TRUTH about RAM vs SSD UPGRADES for MacBook
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- Опубликовано: 8 окт 2023
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VS Code + X code + docker and 8GB is still not using swap! That's impressive memory management.
imagine using colima instead of docker desktop, vim instead of x code, the base model is perfect for me!
And yet on all other tech videos everyone is saying '8GB is not enough' .... how many 'average consumers' are opening more than this!
It's a useless baseline since it OBVIOUSLY depends on the project and the Docker Image. 8GB is 8GB no matter how good your memory management is and the system takes a huge chunk of it.
@@lomelyo huge chunk? what do you mean by huge chunk. people need to learn to read macos ram usage before talking. if you see 5 gb out of 8 used, and 2.5 gb cache, you still have 5.5 gb usable. which is plenty for many use cases. the thing is you see 5 gb used and you start panicking. start understanding the numbers you see.
@@sphexie I'm talking about 1-2gb range. Which means 25% of the RAM is reserved for system use. 🤦🏽. I know how RAM works.
I understand now why my M1 Pro 32GB RAM Macbook uses around 12GB of RAM in rest mode. Thanks for the information!
Really surprised just how well it handled with 8gb of ram. Windows struggles with that much these days from what I've observed.
My kid has an old air ~2015 with 4GB and it still flies with all his Roblox games
If I boot my Windows computer, it takes about 10 or 12GB RAM by just starting.
If I boot my Macs, they use like 4GB upon startup.
@@xmaverickhunterkx This is just a straight up lie. Windows 11 uses 3.5-3.8 GB upon start up.
@@fazlerabbi460 I mean with actual programs installed that startup ln both machines with the OS. Not an empty install.
Both with exactly the same programs BTW.
And Windows actually uses more RAM if you have more too. My 16GB Win would take about 6 to 8, and my 32GB upgraded to 64GB is the one that has always used about 10GB.
And I highly doubt there's a world where Windows uses only 4GB and is not paging like a mad dog lol.
depends of windows. if you go with spectre or light you can use it on 2gb of ram perfeclty fine
Thanks for the detailed comparison! The tables showing the differences really helped. Subscribed!
I went with M1 Air with 16GB and 500GB. Great little laptop, the only thing lacking is the screen brightness. It’s not great writing outdoors but for the price its a great deal.
Just what I needed to know. Thank you for posting this
Thank you for your videos, they have helped me a lot picking out my macbook and getting it much sooner.
great videos man, very informative and delivered in an organized way.
At last I found this video...this is what I wanted to know...thanks Alex...keep up your super practical videos.
A memory allocator only "reserves" memory, but this memory is only reserved in the virtual address space of the program. It is only written to real memory after the first write. Therefore your program won't actually use 8 GB, but it allocates it (you can see it in htop for example in the "VIRT" column).
I write os kernels. I don't exactly know how macOS handles things, but I'm fairly certain that just allocating memory is going to fill the processes' page tables with pointers to just one (zeroed out) memory page. Usually memory is actually allocated only when you try to write to the memory you asked the OS for.
Excellent video. You’re the first one I’ve seen who did this type of test. Thank you
Glad you liked it!
Always prioritize the ram upgrade cause you cannot add more ram down the line whereas you could always buy more external SSDs.
Problem is apple in the base models uses cheaper slower ssds so it realy depends on the usecase. nothing is as fast as ram but if you f.e. deal with larger files the faster ssd on the upgraded models can safe actual time
Its very expensive tho
@@JC-tg5xx what's more expensive is having to buy a new laptop when you realise you need more ram
Is 8gb really insufficient for stuff like messaging apps, browsers with a few tabs, documentation apps?
@@JC-tg5xx Well sure 8gb is fine for light use such as the aforementioned tasks, but it'd be hella nice to be able to do more than that. Take my work load atm as an example: 20 browser tabs mostly documentations and a youtube video playing in the background, xcode, discord, and some other background apps and the system is still running smoothly with ZERO swap.
My point is: while it's perfectly usable with 8gb, upgrading to 16gb allows you to use the M2 SoC to its full potential. I mean why wouldn't you want to get the most out of your already overpriced ultrabook.
