8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro ‘Analogous to 16GB’ on PCs, Claims Apple::Following the unveiling of new MacBook Pro models last week, Apple surprised some with the introduction of a base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip,…
I don’t disagree that the M processors need less RAM, but the idea that they need half as much is bullshit. My poor little 8GB M1 struggles with more than 20 chrome tabs open, and it especially struggles when running apps that aren’t built to be M1 compatible (through Rosetta).
They share ram with gpu, which means they need more of it for equivalent memory space, not less. There’s no magic that makes less memory work like more other than swap, and swap is slow as fuck, even with a high speed ssd (which the m3’s actually have slower ones).
It’s an entirely different architecture, so every program needs less RAM (with exceptions like I mentioned above). That’s why they’re using shared RAM; because they can pull it off (mostly).
Lol
ARM is pretty efficient, that’s true. But an 8 gig video will always be an 8 gig video. No amount of processing and compression and swap tricks will make it occupy any less space without a massive hit to performance that an x86-64 arch with 16+GB of ram won’t have to endure.
Uhh what? That’s not how RAM works, you don’t load an entire 8GB video you’re playing into RAM.
You do if you’re editing it, and the editing capabilities are one of the main selling points of macOS
When you have 64GB of RAM, you do.
no
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On my unix-based system, after boot I’m sitting at 2gb usage, while Windows would be at >6GB, so it’s not that far fetched. Until you try to run any applications…
I’m sitting at 300 mb usage after boot running Linux and at 250 mb usage on a secondary machine running OpenBSD.
Are you using a desktop environment?
in Linux I use Sway, although I have XFCE installed as a backup.
I think that what makes a major difference is disabling all the trash services that distributions have enabled by default and most users never make use of. To be fair, I disable Bluetooth too, that people find useful. But I don’t think that would make that much of a difference.
Windows only takes a lot of RAM if it’s available. Try it out with less RAM and it’s more around 2 GB I think.
For any computer I use 32 GB seems to be the optimum nowadays.
Exactly so. Windows eats what it can and leave $X free.
*half the ram, double the price! *That sounds catchy…
Fucking apple with the dumb ass marketing again. Can’t wait to explain to fanbois you can’t shove 16 lbs of shit into an 8 lbs bag…
You see with apple the whole product is made of shit. That’s 60 percent more shit per shit
RAM manufacturers - haha
MacOS is pretty decent at memory management. That being said, 8GB of RAM is ridiculous in 2023. Newer and updated applications are tossing memory management out the window. Platforms like Electron wreck memory usage, and many apps popular desktop apps are using Electron now. 12GB is the new 8GB, for Macs. 32GB is the new 16GB for PC’s. I wouldn’t recommend a computer with less than 12GB of RAM for more than $300.
I had to use an m1 base air for school. The CPU was fast but ram was always at Ower 90 percent while doing almost nothing
ram is meant to be used so high ram usage is not really any indicator of efficiency. if ram is slow and application is being swapped in and out frequently then it will be laggy but high ram usage can also be an indicator of a snappier experience.
CrApple are just such hardcore money grabbers since pretty much forever.
I’ve been on 16GB of ram on all of my machines for so long … It’s really the sweet spot for everything I do (gaming etc. ) I don’t do media production or anything like that. All that said I’m currently in the market for a new machine and will probably get 32GB “just to be safe” but since my next laptop will probably be a framework I don’t have to make the decision till I actually need the ram and even then I can still decide to get one stick first the other later and the prices scales pretty linearly.
8GB might still be enough for some web browsing and stuff but apple should not put this little RAM in anything they call professional.
And before anyone says “you only need that much ram in Windows” well … I don’t and won’t be running Windows ;)
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Linux Or templeos?
What? Linux.
In case you didn’t know, templeos is an os made from scratch by this mentally Ill dude, and its kinda become a meme
I had heard about it before and gave it a quick Google earlier. But didn’t know the meme so I guess that joke went over my head :)
Yeah it’s no problem, I was confused the first time i saw someone day something like that too
Memory compression does allow the os to store to cram more data in the RAM, but does 8gb RAM with memory compression really equivalent to 16gb of RAM?
Windows compresses RAM too. It’s really a combination of fast flash memory (Apple doesn’t use SSDs, they put flash memory on the same package as the CPU) and being smart about moving things to flash memory if they don’t benefit from being in RAM.
I think they simply mean analogous in price.
The interviewee seems to be meaning it as memory usage (quote from them): "Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture.
Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently."
They were making a joke about it being expensive
because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory,
Do they use below 24 megs of RAM in console? Or below 500 megs in GUI? Well, 500 megs is upper bound, I should probably compare to something less bloated than KDE.
and we have a unified memory architecture.
Really? They still doing UMA?
It’s all unified: CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD as far as I remember.
If anything the memory being unified between the GPU and CPU makes it even less than 8GB equivalent
Wait, unified VRAM? This is even worse. I thought that they meant all CPU cores share same bus.
What, no! 8 GB Apple RAM costs 4 times that of 16 GB regular DDR4 RAM module.
Edit: 5 times.
Just waiting for Apple to just start trademarking and “inventing” units…
Our new Mac has the highest amount of “Rapid Storage Blocks ™” of any Mac ever! Enough to run 30 “Safari Experiences ™”.
Check out their “SSD”:s, hard drives with SSD cache memory.
Not a bad idea (if made correctly and not creating two failur points) but it was so ridiculously small, both of them, like 32GB SSD for 1TB DD when 1TB SSD was for like 200€…
They haven’t sold FusionDrives in years.
More apple gaslighting.
Since 1990.
I remember their CPU cycles were “worth more”.
They also always cheapens out on stuff, even when they used “PC” hardware, CPU from 4 years ago etc and RAM & HDD/SSD were so small you basicallyhad to buy a “next tier” machine (much more expensive).
I remember their CPU cycles were “worth more”.
But this exists… There’s still differences amongst PC CPUs in per-cycle performance…
Sure, but their claim was just bullshit back then.
They did optimise Photoshop wildly for Mac to try to show they were right IIRC.
It is not theirs, it is IBM’s. Or rather Freescale’s, now bought out by NXP. Was true at the time.
God damn fucking marketers
