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.
@@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.
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 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.
@@michvod Congrats. The comes with a fan, though, one of my favorite things about that first air was no fans and no vents so I’m good with it. Also, the air was on sale when I got it. Might get another mac in the future some day but for now it’s nice.
@@Mattribute Fan is nice, it runs only when the laptop gets toasty. The stuff I am doing on my MBP14 M1 Pro maxes it out , so I doubt a fanless MBA would suffice. The base MBP14 config (16GB/512GB) is actually bit underpowered for my type of work, at least now after 2 years when I stress it even more. About the RAM, well I put 100-150 photos into Photoshop, and it would immediately fill up whole RAM and put a nice chunk into the swap...
@@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?
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
@@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.
🎯 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
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I have the M3 Air Base to run my RUclips Channel. For the computer to stop working I need to play literally 5+ RUclips videos at once and open up every application on my Dock. With a few tabs of 365 online open, a few tabs of RUclips open with 1 video playing, multiple tabs of canvas open with different images along with the photos app opened multiple times with multiple finder tabs open I have literally no problem with this machine. It's a tough choice trying to figure out if I should return this for the 16GB or not.
I returned the laptop. Back to my Dell G5 5525, Ryzen 6800h, Rtx 3050TI, 32GB of ram that i got 2 years ago for $1,100 including the 24gb upgrade i put in. Im fine with using a wall plug every 5 hours.
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).
@@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!
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. 😅
Yeah, RAM is vital. For $1600, 8 GB of UNIFIED MEMORY (for both the CPU and GPU) is unacceptable. That should be 16 GB at the bare minimum. Heck, I'd argue that 24 GB should be what we consumers are asking for at $2000.
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.
I just switched from windows to an Air M2 base model as a software development student, and as beginner who is not stressing my system so soon as you did I'm really glad with the results. Hoping to become as experienced as you on coding now! Thank you from Brazil
Defiinitely RAM, please get more RAM. Better performance on development, also RAM on a macbook is special because it's unified ram, which will help in running local LLM or machine learning tasks in general.
💯Which is the reason I went for the Macbook Pro M1 Max w/64GB unified memory & 4TB SSD. I use it to run Parallels VMs, LLM & machine learning tasks. And believe me it does NOT disappoint. In almost a year of usage I've only been to get the fans to spool up to audible levels once.
@@TheWallReports Same, I initially got myself an M1 Max 32 gb ram, it was fairly common to use swap memory but I wasn't concerned about it. I had to return it due to problems with the keyboard after abour 4 months of usage. So I took the opportunity to upgrade to 64 gb of ram. One year later still going strong, most of my development tasks are handled like a breeze, most of the times the cpu never goes over 20%, ram never requires to use swap memory. Realistically I have no need to upgrade for a good few years I guess.
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. 😊
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Hi, i am considering the M2 base model, i plan to use it only for google docs, opening 15-20 tabs, and microsoft office, and discord. Is 8 going to be enough for at least the next 5-10 years? Ofc in your video the 8gbs seems to be doing fine, but i was just wondering if opening all those things i mentioned at once would be fine.
Yes you will be fine with the 8gb. With all those things open his base model was able to so everything it just lagged a bit when it overheated. You wont be doing even 20% of that
I run my whole RUclips channel mostly from an M1 MacBook Air base model and an M2 iPad Pro 256 GB, and an iPhone 13 with 128 GB. The base models do just fine for productivity for most people. I’ve not ran into any situation where I’ve thought a higher than base model would be better. Apple Silicon is amazing and external hard drives are very very cheap.
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.
@@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.
@@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.
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.
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…
If I am doing Speech and Debate could have 5+ huge word documents all open at the same time all of which could be 50+ pages will it run fine with 8GB of Memory or should I definitely upgrade to 16Gb?
So, you recommend macbook air m1 with 8gb ram or m2 with 8gm ram for software dev? I dont know if i understand very well. Im trying to get a macbook air, but my budget its between those macs i mentioned. Or which one do you recommend? Thank you so much!
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.