Heres a bonus: aside from the apps i have already mentioned, I opened davinci resolve, photoshop, 2 more youtube tabs, netflix and the swap is still ZERO.
It would be interesting to compare the SSD's TBW status before and after using all that swap.
my mba2012 4/256 stil work without problem
Currently learning to code on a 2012 MacBook Air so…. I am definitely keen to upgrade and weighing options
I randomly stumbled on this and took time to watch until it ended. Thank you so much. I have the 14”M2 pro chip 2023 16gb ram 256 ssd and didn’t feel it was enough not like I actually have to work with so much power but I crave the 32gb 1T.
No plans on getting or upgrading soon. But i think I’ll just get the M3 Max 32gb 1T n live with that forever. This machines are exceptional…
Super useful video!!
Nice work
Glad it was helpful!
I have been waiting for this comparison since M2 came out - no idea why nobody else did it 🤷🏻♂ You have a new subscriber✌🏻Thanks!
Same here. Sub n Bell right off the bat. Really needed this review after purchasing (somewhat blindly) an M2 with 256GB of SSD.
Thanks for the sub!
@@auangApple has nothing to do with content on this channel. I just haven’t done this test before, but I totally should have. What other tests do people want to see?
@@AZisk It would have been really nice to see the 24GB ram version in the comparison too. Would you say is it worth buying more than 16GB of RAM knowing now how MacOS compress the memory? Also the responsiveness only degraded in the base model after a lot of tests.
@@AZisk Not sure about tests, but from what I've heard 'swap memory' being used doesn't significantly affect the SSD health unless you use it for very RAM-intensive tasks, all-day, for many many days - and even then, by the time it significantly damages the SSD, the life-span of the Mac itself would be coming to an end. In that scenario, an 8gb Ram M2 Air would be the optimal Mac for students, especially those in CS or SWE - could you please speak on this?
i was using a thinkpad e14 gen 2 with ryzen 7 4600u 24gb model, it wasn't able to handle my development apps, but after i got m2 air base model, i am amazed how it is able to handle everything that i used on thinkpad very easily with just 8gb of ram. Thanks for your mac testing videos. You got a new subscriber from Nepal
What kind of development were you doing??
this video helps me a lot with the dilemma. Thanks, Alex
Genial video !!! Estaba buscando esta respuesta ahora que han salido los MacBook Air M3 !! Gracias 🎉🎉
Crazy how it took this long to get this comparison! I remember when these MBAs came out a tonne of reviewers were recommending the 8gb 512gb model and it made literally no sense to me. Glad we've confirmed that the 16gb ram model is the one to choose.
too long :)
I mean if you have half a brain it’s obvious the choice but i agree a lot of fluff reviewers out there, Alex is a champion.
Well, if I remember correctly it was because the SSD of the 256GB much slower than the 512GB
@@vitalis Yeah that's true, but even still the 256gb ssd was fast enough and the extra ram would be the sensible choice for longevity, in my opinion
@@MrKarco Yes for a software developer. For a college kid or general user 8gb is enough.
Finally found a video I was looking for ❤️
Heh, I was waiting for the compressed memory to show up in this video and I like that you saw it in action. macOS is actually impressive in this regard tbh since yeah, even 8GB models can perform significantly well even though we've recommended 16GB as the default for Windows setups for years now.
Sidenote: I know this was a test featuring real world dev stuff but I honestly would've given the machines a Code LLM or even just an LLM with lots of parameters to truly see if you could push the memory pressure to red.
The zig test didn’t do anything because you didn’t assign to the memory. Only if you assign to it will the virtual memory pages be marked “dirty” and be resident in memory otherwise they are merely reserved.
But good video. 😊
Great video! I subscribed!
Thanks for the sub!
Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
This is exactly why I purchased the M3-8gb-256ssd base model which is just about enough for Teams meetings & Office & Xcode work on the go. I can wait those extra processing seconds compared to the 16gb model. (this is not my primary machine though, only for mobility purposes)
All modern OS use virtual memory. You can allocate as much memory as you want, until you actually write to each memory page nothing will happen. That's why when you use zig to allocate memory it didn't work. Try write random data to that memory and it will quickly blow up.
