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8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro ‘Analogous to 16GB’ on PCs, Claims Apple::Following the unveiling of new MacBook Pro models last week, Apple surprised some with the introduction of a base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip,…
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I think they simply mean analogous in price.
What, no! 8 GB Apple RAM costs 4 times that of 16 GB regular DDR4 RAM module.
Edit: 5 times.
The interviewee seems to be meaning it as memory usage (quote from them): "Comparing our memory to other system’s memory actually isn’t equivalent, because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory, and we use memory compression, and we have a unified memory architecture.
Actually, 8GB on an M3 MacBook Pro is probably analogous to 16GB on other systems. We just happen to be able to use it much more efficiently."
I mean, i played with memory compression on linux too, but it’s not a factor x2 and you trade that with more CPU utilization/less battery life. And even though software is not worse in efficiency on this side, webbrowsers, VMs and games still need the RAM.
I’ve seen this a lot on this thread, but this is Apple we’re talking about. They have billions of dollars to throw at making their memory compression far better than what’s on Linux. I still regularly use an 8gb ddr3 apple macbook air from 2017. It’s not as fast at computing as my 32gb windows laptop, but it feels more snappy. I also have a 16gb desktop, also windows, and the macbook feels just a little slower than that. A little. And it’s ddr3 vs ddr4
Ok, honestly, snappyness is mostly the duration of animations, hard to judge from that. Billions for better compression is a mixed bag; it must be cheaper than more RAM in manufacturer prices. And, atleast in Linux, you can choose the compression algorithm, while lz4 has almost memory speed.
Now i’m curious, are there memory load tests for Linux aswell as Mac?
If anything the memory being unified between the GPU and CPU makes it even less than 8GB equivalent
Wait, unified VRAM? This is even worse. I thought that they meant all CPU cores share same bus.
Unified memory architecture as in “fancy integrated video,” or as in transparent gradient to swap space? Because swap extending RAM would be neat, but slow, and the other thing is a complete joke.
because of the fact that we have such an efficient use of memory,
Do they use below 24 megs of RAM in console? Or below 500 megs in GUI? Well, 500 megs is upper bound, I should probably compare to something less bloated than KDE.
and we have a unified memory architecture.
Really? They still doing UMA?
It’s all unified: CPU, GPU, RAM and SSD as far as I remember.
They were making a joke about it being expensive
RAM is RAM. If you’re able to manage it better, that’s nice, but programs will still use whatever RAM they were designed to use. If you need to store 5 GiB of something in memory, what happens with the other 2.5 GiB, if they claim that it’s 2x as “efficient?”
Definitely true, but I will say Mac has pretty decent compression on RAM. I’m assuming that’s why they feel this way. My old MBP 2013 had 8, and I used it constantly until earlier this year when I finally upgraded. It was doing pretty well all things considered, mostly because of on the fly RAM compression.
Lower end macs tend to have slower SSDs so this could be a double whammy on these machines.
I’m specifically talking about the in memory compression, not swap.
But memory compression works the same way swap works. When memory is needed LRU page is
written on diskcompressed, and where application needs to read data from compressed page it generates pagefault and OS loads(decompresses) page in memory. That’s it.It can be compressed in RAM, too.
Thanks, cap, this is what I said.
Pretty sure windows has been doing some pretty efficient RAM compression of its own since 98SE or something
They actually just it in Windows 10. There were third party add ons to do so prior to then, but they had marginal impact from my experience.
Did you know that you could do RAM compression on “old” MBP 2013? All you had to do is install Linux and enable memory compression.
My dick is 2 inches long. That’s analogous to 10 inches on Mars.
Enough with this Martian slander
Holy crap, apple charges $200 to add 8GB of RAM. I just bought 32GB of DDR5 for the Framework I have on order for $95.
They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it’s a status symbol.
Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
The infamous Apple Water…
They’d call it the AppleZeus
That might be true but it’s also embarrassing for all pc brands who get slaughtered by apples performance as soon as they actually attempt to make things. For example there isn’t a single laptop in the windows world that can match anything apple does
Any laptop with a recent GPU will beat an Apple Laptop for performance. Some higher end CPUs too.