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
I have the 24GB M3/1TB SSD and it's a great investment compared to what some pretend. I checked the memory usage for several weeks, running all kinds of programs and memory usage hovers around 16GB or slightly above. Zero swap usage all the times and really snappy & FAST. So there 8GB extra headroom is a nice bonus for future-profing, docker, etc. And resulting with zero swap which is satisfying...
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.
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
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?
I have macbook air 8gb its working splendid for the amount. But throw some docker, tabs etc, some slight hiccups start to appear. Now, same scenario on windows laptop means uneresponsive system, so ... its vastly better, but i want to have a little bit of leeway
I'm considering an upgrade from my old trusty Macbook Pro from 2018. Its battery health ain't what it used to anymore and the screen seems to flicker from time to time. As a Java/C# developer (still a student), would it be better for me to go for the all new Macbook Pro M3/M3 Pro or would the the Macbook Air M2 be sufficient?
Even if you don’t hit « red » on the memory chart, what is considered really bad is swapping. Swapping puts stress on the SSDs, contrary to RAM they were not designed for frequent read writes. Long story short you’re shortening the lifespan of your SSD, which in Apple terms means shortening your machine lifetime.
I have a mini and a mba 15in. Both base models. They are perfect. I don't have one single complaint about base model. I do a lot of browsing. My work is done mainly on website based applications and I keep my files on the cloud(apple's and google's)so I do not need a lot of installed apps. I also do photo editing as a hobby. Again never had a problem. These machines are amazing.
you needed vacode with more extensions, browser with more open tabs, or vms with more ram or more instances would like to see how windows performs as well with 8,16 or mor rams
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.
Amazing man What do you think is best for me as a developer MacBook air M2 16 ram or windows laptop like asus TUF I will use laptop in programming like web,flutter,also in machine learning Thanks
IMO MacBook. Not a fan of Asus machines, as they are cheaply made. some have good parts in them like the latest procs and good GPUs, but the chassis is always cheap and sound is terrible. If you go Windows, Dell xps is a good option
bro whatever you do, dont get a asus tuf. im working off one right now. and like AZisk said, the build quality is terrible. and the fan noise when doing anything remotely intensive will make the laptop sound like an airplane. the only good thing about this laptop is the expandability, i have it configured with 2 m.2 ssds with a normal ssd as well. and 40gb of ram R9 4900h 8c/16t rtx 2060
@@Abdullah.Albunni TUF is their entry level (gaming) lineup which has bad build quality. If you want something a little better get their ROG lineup. They have very good laptops in this lineup like the Zephyrus G14 & G15, but always watch a review about the laptop before buying it to see its performance and fan noise, etc.. I recommend Dave2D's channel for good reviews focusing on real world usage.
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.
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.
It will be for one year, you are doomed with updates! My MacBook Pro screams just running 2 monitors and a couple of Chrome tabs! 8 GB RAM is a scam! Welding RAM and SSD to the motherboard and not letting us upgrade is a robbery!
I have the 16GB model and it gets incredibly slow with just docker, chrome and vscode due to memory pressure. Of course, my docker has "real" containers running, that I'm actually using, not just leaving them open to force memory pressure. And that's the problem with this video: most of these open apps are not actually contributing much. MacOS (and even Windows) is smart about what data to push to the swap memory. Ideally, it would choose data that is basically never accessed - and that's exactly what it tries to do, often successfully. If you open an app that allocates lots of memory, but doesn't do much in the background, the OS can move its data to swap and free some physical RAM; then, unless that app requests that data, the OS never has to move it back to the physical RAM. That's why I say there's a problem with this video. The people suffering from memory pressure are not opening 20 apps that they never touch after opening. They are opening just a few apps that they NEED to use, and those few apps are consuming a lot of memory that is actually constantly accessed - like in my case.
My personal, 2019 Mac with Intel i5 and 8GB RAM uses around 3 to 4GB of RAM for most of my workload, however my work laptop with 32GB M1 Max uses 22GB for similar workload.
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.
JOIN: youtube.com/@azisk/join
I understand now why my M1 Pro 32GB RAM Macbook uses around 12GB of RAM in rest mode. Thanks for the information!
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.
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
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 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.
I got the 14-inch M1 Pro with those specs for little less than M1 Air with same specs...
