacBook Air refresh and therefore I've been closely monitoring the memory usage on my MBP being that I only have the base 4GB installed and as I don't really use virtual machines much anymore, I might just be able to get away with only 4GB, because of the SSD-only nature with the Air and the incredible leap that the Sandy Bridge Core i CPU's will represent. Hopefully, there will be a nice and fast GPU involved as well with at least 512MB of dedicated VRAM. Last, but definitely nowhere near least, there is ThunderBolt. I'll have quite a few pieces of electronic goodness hanging from my ThunderBolt port, including more (external) SSD's and a 4-6TB NAS for storage. The last item in the chain will be my new 27" LED Cinema Display.
Gotta love that daisy chain train of
goodness, because the old adage that RAM is always the cheapest and easiest way to bring about a faster system is definitely NOT true with the MacBook Air.
it's Non-Volatile RAM which can be powered down!
The MBA has standard DRAM. There's nothing special about it.
Looks like you got owned on that one, nutjob. (Mods: it's the name he picked lol)...
...and what would be wrong with that? Look up! That's me looking down on arrogant people like you.
Well I have a 4gb RAM macbook right now and love it; for the average consumer, I don't think (aside from games or editing) they need anything over 4; heck most people never need more than two.
I tend to run Parallels from time to time and when I do, I have to watch the allocation of RAM to that machine. Now I'm never doing serious "work" on them so I only allocate 1 gig, however I would love to run more than 1 machine at times and I just can't do that.
On top of that, the ability to just... well, keep things open will be great as well. Of cours I quit programs when i'm not going to be using them anymore and currently, without VMs, I never use all of my RAM.
Having more than you need never hurts
I tend to run Parallels from time to time and when I do, I have to watch the allocation of RAM to that machine. Now I'm never doing serious "work" on them so I only allocate 1 gig, however I would love to run more than 1 machine at times and I just can't do that.
On top of that, the ability to just... well, keep things open will be great as well. Of cours I quit programs when i'm not going to be using them anymore and currently, without VMs, I never use all of my RAM.
Having more than you need never hurts
Then it's Non-Volatile RAM which can be powered down!
The MBA has standard DRAM. There's nothing special about it.
You don't have a clue. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Static_RAM or anywhere else. If you're joking then yeah you're hilarious. For everyone else the opening para:
I run Win7 (Pro) in Fusion 3.1 - Win7 is very happy running in 768MB of RAM, even with applications like Agilent ADS (RF simulation software).
Win7 and Firefox 3.5 were able to run without slowdown on 384MB RAM.
4GB is enough for my day-job needs on a MBP15 (Adobe Lightroom, FF, sometimes some VMWare fusion) - though I notice that SL slows down when it only has a total of 2GB to allocate.
I agree with the OP - unless OS X 10.7 has a larger memory footprint, then 4GB is enough for what 90% of the people will want to do with an MBA
On my (SSD equipped MBP15) I prefer to close apps that I'm not using. They tend to steal CPU cycles*, giving increased power drain and I find Expose useless with more than 9 windows open (I never liked Spaces).
*web browsers do this, and try selecting an area in a PDF using Preview - that uses 7%(!) of a 2.4GHz CPU constantly whilst the selection is highlighted!
After all, 640K should be plenty, right?
You do realize that Bill Gates didn't say that? Does that mean that what you said is your opinion or are you just misquoting Bill Gates?
https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=bill+gates+640K&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US
fficial&client=firefox-a
I kinda hope it won't get 8GB. That way, I'm certain to wait for Ivy Bridge. If it gets 8GB, it's hard to say "no".
I don't have a clue ? NVRAM is not SRAM and can be powered down, I was agreeing with you and joking a bit. I know the different types of RAM.
The second sentence of my post should have clued you in. Now calm down and don't go hyper defensive. Not everyone here is clueless and out to get you.
I think 8GB is necessary to avoid the OS from using its paging file. Not to mention the OS caches everything you do (more or less).
I just upgraded my MBP from 4 to 8GB and it went from heavy paging to almost none and everything's smoother. Big surprise. Not.
However, after reading several reviews of the current MacBook Air, I think 4GB will be more than enough, because of the solid state flash that it uses. I still don't have an SSD in my MBP, but that's for another day, but obviously, the MBA's only have solid state flash (without the shell) and that's what a multitude of people noted in their reviews. Supposedly, that was key in "not feeling any difference" over other more "traditional" computers with more RAM. I'm all for nixing the "traditional", which is another reason as to why I dig Apple's decision making process.
The Sandy Bridge will make it that much faster (especially coming from a Core 2 Duo) and HyperThreading will be useful, too. Going from a MBP to a MBA will further mean the loss of the FireWire 800 connection, though, as well as one USB port. Oh well, I'm psyched either way!
However, after reading several reviews of the current MacBook Air, I think 4GB will be more than enough, because of the solid state flash that it uses. I still don't have an SSD in my MBP, but that's for another day, but obviously, the MBA's only have solid state flash (without the shell) and that's what a multitude of people noted in their reviews. Supposedly, that was key in "not feeling any difference" over other more "traditional" computers with more RAM. I'm all for nixing the "traditional", which is another reason as to why I dig Apple's decision making process.
The Sandy Bridge will make it that much faster (especially coming from a Core 2 Duo) and HyperThreading will be useful, too. Going from a MBP to a MBA will further mean the loss of the FireWire 800 connection, though, as well as one USB port. Oh well, I'm psyched either way!
I can see 8gb being necessary at some point for some people, but most of the time for most people, 4gb will be plenty. I have a core i7 with 8gb and the only time I see any pageouts (ram has been filled) is after I run it for about a week or if I am using parallels (allocated 4gb to the virtual machine), and even then it takes a while to use that 4gb.
If you are saying the 8gb will help in video games, get the MBA with the SSD, that will improve loading and performance much more than 4gb -> 8gb.
If you are saying the 8gb will help in video games, get the MBA with the SSD, that will improve loading and performance much more than 4gb -> 8gb.