Apple has really good power efficiency, which is great when unpluged, but plugged in laptops with 200 to 300W TDPs are still better.
Hahahahaha
I have friends who spec for their clients every day (I only do it occasionally). Mac laptops cost anywhere from 50% to 100% more than equivalent Dell and Lenovo laptops (ignoring the even less-costly brands, because none of us spec those).
They all have access to the same hardware. And MacOS, despite the gaslighting in this article, isn’t any more performant on the same hardware in the real world.
They all have access to the same hardware. And MacOS, despite the gaslighting in this article, isn’t any more performant on the same hardware in the real world.
Ah yes please tell me which PC OEMs are using the M-series chips 🙄
Also AFAIK no other company makes their laptop top case/lid and hinges out of a single piece of metal. ALL other laptops glue/epoxy the hinges to the lid and they will (sooner rather than later) break. So if durability is what you’re looking for Mac’s are still built better than all other laptops.
What a strange boogeyman here. I have a 15 year old HP that was $400 when I bought it and the hinges are still fine.
Literally a lottery. I used to do laptop repair for my job. HP makes the shittiest computers I have EVER seen so you’re extraordinarily lucky.
I lost count of how many HP laptops with broken hinges came across my desk. Too many. If you don’t know this issues exists it’s willful ignorance
Try buying laptops at same price as MacBooks. Of course they’ll break if you buy a 100$ laptop from wish. Try galaxy books or Lenovo yoga
Have you ever actually seen a laptop lid just break off because the epoxy failed, or is this just a hypothetical? I used my last laptop for around 8 years, I took it with me to college every day in a backpack, on public transit. It got thrown around, scratched up, but the hinges didn’t break lol
Have you ever actually seen a laptop lid just break off because the epoxy failed
I have tbh
It was a shitty gaming laptop, but the hinges broke within a couple years. Still cost me nearly $2k at the time. I highly regret not buying the equivalent MacBook I was offered
Yes, several. Acer Nitro, Dell Inspiron 7000 series, several Lenovo Yogas, too many HPs to even keep track… If you have done laptop repairs at all for work in your life it’s honestly not even an uncommon sight.
Now in the last generation of MacBook apple made it so that the flex cables were too short and flexing the hinge back and forth over time would cause the screen to go, but I’ve never seen a MacBook with broken hinges from normal use.
Other brands do not do this because it is cheaper. Most do not pass those savings off to customers.
Ah yes please tell me which PC OEMs are using the M-series chips 🙄
RP2040. Cortex M-series. :wheeze:
hinges out of a single piece of metal.
I’m trying to imagine hinge that is one solid object. I guess you bend you laptop to close it.
I’m trying to imagine the mental gymnastics you must have gone through to conjure that up :wheeze:
Circumstances outside gaming where any high end laptop isn’t good enough is pretty niche and I don’t think this really matters to most consumers. I would prefer to run Linux but at work, my options are Windows or MacOS. It’s a pretty easy choice. Apple products are great when someone else is paying for them.
This is mainly due to Windows being incompetent getting an ARM version of Windows in a usable state.
Snapdragon claims to have a M2 level ARM chip for desktop/laptop. It will likely be pretty comparable to the M2, but what OS will it run? Not Windows. In fact at the enterprise level, Lenovo is selling laptops with Android in desktop mode.
So, once that chip is released, I am guessing you will see great options with Linux and Android. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will surprise us with an update that lets Windows run reasonable well on ARM.
And now look at the actual chip prices and you’ll know, why apple is so fucking rich
Won’t someone please consider that Apple has to spend all the extra effort soldering the ram to the motherboard?? Only $200 extra is a steal!
They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it’s a status symbol.
Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it’s a status symbol.
Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it’s a status symbol.
Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
Yes, which is why anyone spending anywhere close to this on a laptop gets 32 GB RAM
Lol no. My poor linux kernel barely keeps everything stable in 8GB and even then by shoving stuff into swapon zram.