@@michvod Congrats. The comes with a fan, though, one of my favorite things about that first air was no fans and no vents so I’m good with it. Also, the air was on sale when I got it. Might get another mac in the future some day but for now it’s nice.
@@Mattribute Fan is nice, it runs only when the laptop gets toasty. The stuff I am doing on my MBP14 M1 Pro maxes it out , so I doubt a fanless MBA would suffice. The base MBP14 config (16GB/512GB) is actually bit underpowered for my type of work, at least now after 2 years when I stress it even more. About the RAM, well I put 100-150 photos into Photoshop, and it would immediately fill up whole RAM and put a nice chunk into the swap...
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?
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.
🎯 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
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.
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.
@@sniperhawk6969 it also compressed memory quite often
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)
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
It outperforms Lower end windows laptop@@GamingPIPI
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.
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.
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.
@@ZKTheGreat so I *should* be fine with Final Cut Pro on my m1 8gb pro? 🙏🏼
@@ariehill5631mad que s 😂
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
Thanks for the detailed comparison! The tables showing the differences really helped. Subscribed!
This is called "Apple's Upgrade Hell Dillema"
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.
@@vladimir0rus he should write random value to avoid compression
I have the M3 Air Base to run my RUclips Channel. For the computer to stop working I need to play literally 5+ RUclips videos at once and open up every application on my Dock. With a few tabs of 365 online open, a few tabs of RUclips open with 1 video playing, multiple tabs of canvas open with different images along with the photos app opened multiple times with multiple finder tabs open I have literally no problem with this machine. It's a tough choice trying to figure out if I should return this for the 16GB or not.
I returned the laptop. Back to my Dell G5 5525, Ryzen 6800h, Rtx 3050TI, 32GB of ram that i got 2 years ago for $1,100 including the 24gb upgrade i put in. Im fine with using a wall plug every 5 hours.
DDR5
Get the m4 pro and you won’t look back
@Sequel7 Nah mac is dumb
Excellent video. You’re the first one I’ve seen who did this type of test. Thank you
Glad you liked it!
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. 😅
Yeah, RAM is vital. For $1600, 8 GB of UNIFIED MEMORY (for both the CPU and GPU) is unacceptable. That should be 16 GB at the bare minimum. Heck, I'd argue that 24 GB should be what we consumers are asking for at $2000.
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
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.
Just what I needed to know. Thank you for posting this
The Unified memory feature on MacBooks never fails to amaze. Thanks Alex.
I just switched from windows to an Air M2 base model as a software development student, and as beginner who is not stressing my system so soon as you did I'm really glad with the results. Hoping to become as experienced as you on coding now! Thank you from Brazil
Currently learning to code on a 2012 MacBook Air so…. I am definitely keen to upgrade and weighing options
Less swap also means potentially longer SSD life.
good point!
At last I found this video...this is what I wanted to know...thanks Alex...keep up your super practical videos.
Welcome back we really did miss you
Good to be back
Defiinitely RAM, please get more RAM. Better performance on development, also RAM on a macbook is special because it's unified ram, which will help in running local LLM or machine learning tasks in general.
💯Which is the reason I went for the Macbook Pro M1 Max w/64GB unified memory & 4TB SSD. I use it to run Parallels VMs, LLM & machine learning tasks. And believe me it does NOT disappoint. In almost a year of usage I've only been to get the fans to spool up to audible levels once.
@@TheWallReports Same, I initially got myself an M1 Max 32 gb ram, it was fairly common to use swap memory but I wasn't concerned about it. I had to return it due to problems with the keyboard after abour 4 months of usage. So I took the opportunity to upgrade to 64 gb of ram. One year later still going strong, most of my development tasks are handled like a breeze, most of the times the cpu never goes over 20%, ram never requires to use swap memory. Realistically I have no need to upgrade for a good few years I guess.
this video helps me a lot with the dilemma. Thanks, Alex
Nice comparison, I did both upgrades (16GB RAM & 512GB SSD) "just in case.."
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. 😊
Thank you for your videos, they have helped me a lot picking out my macbook and getting it much sooner.
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!
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.
