But but the memory is more efficient, 8 is actually 16!
LMAOOOOOOO 🤡
To be fair I had an 8Gb M1 Mac mini for about a year and never even once felt like it was lacking memory. I could open as many things as I wanted and it didn’t slow down, so I can kinda see where they were going with this. Not saying it makes that situation much better though.
I think the current base iPhones with 4Gb or 6Gb suffer way more from lack of memory than the 8Gb Macs, and people aren’t taking about this enough.
I needed a cheap laptop for audio, so i decided to pick up a second hand m1 air a couple months ago.
It is honestly pretty impressive for the price, I generally don’t have issues either. Everything is snappy, and it handles multitasking fine. Its even faster than my $2000+ PC at several things, which frustrates me greatly.
However… When running ableton live (or presumably anything that involves heavy image, video, or audio editing), 8gb of ram is honestly not enough. If you push it too hard, it hangs for a second, then the offending app will just close.
Also there is a weird delay in factorio, absolutely unacceptable.
faster than my $2000+ PC
tell me you run windows without telling me you run windows
Base 8GB MacBooks also tend to have base storage, meaning a single NVMe controller instead of dual. If you’re relying on virtual memory then it would make sense to get the Mac that has double the SSD bandwidth. I bought a base M1 Mac Mini for the kids and it’s pretty good for their needs, but they tend to prefer the old i3 win 10 PC connected to the same monitor. The M1 Mini could run Intel Civ 6 faster than my 32GB i7 MacBook Pro could, which surprised me.
I have a old HP Elitebook with 8GB ram with Windows 10 and even on Windows I don’t notice slowdowns for daily tasks. Yes the machine swaps but because of the SSD you don’t notice much performance decrease. However, because it’s constant swapping the lifetime of the SSD will decrease and that’s exactly the problem of 8GB machines these days. Yes the machine stays fast (Windows or OSX it really does not matter) but there is extra load on the SSD.
Don’t believe Apple marketing bullshit that 8GB is enough because of the “super duper advanced memory management” of OSX. If it really was enough then Apple would not release MacBooks with 16+ GB ram. The only reason that the 8GB MBP still exists is to sell more 16+ GB machines.
I have an old 8GB Toshiba laptop that I threw an SSD into and slapped Pop_OS! on for fun. There are plenty of lightweight Linux distros that can breathe life into older hardware if you want to tinker with them. If nothing else, my old Toshiba is good for just basic Internet usage.
The thing you didn’t notice is that you significantly decreased the service life of the permanent storage on the device, because it ABSOLUTELY dips into swap far more frequently than models with more memory, and all high-speed SSD technologies that I’m aware of have limited lifetime write capacity before performance and fidelity start to degrade.
The MBPs (MBAs too in my opinion, but that’s more debate as it’s the “entry level” laptop) should have a minimum ram config of 16gb. 8gb MBP is honestly a really dumb spec level to purchase anyways - if you want something with that little RAM in laptop form, get the MBA.
To be fair
NO! No fair.
I delivered a season of 4k animations for a network show using Motion, AE, C4D, Ps, AI…all using a base model M1 Mini (8/256), with zero problems.
Of course more would be better, but unless you’ve actually used one, it’s hard to imagine how well it works. I tried mentioning this in another post, but it’s all Apple hate all the way down here
To be honest, I can still do most of my work on my old Core2Quad 4GB DDR2 PC, when using Linux.
And as long as I setup my swap properly, I can also keep as many Firefox tabs open as I want , as I tend to forget tabs (running out of brain memory) before I run out of RAM.
But I just like my 64GB RAM.
Increasing swap on Linux is a great way to save money on cloud servers btw. One nice thing on Mac is that there is no swap file that you need to manage. System handles it transparently. Firefox (and really all modern browsers) require a ridiculous of RAM if you use them like you and I do.
People are, just not PC spec heads that like to compare numbers. Practical use is the only real comparison.
Actually the opposite is true for a basic spec. like RAM. People may not understand CPU/GPU naming conventions. BUT they understand something simple like 16>8.
