Because Apple is soldering ram next to the chip, it enables them to make their RAM a lot faster.
What a bullshit I see.
Comment on 8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple
NIB@lemmy.world 1 year agoRAM is not RAM though. If a RAM is twice as fast than some other RAM, then it can swap shit back and forth really fast, making it more efficient per size. Because Apple is soldering ram next to the chip, it enables them to make their RAM a lot faster. M3 max’s ram has 6x more bandwidth than ddr5 and a lot lower latency too.
Also macos needs less ram in general. Is 8gB ram enough? No. But i would bet money on 12gB m3 over 16gB pc to have fewer ram issues and faster performance.
Most of the things that “use” ram on every day pc use, dont need ram. It is just parked assets, webpages, etc. Things that if you have a really fast ram, can be re-cached to ram pretty fast, especially if your storage is also really fast.
uis@lemmy.world 1 year ago
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Of all the points in their blatantly wrong comment, this probably wasn’t the one to single out. The reason for the soldered RAM is due to speed and length of traces. The longer the trace, the more chance there is for signal loss. By soldering the Ram close to the cpu the traces are shorter, allowing for a minuscule improvement in latency.
To be clear, I don’t like it either. It’s one of the major things holding me back from buying a MacBook right now.
Synthead@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The longer the trace, the more chance there is for signal loss.
While this is true on paper, we don’t need to pretend that this is an unsolved problem in reality. It’s not like large-scale motherboard manufacturers simply refuse to put their RAM closer to the CPU, and it’s littered with data loss. Apple also didn’t do anything innovative by soldering the RAM onto their motherboards. This is simply bootlicking Apple for what’s actually planned obsolescence.
Alexstarfire@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I can’t speak for this particular instance but the reason swappable RAM sticks aren’t “littered with data loss” is because they are designed not to. I.e. Only rated up to a certain speed and timings. Putting RAM physically closer to the CPU does allow you to utilize the RAM better. It’s physics.
Personally, I’d rather take a performance hit than be stuck with a set amount of RAM unless there was some ungodly performance gain.
TwanHE@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Same way itx boards are preferred for ram oc. But i doubt apple is pushing crazy timings and clocks.
BURN@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Exactly. There is an actual, tangible benefit of doing it that way. I don’t like it, as it creates situations where you’re unable to upgrade your own hardware, but it does make sense for the 95% of the population who has never opened a laptop, let alone tried to replace ram
azuth@lemmy.world 1 year ago
RAM transfer rate is is not important when swapping as the bottleneck will be storage transfer rate when reading and writing to swap.
Which I doubt Apple can make as fast as DDR4 bandwidth.
at_an_angle@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I have a tank that can hold 500 gallons of water. It’s connected to a pumping system that can do 1000 gallons a minute on the discharge side. So it’s just as good as a 2000 gallon tank!
What do you mean incoming water? Look at my discharge rate!