I can just barely run a game and have a ton of FF tabs open + an IDE + discord + multiple desktops
WIndows basically dies once you hit the swap, and it usually starts at like 2GB used.
I’m assuming MacOS lies between Linux and Windows in memory management and performance, so it’ll definitely start lagging if you open too much.
And this is all ignoring the fact that this is a scam statement that should be struck down by the FTC. You can’t call an 8 gallon gas tank equivalent to a 16 gallon gas tank even if your car has better MPG. In that case you advertise the MPG. And in Apple’s case, it would be something like “X% less RAM usage per system process” which we all know doesn’t actually exist because its snake ass Apple.
So are they going to make the software smaller? What about iOS? Physically how does 8GB = 16GB? Can’t wait to see Photoshop open a RAW and run out of memory. I will say the M2 CPU was pretty slick and if I got one cheap I’d throw Linux on there.
This ^
Architecture changes can happen as much as they want, but there’s certain tasks that require a fixed amount of memory, and between that and poor developer optimization I doubt these improvements will be seen by the end user.
The CPUs really are great. It’s hard to want any other laptop when the performance/battery life are so great on the M series
I find it pretty easy to want other laptops because I don’t use Apple stuff because I dislike their UX. I know I’m weird but if I never have to get close to OSX or iOS I’m pretty happy.
Thanks for saying this, it’s such an unpopular opinion.
I got a Mac Mini last year and it was dreadful. I used nothing but the Mac for 2 months and still couldn’t get used to it. Half the things required the use of birth mouse and keyboard, neither is sufficient on its own for the most basic of things. Finally sold it off and went back to my PC with dual boot of windows and Ubuntu.
To be fair, the Mac mini is the worst way to experience macOS. macOS works much better with a trackpad and Apple keyboard, which eliminates a lot of your problems I think.
I also have a Mac mini and it barely gets used because it’s a shitty experience to use with a typical windows based mouse and keyboard.
I would definitely agree to that. Even as I used it, I could see certain elements designed in a way that would suit a trackpad better.
The worst part was the scrolling experience. It was either too slow or too fast. Could never scroll at a comfortable speed. Never feel this way when I sometimes use my colleagues’ macbooks (my company provides Macs, but I need certain applications which necessitate a Windows machine for me).
Yep, scroll speed is always wrong on a regular mouse from my experience.
Can’t blame you for not liking it, they really do somewhat punish you for using accessories outside their ecosystem.
It’s good at what it does, it certainly isn’t perfect. I have a mix of all 3 major OS’s running at most times and don’t really hold any loyalty to any one of them besides what’s easiest to do a current task with.
Why don’t you use an apple kbd/mouse/trackpad with your macmini?
Honestly just because I didn’t have one and didn’t want to spend another ~$250 for the combo. I had spare windows keyboards already, so didn’t feel the need to replace them.
If I was to seriously use it again, I’d probably get one, but it’s more likely I’ll sell it to fund a new MacBook Pro
But how is that a criticism of the Mac mini? All it does is give you purchasing flexibility (eg if you already own Apple kbd/mouse). It is like you are implicitly arguing that they should raise the price and include those components. But that would be bad for some consumers that already have those items and would help nobody because you can already buy those separately.
there’s certain tasks that require a fixed amount of memory
Sure… and for editing a 12 megapixel photo that number is 384MB (raw or jpeg is irrelevant by the way - it’s the megapixels that matter).
As you add layers, you need more memory… but to run into issues at 8GB you’d need a lot of layers. And nobody is saying 8GB is enough for everyone, Apple does sell laptops with 128GB of RAM. They wouldn’t do that if nobody needed it.
And photoshop, which has it’s origins in the late 1980’s, is actually pretty lean. Back in those days it was common to only have one megabyte of RAM and Adobe has kept a lot of the memory management gymnastics they needed to fit within that limit. If you run out of memory it will make smart decisions about what to keep in RAM vs move to swap.
photoshop […] lean
???