I immediately thought the same when I saw his zig code and was about to comment about it, but saw your comment and just put this comment as a token of agreement.
This test definitely pushed these computers well past even a heavy workload 99% of MacBook users. For anyone on a budget, such as a university student, considering the baseline 8/256 M1 or M2 MacBook Air, I think this shows that you can confidently buy that baseline model and not have to worry. And don't fall for the "future-proof" argument, either. If you take care of it, that baseline MBA will give you 5+ years of great service. No reason to blow up your budget to fix a problem you almost certainly will never face.
This 👍🏻
Still the customization of upgrade to prices is terrible on macbooks. One thing that would put me away from choosing a macbook is the upgrade pricing is terrible.
The laptop I'm currently using for work was about 1200 euros and has a i7 10gen CPU and 32GB of ram (my workload requires me to run servers to a total of 13GB of RAM, OS, browser, IDE, etc easily puts me above 16GB so I'd need to go to the top RAM upgrade), and runs buttery smooth, but for the same thing on a macbook, I'm looking at 2200 euros or more...
@@TheShitpostExperience I think one of the main points people are trying to make is that the Apple silicon Macs are great at managing memory. Now, you might have a unique and specific use case here if you need to specifically and manually allocate memory to those servers. Without knowing what software that is, it is hard to say for certain.
But you are also falling into the same fallacy that most Windows users have when looking at Mac hardware; the incorrect assumption that you have to match spec-for-spec to get similar performance. I "only" have 16GB of memory on my M1 16" MBP with 1TB of storage, and I'm currently running a Chrome, Firefox and Safari, Excel, Notion, WhatApp, Facebook Messenger, Messages and Discord clients, VS Code, a local 11ty dev server, Local with 2 different WordPress sites under development, DeepL client, Excel, Apple Mail, TextExpander, TextSoap and a couple of other utilities. That's a pretty typical load for most of my day. I have my built-in display and a 1440 external display, too. Everything runs super smooth. At some point, I might look into managing my local dev environments with Docker containers, and that might prompt me to upgrade to a computer with more memory, But for now? 16GB is plenty. So, if your workload looks similar to mine, don't automatically assume you need 32GB. But, if you need to manually allocate memory to specific applications, then yeah, you probably will need more than 16GB.
yes. I got my wife one of the 11" Intel MacBook Airs 9 years ago. Really low specs. 4 GB RAM. 128GB hard disk. She does light work on it so it's fine.
It all depends on what you use your computer for.
That said, I'm not a fan of Apple's low RAM and horrendous upgrade pricing for their RAM
I'm in my 3rd year of a CS degree and I've been using a 2015 MacBook Air with 4GB RAM and 256GB storage. Haven't had a single problem, even when running PowerPoint + browser tabs + VSCode together, although it does briefly lag occasionally, some hiccups here and there. I can only imagine that the M2 Air with 8GB RAM/256GB storage is WAY MORE than enough for any college student. The only problem you may run into is in an Assembly/Operating systems course, where you would need to use a Windows computer/run a Windows VM on your Mac. With a base M2 you could run that just fine, and I bet I could even run it on my 2015 air. Forgot to mention, I've also been using this 2015 Air since 2015, a lot. Apple really makes some incredible machines.
Interesting video, thanks a lot. But may I ask a question which is out of this topic. Do you have any info about MacBook Air Thunderbolt output resolutions to external monitors or TVs that support a 120hz refresh rate? Everyone says that only the MacBook Pro supports a high refresh rate via Thunderbolt, and on the MacBook Air, this function is purposely limited to 4k 60hz. Is that true? I am not talking about connecting to multiplay monitors at the same time. I mean only one laptop connected to a single 4k 120hz monitor or 4k TV via Thunderbolt with a special Thunderbold 120hz supported cable
The MacBook came with 8Gb and 256Gb as base configuration in 2015. It’s crazy that Apple still has that as the RAM and SSD base configuration in MacBooks.
Do you see it struggle?
Apple is all about optimisation. You should have expected that.