They also understand their “old slow” PC probably had 8gb and they want to UPGRADE so when they see this “new” mac with same amount of ram they immediately think slow whether it is or not…
UM on an SoC is not the same thing as RAM on a PC with a CPU and GPU. It’s purely a storage liaison, since data is passed directly from core to core.
It’s not that it’s more efficient, it’s simply used less than in conventional PC architecture.
MacOS is also designed specifically to leverage the hardware, so practical use is the only legitimate comparison to a PC.
Maybe PC Gamer isn’t the most informed reviewer of technology outside of PCs.
It’s not that it’s more efficient, it’s simply used less than in conventional PC architecture.
It’s not that you’re wrong from a philosophical perspective with that, it’s that you’re factually incorrect. Memory addresses don’t suddenly shrink or expand depending on where they exist on the bus or the CPU. Being on the SoC doesn’t magically make RAM used less by the OS and applications, as the mach kernel, Darwin, and various MacOS layers still address the same amount of memory as they would on traditional PC architecture.
Memory is memory, just like glass is glass, and glass will still scratch at a level 7 just like 8GB of RAM holds the same amount of information as…8GB of RAM.
The article actually quantitatively tests this too by pointing out their memory usage with Chrome and different numbers of tabs open.
Looks like you didn’t read the article.
You should familiarize yourself with the architecture before commenting. The GPU is broken into several cores of the SoC, along with the roles of the CPU. The UM is not part of the SoC. However, data is passed from what could be referred to as the CPU to what could be referred to as the GPU without interacting with UM.
What a load of nonsense. You’ve got no idea how a computer works. RAM isn’t just used for passing data between cores. If anything that’s more the role of cache although even that isn’t strictly accurate.
Whether a system has a discrete GPU or not doesn’t really factor into the discussion one way or another, although even if it did having more RAM would be even more important without a discrete GPU because a portion of the system RAM gets utilized as VRAM.
This is a truly terrible article.
Like why not test these things? This just sounds like ai generated garbage.
That being said, 8gb is an abysmally low amount of ram in 2024. I had a mid range surface in 2014 that had that much ram. And the upcharge for more is quite ridiculous too.
I know it’s pc ram but I bought 64gb of ddr4 3600mhz for like $130. How on earth is apple charging $200 for 8!!!
Looks like you didn’t read the article either.
Overall, I’m using 12.5GB of memory and the only application I have open is Chrome. Oh, and did I mention I’m typing this on a 16GB MacBook Air? I used to have an 8GB Apple silicon Air and to be frank it was a nightmare, constantly running out of memory just browsing the web.
Earlier it’s mentioned that they have 15 tabs open. I don’t like a lot of things they do in “gaming journalism” but on this article they’re spot on. Apple is full of shit in saying 8GB is enough by today’s standards. 8GB is a fuckin joke, and you can’t add any RAM later.
Written by someone who apparently has no understanding of virtual memory. Chrome may claim 500MB per tab but I’ll eat my hat if the majority of that isn’t shared between tabs and paged out.
If I’m misunderstanding then how the fuck is chrome with it’s 35+ open tabs functioning on my 16GB M1 machine (with a full other application load including IDE’s and docker (with 8GB allocated)
Your 64 gigs of ram probably uses 10x the power and takes up significantly more space than the single memory chip that’s on the M1-M3s die. And yet it still has less bandwidth than the M1, and on top of that the M1 utilizes it more efficiently than a “normal” desktop or laptop can since there’s one pool of memory for RAM RAM and VRAM.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_M1#:~:text=While the M1 SoC has 66.67GB/s memory bandwidth
Chat GPT guestimates 57GB/s for dual channel DDR4 at 3600mhz
$1000 for 8 gigs of RAM in the Air is whatever. $1200 for 8 gigs of ram in the Pro was not great. But 1600 for 8 gigs of ram in the new M3 MBP is really awful.
