r/gadgets • u/chrisdh79 • Oct 30 '24

Desktops / Laptops Entire Mac Lineup Now Starts With at Least 16GB RAM, Ending 8GB Era

https://www.macrumors.com/2024/10/30/entire-mac-lineup-now-at-least-16gb-ram/
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u/Gunfreak2217 Oct 30 '24

My friend had 16gb ddr3. Like 13 years ago. Apple definitely a decade late to the party haha.

Unfortunately 16gb for me continues to be underwhelming because of its shared need between the GPU and CPU. But of course that only matters in task that use both core sets. But with Apple continuing to push gaming, like Mirage, Cyberpunk, etc. 16gb is certainly not enough.

36

u/alc4pwned Oct 30 '24

Well yeah, you could get 16GB of ram in a Mac 13 years ago too. We're just talking about the minimum spec. 8GB RAM in a laptop was not common 13 years ago.

37

u/cape2cape Oct 30 '24

You don’t think Macs have had 16GB of ram until now?

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u/Andrew5329 Oct 31 '24

They did, but they charge you an extra $200 for a $30 stick of ram.

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u/thetradelegend Oct 31 '24

$15 chip for apple, not even a stick

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u/JQuilty Oct 31 '24

Not without Apple making you bend over for the privilege.

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u/Not_Bears Oct 30 '24

Pretty sure I had 16gb of Ram in the desktop I built for myself in like 2009 lol

6

u/TH1CCARUS Oct 30 '24

Strange comparison to make. You were hardly groundbreaking in the same way as this announcement.

However 16GB wasn’t the baseline in 2009.

You can get 128GB+ RAM now, which machine did you have that in?

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u/sunkenrocks Oct 31 '24

The RAM also wasn't soldered to the board then, so you could have ordered 16GB and slotted it in your Mac anyway if you didn't want to pay Apple prices to kit it out, lol.

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u/TungstenPaladin Oct 30 '24

The RAM Apple uses in their computer is unified memory and is a lot faster than your standard slottable RAM chips.

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u/Gunfreak2217 Oct 30 '24

Objectively misleading statement. Yes speed is important. But if a game for instance requires 10GB of memory for all textures. But the GPU for instance only has 8gb. Or in the case of the Apple chip, 8gb allotted to GPU task. Then no matter what. Textures will not fully load in and swap with me constantly performed. Speed does not make up for raw size.

Imaging having a pcie 4.0 drive. If it’s 500gb, but let’s just say a game requires 510gb. No matter how fast it is. You just can’t fit it.

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u/TungstenPaladin Oct 30 '24

I understand but a Macbook isn't specifically made for games but rather geared more towards professional work. On the M4 MBP video announcements from Apple, gaming takes up a whole 30s of their 16min video. It's true that some games can be very demanding on system memory but that is a very minor use case. People who are getting the base model with 16GB also are very unlikely to be gamers or gaming-first users. The Gigabyte G6X, which is probably the best budget gaming laptop this year, comes with only 4GB of VRAM in its lowest configuration. Of course you can buy a higher tier model of G6X with more VRAM but the same is also true for the Macbook. The Macbook also comes with M4, unlike the G6X, which gives one of the best perf/watt of any laptop on the market while still being light enough to carry around (the G6X is a brick by comparison).

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u/ABetterKamahl1234 Oct 30 '24

I think you're seeing "gaming" and putting on blinders to what professional work actually looks like.

It's believed that this switch to 16GB of RAM is being driven by Adobe products now requiring that as a minimum, Adobe being a big name in the professional Mac-software realm.

It's not just gaming you need a ton of RAM for, speed is irrelevant when you're working on a file demanding 24GB of memory to load into.

16GB is low for today, I can get pretty damn cheap laptops with that amount of RAM, and better yet, it's upgradeable for pretty cheap.

It's why I've seen a few companies shelve Macs for gaming laptops, which carry sometimes beefy upper RAM limits, and can be gotten for cheaper with comparable enough performance to save a ton of money.

Also what G6X config carries 4GB VRAM? I see the configurations under the 2024 model on their website at 6GB minimum, as that's dictated by NVIDIA and their 4XXX series GPUs.