It's an high quality NAND, will not run out in next 10 years. After it, your lappy is pointless
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
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.
You should also create the same video for M3 macbook air also
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.
I've never used the programming language you talk about, but can't you just allocate randomly generated memory? Wouldn't that avoid compression?
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.
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!
great videos man, very informative and delivered in an organized way.
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 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
Hi, i am considering the M2 base model, i plan to use it only for google docs, opening 15-20 tabs, and microsoft office, and discord. Is 8 going to be enough for at least the next 5-10 years? Ofc in your video the 8gbs seems to be doing fine, but i was just wondering if opening all those things i mentioned at once would be fine.
Yes you will be fine with the 8gb. With all those things open his base model was able to so everything it just lagged a bit when it overheated. You wont be doing even 20% of that
@@damianicely Thanks, I just realised I am going to also learn statistical R for my job search, not sure if that would make a difference.
Will be totally fine!
I run my whole RUclips channel mostly from an M1 MacBook Air base model and an M2 iPad Pro 256 GB, and an iPhone 13 with 128 GB. The base models do just fine for productivity for most people. I’ve not ran into any situation where I’ve thought a higher than base model would be better. Apple Silicon is amazing and external hard drives are very very cheap.
@@jeremsgarage i ended up going with 16/512gb as i found a deal at 1350$. I may use it to play dota 2 once in a while.
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.
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
@@arafkhan6320 Which one did you buy??
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…
There is no forever, my friend. The next processor update is around the corner.
Im lucky enough to own a M3 24GB/1TB MacBook Air and I regularly see 10-12GB cached, roughly equating to 'used memory'. But boy is it fast !
this info about the ram makes so much sense! I only use firefox everyday for school work and stuff and i have almost 12 gb of ram sometimes.
If I am doing Speech and Debate could have 5+ huge word documents all open at the same time all of which could be 50+ pages will it run fine with 8GB of Memory or should I definitely upgrade to 16Gb?
Which program does Alex use to monitor RAM usage please?
It’s built in to MacOS - Activity Monitor
So, you recommend macbook air m1 with 8gb ram or m2 with 8gm ram for software dev? I dont know if i understand very well. Im trying to get a macbook air, but my budget its between those macs i mentioned. Or which one do you recommend? Thank you so much!
Great that you include Docker in the tests.
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.
Finally found a video I was looking for ❤️
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
You have to access each page of allocated memory to really use RAM.
The truth is memory rules all. 16GB is the bare minimum in 2023. It's that simple.
256 ssb 8gb of ram is this video 6 month or 6 years old ?
8:12 huh - typically if a tree falls on someone sleeping under the tree, they tend to make the sound.
If the benchmarks for a 16GB model were great, would getting a 24GB M3 MacBook Air be worth it for long-term use?
I have the 24GB M3/1TB SSD and it's a great investment compared to what some pretend. I checked the memory usage for several weeks, running all kinds of programs and memory usage hovers around 16GB or slightly above. Zero swap usage all the times and really snappy & FAST. So there 8GB extra headroom is a nice bonus for future-profing, docker, etc. And resulting with zero swap which is satisfying...
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.
What do you think about graphic design needs? I think it is the same case right? Should I upgrade the RAM first?
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??
@@petermikus2363 The one in bullshittery
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?
I have macbook air 8gb its working splendid for the amount. But throw some docker, tabs etc, some slight hiccups start to appear. Now, same scenario on windows laptop means uneresponsive system, so ... its vastly better, but i want to have a little bit of leeway
I'm considering an upgrade from my old trusty Macbook Pro from 2018. Its battery health ain't what it used to anymore and the screen seems to flicker from time to time.
As a Java/C# developer (still a student), would it be better for me to go for the all new Macbook Pro M3/M3 Pro or would the the Macbook Air M2 be sufficient?
m2 wit 16gb ram and 512gb ssd should get you right
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.
It was expected to me. But now... Do I really need to choose 24 RAM on MBA M3?
I have 2017 imac fusion. I want to do content creation and editing. Should I just upgrade ram or buy the ssd?
Why should a bigger SSD impact performance, as long as it's not nearly full?