Yup absolutely crazy. Apple is all about forcing user to upgrade sooner, ditch their sub-par laptops and cough up cash so Apple can profit more. Witness the macOS abandonware cycle. Apple's newish 2017 laptops already can't upgrade to newest macOS. Witness simple ssd failure on macbooks means expensive motherboard replacement which cost as much as just buying a new one (check Louis Rossmann video on this). Older Apple laptops are rubbish unless you are willing to use windows or linux distro.
Even more crazy how it is still outperforming many windows laptops
I enjoyed this video and made my decision based on it. Thanks
Glad I could help
After watching your video, I felt confident with my decision and I bought m1 macbook air base model for my data science course. Though I just wanted it to run all my applications and some light projects., it works like a breeze.
I was a intel i3 5th gen windows user so you can imagine the bump i felt in performance ❤
Thanks, I love your videos. Very informative.
You bought now the m1 air?
Like hownlong will it have support maximal for 2 more years.
I found on my 14inch m2 pro 16gig to show the famous beach ball, when running a about 10 chrome tabs, docker, photoshop and adobe illustrator. For me, illustrator was the main hog when I have 2 or 3 files with each around 30 art boards that have a lot of vector illustrations. I guess it’s safe to say 32 gig of rams would be a better choice.
I've never used the programming language you talk about, but can't you just allocate randomly generated memory? Wouldn't that avoid compression?
Thanks fully I bought 16GB and 512GB model. Very excited to collect from the store in the next few days.
Thank you sooo much
mom wake up, alex ziskind finally uploaded again!
😂 I bugged him on Twitter the other day. What is he doing twitting man. Seriously? I just cannot say Xing, darn terrible name change.
I'm sorry for out off topic question.) What kind of microphone(s) do you use?
Love this video. I have been debating how to spec my new MacBook and this gave me the answer. Definitely subscribing!!!
Thanks for the sub!
The problem I have with swap is it will wear out the NAND in the MacBook faster because it constatly has to write to it.
You did Zig memory test wrongly. When you only allocate memory every modern OS will provide you a virtual memory which cost nothing. No real RAM used in such a case. So you need at least write something to this allocated memory. And only after that memory compression/swapping will take a place and try to compress/swap memory pages which not used frequently. So to prevent extremely efficient memory compression you might write random numbers to memory.
Very informative yet impressive. I'm in the market for these devices and deciding between configurations. I'm a professor who used windows and I want to believe the 8 gb SHOULD be sufficient for me (office apps, excessive web browsing, nothing crazy like programming). This video really helped me consider!
I got my m1 MacBook Air for $750 a year ago and it handles video editing and multi-tasking like a champ. I make 10-15 mins videos on Final Cut Pro and I've never had an issue. 16gb ram would only be a convince thing for me, incase I want 50 tabs open while I edit. I think for 99% of people, 8gb is enough. I can't justify buying the new MacBooks for over $1,300- $2500. The m1 air can do everything I need. Just my two cents. Also great video.
can you share the docker compose example, i would like to run it on my machine and learn how things are done.,
That Zig program, you should fill the allocated memory with random data so it doesn't compress well.
I used 8 GB with Intel processor and 16 GB with M1 MBP. As an iOS develop, especially with SwiftUI, 16 GB are barely enough. I will sure go for 24 GB or 32 in the future.
This is called "Apple's Upgrade Hell Dillema"
If you want to artificially push the memory pressure when using the Zig manual memory allocation, try filling it with random values (as opposed to just allocating the memory and letting it be zero filled). Use a Pseudo-Random Number Generator, and the result will not be easily compressible to fill the memory, and then MacOS won't be able to compress the memory to avoid the memory pressure.
Nice comparison, I did both upgrades (16GB RAM & 512GB SSD) "just in case.."
Either Apple should allow you to upgrade the RAM in your MacBook (using proprietary connectors if they wan't to stay Apple) or provide the memory upgrades for cheaper.
Why didn’t you run a test after opening parallels? That was the most important part. 8GB was deep into swap but 16GB was still swap free. You just skipped to both being in swap territory.
