Comment on 8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests
Iwasondigg@lemmy.one 7 months agoDon’t they also solder it to the motherboard so you can’t upgrade your RAM as well?
Lol, the ram is part of the m3 chip That’s a reason why it is so efficient. The storage in m3 is for RAM and videoRAM.
Wikipedia: The M3’s Unified Memory Architecture features up to 24 GB RAM, the M3 Pro up to 36 GB, and the M3 Max up to 128 GB. Like the M2 generation, the M3 SoCs use 6,400 MT/s LPDDR5 SDRAM. As with prior M series SoCs, this serves as both RAM and video RAM.
That’s literally how Intel integrated GPUs work too
With Apple’s chips the RAM is all on the CPU die so both CPU and GPU get the performance benefit. With Intel’s, none of it is.
What Apple calls “unified memory” is RAM (random-access memory) used as “main memory” (not a CPU or GPU cache and not mass storage either).
The term “unified” refers to the fact that the memory is shared by the CPU cores and the GPU cores. That’s not novel: “integrated graphics” options in Intel x86 chips (like Iris Xe) do the same, as do just about all modern smartphones.
Yea but the RAM is not on the located within the chip design, is it?
Well yeah, if you were paying $50 a GB wouldn’t you too? Got to lock that shit down!
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 7 months ago
It’s not so much soldered to the motherboard as much as part of the same package as the CPU. As in: there are no separate memory chips.
GenderNeutralBro@lemmy.sdf.org 7 months ago
But they did indeed solder it in before that, on their old Intel laptops. I think they started doing that in 2013 or 2014 but I forget exactly.
4am@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That has more to do with faster traces; the ram is “closer” to the CPU so the signal is cleaner.
Not defending the move, I’d take upgradability in a laptop.
TwanHE@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Only makes a difference at oc levels of manual tuning. Which apple isn’t doing at their factory I reckon.
EmergMemeHologram@startrek.website 7 months ago
This is both great, and incredibly annoying because they selected 8gb as the base…
billiam0202@lemmy.world 7 months ago
So wait- if you want to increase your RAM, you have to install a whole new CPU?
4am@lemm.ee 7 months ago
You buy a whole new Macbook
lupec@lemm.ee 7 months ago
That’s soldered as well! It’s theoretically possible but way too involved for most to bother with hiring a professional to get it done or what have you.
BorgDrone@lemmy.one 7 months ago
No, you just buy one with the amount of RAM you need.