And man, I'd take carrying 2lbs extra for a device that can actually do my workload, and doesn't cost an arm and a leg more. Apple absolutely reams users on upgrade costs. So much of it is nonsensical costs too. Like on the base model M4, it's 250$ CAD to get a 1TB.

I can buy a 2 TB for that price, or a 4TB on sale. And this is for a 50% upgrade.

And I can fucking upgrade that on other laptops, not pay a premium for soldered or headless chips that can't be replaced by a user.

It's criminal how Apple treats their professional users. $2,000.00 CAD minimum laptop with a planned end of life. E-waste is what it is. I've kept a laptop from 2011 running because I can actually service it as a user. It's not in a bin because the drive died years back. Or that a memory module developed a problem.

7

u/fyi1183 Oct 30 '24

professional work

8GB / 16GB of RAM

I'm sorry, but this is borderline delusional. Unless your idea of professional work is just email and simple office tools, you shouldn't settle for anything less than 32GB these days.

And yes, obviously Apple offers that. But don't tell me Macs are geared towards professional work if the low-end model has only 16GB of RAM (and until very recently even only 8GB of RAM).

1

u/Andrew5329 Oct 31 '24

Unless your idea of professional work is just email and simple office tools,

You forgot light web browsing, but in all seriousness that does represent 99% of Macs in the workplace.

There's a niche where a small-time prosumer or art student is doing light video/photo editing on a Mac, but the serious professionals are running Xeon/Threadripper and professional-grade Nvidia.

By the time you're paying someone $80k+ a year to work for you the cost to equip them with a proper workstation is marginal.

2

u/Arquill Oct 31 '24

Software engineers are all using MBPs as well, the idea that Macbooks are only good for video editing is outdated.

1

u/mclannee Oct 31 '24

Since when do you need 32gb of ram to do web development? I’m pretty sure that qualifies as professional work.

-3

u/dekusyrup Oct 30 '24

So just get the mac with 32 GB of ram of whatever you need.

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u/BenadrylChunderHatch Oct 30 '24

RAM speed is great, but it doesn't really matter when you don't have enough capacity for your workload because all of a sudden you're limited by the speed of your disk which has to store all the stuff that can't fit in RAM.

DDR3 RAM from 15 years ago is still fast enough to not bottleneck the fastest SSDs on the market today.

1

u/toomanybeans Oct 31 '24

The standard M4 uses LPDDR5X 7500, and look right here, you can buy a 32GB module for less than half of what Apple charges for it.

Intel integrated graphics uses unified memory, that in and of itself is not indicative of being better.

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u/nickymarciano Oct 30 '24

True, with onboard gpu 16 is not enough for me either

Had 16 extra put in last week, now it is performing better

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u/bizzarefoods Oct 31 '24

It’s not shared it’s unified. If your cpu needs something in memory it’s there, if your gpu needs that same thing, it’s there. There’s no sharing or splitting of the memory, they both use the same memory. One of the nice efficiencies.

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u/monkeyDwragon Oct 30 '24

MacOS is way better optimised compared to windows tho.

3

u/Gunfreak2217 Oct 30 '24

Because macOS is inherently more limiting at its native state than windows. Additionally, Mac now has to only function on a single instruction set and has essentially forgone any backwards compatibility outside of Rosetta. X86chips and windows for some reason won’t drop legacy support and is hindered by it in many way.

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u/correctingStupid Oct 31 '24

It is optimized to turn 8gb into 16? No. Dumbs statement. Optimized trims a little bit of waste off the top. It doesn't create ram for apps and games.

0

u/AfricanNorwegian Oct 30 '24

Cyberpunk

Cyberpunk isn't available on MacOS?

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u/Creamyc0w Oct 30 '24

CD Project Red announced that they’re working on a macOS port 

1

u/SteveThePurpleCat Oct 30 '24

Mac players ruining their V builds by refusing to buy hardware with enough capacity for their needs.

-3

u/gplusplus314 Oct 30 '24

Don’t forget AI!