They’ll continue selling these, purely because of two reasons:
- On an Air, 8gb is the bare minimum that is realistically viable, for people who don’t do anything than browse the web, who they can later upsell, when they get a new machine.
- They can immediately upsell you for every extra memory tier you would need. This makes them a colossal amount of money.
Practically all of us know that the difference between these memory modules is pocket change, when mass produced like this, but for those extra couple cents, they get an extra 100$ from you
On an Air, 8gb is the bare minimum that is realistically viable, for people who don’t do anything than browse the web
Thanks to the modern web, web browsing of one of the most RAM intensive tasks. Add a few Electron based apps and you’re in hell.
For browsing the web 4 GB is enough, unless you do some multitasking. Still I wouldn’t buy a computer with less than 8 GB of RAM nowadays.
Practically all of us know that the difference between these memory modules is pocket change, when mass produced like this, but for those extra couple cents, they get an extra 100$ from you
This is called capturing consumer surplus through segmentation. There’s a pretty good explanation of it here.
The long and short of it is that some people are just perfectly fine spending more money on a macbook, and apple wants to give them a good enough excuse to do so.
I think it’s mostly to have a price tag that doesn’t immediately turn off people.
Yes, Apple is expensive in general, however people are generally fine with paying a premium. But if they’d come at you immediately with the full price for a reasonably specced machine, it would still turn many people away.
Instead they fix you on with a high, but still somewhat reasonable price and then upsell you in steps for everything. Like sure you could buy the 128gb iPhone pro, but then the storage will fill up fast with photos and videos. A great camera system being the huge selling point of the device.
On a side note I actually find the 256gb non upgradeable/replaceable ssd much more egregious, than the 8gb RAM.
As you say, for people with basic needs (and that is actually a quite large group), it is enough for daily use. Those people just browse the Web, view photos and write short documents in word. However especially if they have an iPhone and take lots of picture/videos, they will still fill up that storage fast. And then it gets really frustrating, unless you maybe pay even more to outsource everything to the icloud and pay monthly.
The low ram and storage are to drive you up 2 tiers.
By the time you go “256gb isn’t enough storage, so I’ll pay 10% more for something useable”, you are pretty much at the stage of “if I’m spending this much, I might as well get the ram upgrade as well”. And suddenly you are paying $500 more.
Exactly my point. Not sure if there is a better term, but in some way it is a bait-and-switch tactic.
With the “starting at” sticker price of the lowest configuration they get you into the mindset of wanting (and being able to afford) their premium device. And then once you are mentally commited they it’s the choice between spending even more or compromising on a premium device (where you really should have to).
That’s just the reality we’re in now. All components will eventually ship as a single bundle, and there’s nothing you’d be able to do. Obviously there are speed and latency benefits to this, but it comes at a cost of a colossal amount of e-waste with hardcoded serial numbers. This only works in their favor, because the groups of people you’ve described will just return to the shop, and buy a more expensive model
An extra $100 takes you from 8GB to 64GB on a PC if you install it yourself.
not by much; here in central europe a 2 module 64gb kit costs about 125€ (~135$ incl. VAT). not the greatest timings, but very much faster than the swapfile.
8 is fine for a tablet.
8 is not fine for a brand-fucking new state of the art laptop.
“With an apple silicon architecture, 8gb is like 16gb” -some stupid apple flunkey
The irony is that it’s arguably the opposite, since the GPU and CPU just have a shared memory pool, rather than having dedicated memory and the shared memory pool.
So if you’re watching a 4k video, you might have lost a gigabyte or two just for VRAM.
My iPad has 3GB RAM and honestly that’s enough. I don’t know what you do on your tablet, but for my everyday activities I have never felt limited
We’re talking about laptops though. I was just using tablets as a comparison point.
It’s totally so they can list a really low “starting at” price and then upsell marked up parts in the configurator.
Disclaimer: I didn’t read the article and just came in to shit on scummy business practices that I made assumptions about.
8GB of RAM is perfectly usable for basic things, but on a new computer, with that price, non-upgradable… ech…
