The annoying thing is I have had people claim that 8GB and 16GB is fine on Apple and works better than on PC laptops. To the point one redditor point blank refused to believe I owned an Apple laptop. I literally had to take a photograph of said laptop and show it to them before they would believe me about the RAM capacity.
Comment on 16GB of RAM Could Be the New Minimum in Apple's Upcoming M4 Macs
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Whoa, that’s like 32GB of Windows RAM. Seems excessive to me tbh
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
x00z@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
You should have said “sure buddy” and ignored them.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
The problem is they will then keep spreading misinformation.
lemming741@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
And that’s your problem? Do you hold $AAPL
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Obviously it depends on the situation but sometimes it is worth talking to idiots not because you have any chance of changing their mind but just demonstrate to everyone else in the thread that they are in fact an idiot. Just in case somebody thinks they have a point.
x00z@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Sure buddy.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I own a 8GB MacBook Pro for work, it’s definitely better than a PC with 8GB of RAM, but not better or even close to a PC with 16GB. Just the amount of stutters/freezes while the swap file goes is insane
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Maybe this is true if you use Windows. If you use Linux on your PC versus macOS on a MacBook you will probably find the PC performs comparably if not better.
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Until you open a web browser or an Electron app. Them folks don’t really seem to give a shit about RAM usage.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Oh totally, Linux is in the same ballpark, if not better, as Macs when it comes to RAM usage. Windows is just a hog
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
That’s probably all the telemetrics in Windows taking their toll.
tb_@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Does it?
Previous benchmarks have shown the 8 GB models seriously fell behind in performance.
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Yeah I think the joke just flew over your head.
Apple keeps saying that their RAM is somehow magic and therefore better than Windows RAM, which is a comment that obviously makes no sense.
barsquid@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
I think they are able to share it with the GPU or something? It is maybe slightly better but it sure as fuck is not 2x better.
8 GB, even if it is “magic RAM,” is a joke amount and has been for a long time.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
That’s just an APU, see consoles and laptops. The unified memory is basically just the above, but Apple also claims that due to Apple Silicon having the storage controller on board, the swap is magically faster 🤷
Also Mac OS/Linux use less RAM than Windows which certainly helps.
8GB is “fine™” on a MacBook Air, but it’s criminal for a Pro machine, and it certainly should not cost £200 for an extra 8GB. That’s genuinely insane pricing
cheddar@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Yeah I think the joke just flew over your head.
I realize this should be a joke, but I am still unsure if it is.
HauntedCupcake@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It is 100% a joke. Literally other than Windows being slightly more RAM hungry, there’s no difference between it and Mac’s RAM
echodot@feddit.uk 3 weeks ago
Memory is memory. An application requires a lot of memory then it really doesn’t matter what speed that memory is it’s more important that there’s enough of it.
There are plenty of applications that could theoretically run on the M2 MacBook in terms of processing capacity but can’t run because there isn’t enough RAM available. Oh they run in switching mode, which is super bad, because a, it’s incredibly slow, and b, it’s bad for the hard drive.
T156@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Ironically, it’s the other way around, since Apple has to share their RAM between GPU and CPU, where other computers typically have them separately.
So in normal usage with 8 GB, you’re automatically down to 7, since at least 1GB would be taken by the graphics card. More if you’re doing anything reasonably graphics-heavy with it.
cryptix@discuss.tchncs.de 3 weeks ago
AI Models needs that RAM to load models.
cheddar@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Is it like SI RAM vs US Customary RAM?
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Yes. Freedom RAM equals approx. 1.6 metric RAMs. Unless your computer is on water, in which case it’s 1.857
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Is that calibrated against the Universal Prototype Kilobyte in Paris?
Hadriscus@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
iirc that one is outdated as it’s 1024 bytes. They haven’t been able to shave off the extra 24 bytes
lengau@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
My Linux machine has 64 GiB of RAM, which is like 128 GiB of Mac RAM. It’s still not enough
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Serious question what are you using all that RAM for? I am having a hard time justifying upgrading one of my laptops to 32 GiB, nevermind 64 GiB.
lengau@midwest.social 3 weeks ago
For me in particular I’m a software developer who works on developer tools, so I have a lot of tests running in VMs so I can test on different operating systems. I just finished running a test suite that used up over 50 gigs of RAM
InvertedParallax@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Same, 48c/96t with 192gb ram.
make -j is fun, htop triggers epilepsy.
Few vms, but tons of Lxc containers, it’s like having 1 machine that runs 20 systems in parallel and really fast.
Have containers for dev, for browsing, for wine, the dream finally made manifest.
Mistic@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
If games, modding uses a lot. It can go to the point of needing more than 32gb, but rarely so.
Usually, you’d want 64gb or more for things like video editing, 3d modeling, running simulations, LLMs, or virtual machines.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
I use Virtual Machines and run local LLMs. LLMs need VRAM rather than CPU RAM. You shouldn’t be doing it on a laptop without a serious NPU or GPU, if at all. I don’t know if I will be using VMs heavily on this machine or not, but that would be a good reason to have more RAM. Even so 32 GiB should be enough for a few VMs running concurrently.
Reverendender@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
Photo Editing, Video Transcoding.
datelmd5sum@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
k8s
tal@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Any memory that’s going unused by apps is going to be used by the OS for caching disk contents. That’s not as significant with SSD as with rotational drives, but it’s still providing a benefit, albeit one with diminishing returns as the size increases.
areyouevenreal@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Outside of storage servers and ZFS no one is buying RAM specifically to use it as disk cache. You will also find that Windows laptops are also designed to be left in sleep rather than hibernate.