Thanks for this awesome compare! I'd bought a MBP 16" 2023 with 16gb ram and 1tb ssd. You think its fine for an computer sience student and how long i can go with it ? I dont use vms
Great compare. What about running a LLM locally? I think the 16 or 24 would be ok on the Air. What is your opinion? I realize the air is not the best solution but it is the one I have access to at the moment. Thanks
for LLM it depends on the size of the model, but even 96GB isn’t enough for some loads
I have a M1 MacBook Air for three years now. I thought it over to upgrade and I decided to order a 1TB SSD option. 8GB RAM is fine for me.
I am looking to get a mac mini m2 pro and this is exactly what I wanted to know before I buy one. Thanks!!!
Glad I could help!
Welcome back we really did miss you
Good to be back
I have a 2021 M1 macbook pro - 16GB/512 GB and my brother has a 16GB/256 GB of same model. Without any other apps running or any paging, i have noticed that Android studio builds considerably faster on the 512 GB model. Maybe a 30-40 percent faster. That really surprises me.
hey, the more ssd storage the faster it gets :D In this case it's the write operation so it's undeniably faster
@@maliceworld 2 drives is faster not the storage amount
Great stuff!
This is an antidote to those swayed by a particular channel with an agenda on the 256GB SSDs. I was a pain in those comment sections and was blocked. I insisted that you upgrade the RAM, not the SSD, against the claims of those videos. Funny enough, that channel never did the test you posted despite my insistence and persistence (before I was cancelled). I wonder why?
Buy as much RAM as you can afford, and do not worry about filling the RAM, as Apple uses ML to manage it. Currently, on my 24GB MB Air M2, I have 7.10GB cached, and I only have five (in total) Safari and Firefox tabs open (an aside, do not use Chrome, as it is not only a RAM eater, but it chews through battery more than Safari). I use an external drive for storage; I use under 40GB on the internal drive).
How big is your storage?
@@AschKris It is 512GB. I bought that for resale values so when I get the M3 MB Pro 13 (new design), I will be able to sell it more easily. I do not use it even though I could. That is what Thunderbolt is for!
@@andyH_England which channel? Knowing the channels with agenda is good so that we avoid them/their agenda
Would you recommend M2 Air 24gb/512gb ssd over M3 24gb/512gb? They seem closely priced and I'm confused as a software developer coming from a 2015. Refurbished are not an option since they're not available in my country and can only order in Apple store. 😅
Welcome back sir, good vibes!
Hey, thanks!
I have an M3 Pro MBP with 18GB and 1 TB or storage. I upgraded the SSD because I’ve never had a computer with less than 1 TB since 2010. Even though I only use about half of it I’d rather have it there. I don’t experience any performance issues at all really (except for with the new ChatGPT app but I figure that’s more of an app issue than an OS issue and it’ll get better with time). Although I do wonder if I’d experience any noticeable performance gains for my workflow if I had bumped up the RAM. I’ll probably do that on my next Mac but I think I’m golden for a long while yet. Good video though. :-)
I have a m1 MacBook pro 13 inch. Still feels snappy. Any suggestions on ram maintenance? Have the base model from 2020
I long for the days when RAM could be increased after the initial purchase. These days, I would go for as much RAM as needed upfront. No second chances except on a new MacBook purchase.
Technically it’s upgradable but it requires an expert and a ram from another MacBook
@@ms1-Alex Yeah, not crazy about that approach. I used to just pop in RAM. It would seem that the newer SOC M1 architecture with unified memory might make this extremely difficult and cost-prohibitive.
It makes sense to just spec up your purchase to avoid this being an issue these days
@@TechnoRiff I am old enough to remember that you could have a separate FPU, that has been integrated in the CPU. Far more optimized. Its the same with the RAM, the RAM is now highly integrated in the SoC package, with huge advantages. Just like the Neural Engine, the GPU, the Afterburner used to be an expensive external card, now its part of the SoC. Working with video on an Apple Silicon Machine is incredibly fast, not in the least because of this.
@@BeaglefreilaufKalkar Sure that sounds right - plenty of optimizations due to proximity and resulting shorter signal paths, along with lower costs over time that hopefully get passed thru to the consumer. I also am very impressed with my M1 Macbook. Can't help feeling a bit gouged though for any than the base amount of memory - that decision seems final for that particular machine.