Yeah, not sure if they’ve used PS in the last few years, but lean is not a word I’d use to describe it
You’re entirely leaving out the ~2-4GB of system overhead, 1-2gb just to have PS open and then having headroom left on top.
Oh and by the way, Lightroom eats ~45gb of RAM when importing. Also file sizes are much bigger for any decent camera now. I shoot 45MP and files are huge now
I call BS. My 8gb Mac Mini is terrible and constantly running out of memory.
I’m in need of a new laptop, but the lack of upgradeable RAM in these has really made it hard to justify. A minimum of 32gb, preferred 64gb (photographer working with very large files) costs hundreds extra and can’t be done by myself anymore. It’s also hard to find these ones used as the people who buy them have a specific use case and don’t replace them often.
Same here with my M1 MBA. Simply opening a browser with a bunch of tabs + a couple of productivity apps eats up your RAM.
Thanks for sharing. I was eyeing the M2 MBA for my wife because I’m pretty satisfied with my work M1 MBP (32GB RAM), but it seems even apple silicon won’t really do much with just 8GB RAM anyway.
I’m in need of a new laptop, but the lack of upgradeable RAM in these has really made it hard to justify.
Framework. Framework or desktop computer.
Framework doesn’t fit the usecase, and I’m not running Linux or windows on a laptop
I need a laptop with specifically huge battery life, a mainstream OS and Adobe compatibility.
Edit: You really shouldn’t be downvoted for suggesting Framework. For anyone who wants a decently powerful windows or Linux laptop, it’s a great product, it just unfortunately doesn’t fit the use case that I have in mind for a laptop.
Is it an M3?
M1, but same idea. One app can take 8gb of RAM easy on it. No matter the improvements to the architecture, they’re not going to be able to solve for poor implementation on the dev side
Just waiting for Apple to just start trademarking and “inventing” units…
Our new Mac has the highest amount of “Rapid Storage Blocks ™” of any Mac ever! Enough to run 30 “Safari Experiences ™”.
Check out their “SSD”:s, hard drives with SSD cache memory.
Not a bad idea (if made correctly and not creating two failur points) but it was so ridiculously small, both of them, like 32GB SSD for 1TB DD when 1TB SSD was for like 200€…
Absolutely hilarious. But I’ve heard MacBoys parrot this exact same line of propaganda for years now.
16GB are totally enough! Apple will manage my 20GB of required RAM in such a way that it’ll fit in my 16GB (actually ~15)
I have not. As someone in the Mac community I can tell you that Apple enthusiasts are Apple’s harshest critics. They are the type of people who care a lot about details like this, and have been criticizing Apple for years on the amount of RAM in entry level systems, as well as the absolute rip-off prices they charge for RAM upgrades.
If they are rip-off prices and bad RAM, then why continue buying them? Doesn’t that imply getting ripped off?
When I argued that for the money you shell out for a mac, you could get a machine with 1.5-2x the specs, the constant thing I heard was “yeah, but you can’t compare a SoC with a normal laptop/PC”. Then came the argument about RAM not mattering, CPU speed not mattering, and so on. It would be cheaper for companies to give devs linux machines than macs, but they don’t want to hear it because macs are now the table tennis tables, pool tables, arcade machines, avocado toast, and “we’re a family” of companies.
“lol” said Apple “lmao”
MacOS is pretty decent at memory management. That being said, 8GB of RAM is ridiculous in 2023. Newer and updated applications are tossing memory management out the window. Platforms like Electron wreck memory usage, and many apps popular desktop apps are using Electron now. 12GB is the new 8GB, for Macs. 32GB is the new 16GB for PC’s. I wouldn’t recommend a computer with less than 12GB of RAM for more than $300.
Thanks to RAM Doubler and DoubleSpace you won’t feel the difference.
Edit: I had forgotten that it was first called Stacker before MS copied/reverse engineered it and sold it as DoubleSpace.
Downloadmoreram.com is going to get a lot more traffic