I'm sorry for out off topic question.) What kind of microphone(s) do you use?
Even if you don’t hit « red » on the memory chart, what is considered really bad is swapping. Swapping puts stress on the SSDs, contrary to RAM they were not designed for frequent read writes.
Long story short you’re shortening the lifespan of your SSD, which in Apple terms means shortening your machine lifetime.
I have a m1 MacBook pro 13 inch. Still feels snappy. Any suggestions on ram maintenance? Have the base model from 2020
Love you brother. Fantastic review. Subscribed.
I have a mini and a mba 15in. Both base models. They are perfect. I don't have one single complaint about base model. I do a lot of browsing. My work is done mainly on website based applications and I keep my files on the cloud(apple's and google's)so I do not need a lot of installed apps. I also do photo editing as a hobby. Again never had a problem. These machines are amazing.
That’s the video i was hunting ❤ thanks💐
Super useful video!!
Nice work
Glad it was helpful!
you needed vacode with more extensions, browser with more open tabs, or vms with more ram or more instances would like to see how windows performs as well with 8,16 or mor rams
also you didn't test with running llms where more ram is greatly beneficial. so it'd be a good idea to see some tests on that regard as well
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.
Thanks alot for this comparison, it helped me finalising what I should be actually buying.
Amazing man
What do you think is best for me as a developer MacBook air M2 16 ram or windows laptop like asus TUF I will use laptop in programming like web,flutter,also in machine learning
Thanks
IMO MacBook. Not a fan of Asus machines, as they are cheaply made. some have good parts in them like the latest procs and good GPUs, but the chassis is always cheap and sound is terrible. If you go Windows, Dell xps is a good option
bro whatever you do, dont get a asus tuf. im working off one right now. and like AZisk said, the build quality is terrible. and the fan noise when doing anything remotely intensive will make the laptop sound like an airplane. the only good thing about this laptop is the expandability, i have it configured with 2 m.2 ssds with a normal ssd as well. and 40gb of ram
R9 4900h 8c/16t
rtx 2060
@@AZisk Ok thanks 🙏
@@Br4mVAL Ok thanks
@@Abdullah.Albunni TUF is their entry level (gaming) lineup which has bad build quality. If you want something a little better get their ROG lineup. They have very good laptops in this lineup like the Zephyrus G14 & G15, but always watch a review about the laptop before buying it to see its performance and fan noise, etc..
I recommend Dave2D's channel for good reviews focusing on real world usage.
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.
Fill the SSD 80% on all of them and the RAM size difference effect will be noticeable
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.
It will be for one year, you are doomed with updates! My MacBook Pro screams just running 2 monitors and a couple of Chrome tabs! 8 GB RAM is a scam! Welding RAM and SSD to the motherboard and not letting us upgrade is a robbery!
Welcome back sir, good vibes!
Hey, thanks!
Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it
I have the 16GB model and it gets incredibly slow with just docker, chrome and vscode due to memory pressure. Of course, my docker has "real" containers running, that I'm actually using, not just leaving them open to force memory pressure. And that's the problem with this video: most of these open apps are not actually contributing much. MacOS (and even Windows) is smart about what data to push to the swap memory. Ideally, it would choose data that is basically never accessed - and that's exactly what it tries to do, often successfully. If you open an app that allocates lots of memory, but doesn't do much in the background, the OS can move its data to swap and free some physical RAM; then, unless that app requests that data, the OS never has to move it back to the physical RAM. That's why I say there's a problem with this video. The people suffering from memory pressure are not opening 20 apps that they never touch after opening. They are opening just a few apps that they NEED to use, and those few apps are consuming a lot of memory that is actually constantly accessed - like in my case.
perfect ❤ explains
My personal, 2019 Mac with Intel i5 and 8GB RAM uses around 3 to 4GB of RAM for most of my workload, however my work laptop with 32GB M1 Max uses 22GB for similar workload.
idk how you do it but my 8 gb MBP starts getting orange memory pressure with just 5-6 chrome tabs open..
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.
3:38 I went looking on your channel for a video about RAM... I no find??? 😭😭😭😭😭
I got some heavy algorithms that we can use to test the RAM in parallel processing.