I got some heavy algorithms that we can use to test the RAM in parallel processing.
Great video looking at important real-world differences. However, to be clear, neither the RAM nor SSDs in current macbooks are user upgradeable. Make sure you get what you will need for the lifetime of the machine when you make your initial purchase.
good point. however, much easier to add fast external drive than RAM
liked the video before it even hit the 2 second mark. There are hundreds and hundreds of M series Air 'reviews' out there all with the same script or spec reads. all these reviewers just don't want to put in the work. this is actually a good and important topic for any one looking to buy the macbook air.
Hello Alex, to make upscalling video AI in 1080p or 4k, wich one do you recommand please ?
Could you test the Microsoft Surface Laptop Studio 2 vs the MacBook Pro m2 pro and m2 max?
i''ve macbook pro m2 13" 8/512, and my productivity usually take 150-600mb swap memory, the question is, it's possible for my macbook ssd still normal till 5 year later?
Less swap also means potentially longer SSD life.
good point!
Hi Alex,
I want just to add some personal experience. Love your channel.
The topic of virtual memory management and MacOS is so complicated that neither this video nor my additions can fully explain it. I am writing here to provide a few examples and explanations from a developer's point of view, hopefully helping users not to make a mistake at the choice of their Mac.
In the following, I often speak of "rule of thump" because as a developer, 10 or 20% optimization can be decisive, but in general the decisive leaps to a higher level of RAM and cores are more connected to the respective use case.
In general, you must first understand that MacOS generally works with virtual memory and this works differently than with other systems. The memory is always managed and not only when the the Ram lacks and swap is necessary.
In order for to work properly, MacOS Virtual memory requires the a linear address space.
I don't want to discuss the differences in memory allocation in detail for 32/64 bit Intel and 32/64 bit ARM, but please keep in mind that efficient management depends on a continuous 64 bit ARM address space on AS.
MacOS on AS trades part of the computing time for intelligent memory management. I think it's not difficult to understand that if you use all cores, e.g. in exports and benchmarks, this limits the abilities for memory management. Another important part that is to be understood is that the scheduler retains part of the ram and the computing power in order to keep the system still responsive and stable even under full load.
Additional rule of thump here is, that apart from edge cases, the system itself and proportionally for the running apps, retains about 1/10 of the RAM and computing time resources and only invests these if the workload absolutely requires it.
In short, the more concurrent apps, the more control threads and the more „save guard memory“ is needed.
Other important points to understand are that if a system has more RAM, MacOS is more generous with initial allocation of Ram for apps and processes. An app guaranteed more RAM at startup with a system with larger equipment in order to reduce the probability that later computing time must be used to manage it.
Furthermore, the system does not automatically free up memory when an app is closed. The reason is that memory operations are "expensive." It "plans" the release of memory for a time when it "probably least bothers". For the majority of use cases there is not need for manual intervention e.g by the activity monitor.
Actually, I wanted to bring a few direct examples from my experience in comparison with e.g. Windows, but the space here is far from enough for a sufficiently detailed look. The great scheme is that in real world you can get much more out of MacOS Unified memory, but not for all scenarios.
Instead, a few more „rules of thumb“. If you work with VMs, Docker containers, emulations, etc. that require independent/additional memory allocation within the MacOS virtual memory, you have to add more RAM according to their characteristics.
8 GB Ram, as far as they can carry you under native 64bit apps on MacOS, are certainly not enough for demanding topics in these areas. I have a cluster environment with 5 VMs for customers here and under 64 GB Ram and 12 cores, testing makes no sense at all. My 16 GB M1 Pro MBP is not suitable for this in any way.
The other important size is the number of large apps you want to use at the same time. Just think of this 1/10 rule of thump. If every app needs 4 GB for themselves and the files loaded to operate properly, how should this work on an 8 GB system without massive performance drops?
As mentioned, of course, the size of files and data sets plays a huge role. With a 16 GB set for AI training, it's game over for my 16 GB MBP M1 Pro. I will have to spend money again when I want to process this sufficiently. (budget wise best currently a 64 GB used M1 Max).
So if your files become very large in Photoshop, AE, etc., you have to invest in RAM or just wait accordingly until those are processed by swapping back and forth. If you only do this from time to time, those few minutes of waiting time don’t matter, bit if this is part of your daily workflow, think twice.
Although somehow tricky a last rule of thump for 3D applications and games. The more detailed and complex the scenes, the higher not just the computational demand, but also the RAM requirement.
8 GB of RAM is quite sufficient at AAA under AS for optimized games at 720p, 900p and a maximum of 1080p (especially with MetalFX wich can cut Ram demand by upscaling).
If you want to have a little more headroom and also want emulated games for 1080p, you should have 16 GB+ and for real 4K assets better 32 GB+. The assets and their storage requirements increase with the details and you not only need more computing power but also more RAM. AS and MacOS memory management take you very far and often make use cases possible that previously required much larger computers, but it does not override physical laws. 4K, high detailed assets, just need a lot of Ram.
And as a last point, I want to mention that the speed of the hole system depends on how well the simultaneously running apps are optimized.
One single app that consumes too much resources can change this massively.
I therefore use specialized, optimized apps for most of my activities such as project management, notes, etc. and only use e.g. Chrome for testing code for the customers. I rarely have more than 5 Tabs open and honestly find tab management beyond 10 tabs annoying and time consuming in my daily workflow while multitasking. But that’s probably just me or the fact that my ancient 13’’ Intel MBP with 16 GB Ram was constantly beach balling when doing web development for customers on the road not being sparingly with tabs.
So it depends on your workflow and the apps playing nicely with the virtual memory. It’s a bit sad that in some cases you can only find out after looking at the memory pressure whether you did the right choice.
For me it’s not a problem that there is a 8GB base model, which most likely would serve me well for web dev on the go. My problem is currently that I’d need much more for other topics.
Glad I finally found your comment. Thanks for this insightful analysis and explanation - I didn't know what you pointed out about linear address space. BTW, what type of development do you do?
@@AZisk Mostly Enterprise Apps for the Automotive Industries, focus Workflow- and Processmanagement. I'm partially retired for health reasons, but still active from time to time.
The Apple stuff is more like a hobby.
@@thesecristan5905 which one should I buy m2 macbook air 16gb 512gb ssd vs m3 macbook air 16gb 256gb ssd for programming and video editing also linux
You have to access each page of allocated memory to really use RAM.
Coding with base m1 air modal here. No different than the devs with M2 16gb Pros in the office.
It was expected to me. But now... Do I really need to choose 24 RAM on MBA M3?
Fill the SSD 80% on all of them and the RAM size difference effect will be noticeable
No regrets after almost a year of using the 16gb one.
which is best for video editing
What do you think about graphic design needs? I think it is the same case right? Should I upgrade the RAM first?
If you want memory pressure to go red, just use Lightroom CC and Photoshop. Also, once it goes red and swap is being used, according to Activity Monitor, only a reset gets the swap space down to zero. After photo editing, I always (likely irrationally - the colour probably matters more than the number) reset my MacBook Pro (14” base M1 Pro).
Do you know how you can clear swap without turning off your MacBook? On Linux it was swapoff -a ; swapon -a
how about running a python script that stores data into an array, ex:
a=[]
for i in range (0,10**12):
for j in range(0,10**6):
a.append(i**6+j)
print(i)
We missed you!!!
I missed being here :)
thx for your videos!my M1 Mac mini base model I spend my time klling apps! google even safari take all the memory! sometimes it slows the comp so to keep it working you need to stop everything this is really annoying! damn we never had issues with browers before
Best Mac Video on RUclips
Which program does Alex use to monitor RAM usage please?
It’s built in to MacOS - Activity Monitor
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 📊 Intro: RAM vs. SSD for MacBook Air software development.
01:19 💻 Basic Usage: RAM usage comparison, SSD matters with larger files.
02:28 🧠 macOS Memory Management: Efficient RAM use and caching.
04:06 ⚙️ RAM Testing: 16GB outperforms 8GB in Xcode builds.
05:05 🪟 Heavy Workloads: 8GB models struggle with memory pressure.
06:27 🐳 Docker Test: 8GB models face memory issues, 16GB remains stable.
07:48 🔥 Stress Test: Base model handles heavy usage well.
08:56 ⏱️ App Startup: 16GB excels, base model surprises in speed.
10:29 🏁 Final Assessment: 16GB RAM shines for developer tasks.
Made with HARPA AI
can you compare 16gb vs 24gb ram models?
Depending on what you are doing, I've found that 32GB is a good starting point for a developer, especially if heavily using Docker with k8s.
As someone whose servers consume 12-14GB or more if we need to scale up the mods, I agree, 32GB is what I'd say the standard should be if you run stuff locally.
most useful comparison.
Glad it was helpful!
Awesome comparison video! Crazy to see how MacOS is so intelligent.
Right?!
The Unified memory feature on MacBooks never fails to amaze. Thanks Alex.
Brother Can i buy this base model for my iPhone & go pro's 4k footage editing perpose? Actually i make Cinematic travel vlog which is 9-10 minutes. Or 2-3 layers timeline only. Not quite longer.
Can i consider this base model?
Give your opinion 🙏🙏take🖤🖤
memory compression is a pretty nice thing
agreed
Hey there, really interested in newer (apparently slower) SSDs where I understand the bigger SSDs are faster. So maybe 8GB RAM models with the slower SSDs vs the faster ones
Well I personally use 15 inch MacBook Air with 512 gb ssd . I believe if you are not doing something that needs the additional ram memory this should be enough for the average Mac user and larger and faster ssd is generally better in that scenario. Also if you want your browser to be extremely snappy just use something else except Chrome for god sake even Microsoft Edge is much better and faster for most tasks .
The difference in speed between slower and faster ssd is not really that noticeable but storage and if you plan to use your computer for long time it is more convenient to have lot of files saved on laptop than to always need to carry and use your additional storage.
I recommend to go with 16GB Ram with 512GB SSD , more free space on SSD means more healty usage, long life. More SSD Chips means, more speed and more reliability. If you buy 256GB SSD that came with just one module of SSD Chip, If you buy 512GB SSD that came with two 256GB SSD Module.
I am a software developer - this was just an insane test. Especially as most professional developers develop via SSH to a dedicated machine to facilitate their builds and deployment environments on servers that are way more powerful than any laptop.. So for me - actually software development never stresses my own development machine - I could probably use the cheapest laptop PC on the market. The problem comes more if you want to do things like video editing for your own needs. But then again - after watching many reviews, and owning both a MacBook Pro and MacBook Air - honestly, I don't really notice the difference. The 8GB may take a couple of minutes more to render a 30 minute video - but that is nothing really. Everyone is getting way over-hyped about all of this stuff for the sake a few seconds here and there. For me I would rather spend the difference on having a nice weekend travelling somewhere. I guess it all depends on how much money you have.
The only time I ever hit Red was with Parallels and Android Studio running LOL.
Im a random guy on the internet and my advice is to always prioritize true RAM, i cant believe im saying this but 16gb isn't enough for some dev environments, for example my work's Angular/SpringBoot dev Environment. we have a lot of dependencies like Mysql, Kibana, ElasticSearch, Redis ..etc, running on docker containers locally. i had to switch from an M1 Macbook Air 16gb to a thinkpad with 40gb of RAM running linux and the project still takes 25gb of RAM on a lightweight linux desktop.
Also Virtualization is getting really good on Apple Silicon, the latest UTM virtualization allows you to virtualize Macos and Linux operating systems with GPU virtualization thanks to the Apple virtualization framework for Macos, Asahi GPU drivers for Linux VMs. and for that 16gb isn't enough asigning 14+ GB of ram to the vm crashes the program. i love Apple silicon but im probably switching back to x86 laptops due to "Affordable" RAM upgrades and Nvidia gpu support for LLMs.
Love your content Alex, Glad to see you back
you’re not a random guy! you’re one of the longest watchers of this channel:) thanks for the input. yes, even 16 is hard with some loads, but i was really just surprised by how well MacOS manages everything
😂
Did you consider to use zram/zswap?