Caporegime
Maybe not today but later down the line you don’t want your £1k laptop to become laggy because you skimped on ram.
Poll: *** The official 2020 MacBook Air/13" MacBook Pro thread (it has the M1 chip and everything!) ***
- Thread starter Feek
- Start date
Maybe not today but later down the line you don’t want your £1k laptop to become laggy because you skimped on ram.
I guess it depends on what you are doing. I have the 8/8/512 pro, I am not video editing, but no matter how many applications I open, web browsers, etc it doesn't seem to slow down nor heat up. Its very impressive. I haven't owned a MacBook since 2017, this smokes my most recent Windows Lenovo X1 Carbon 7th gen, with 16GBs of RAM for my type of work. The lack of heat is a big seller for me, I like to work with a laptop on my lap, no more do I end up with wearing legs!
I think there is an element of very good RAM management with the Apple siliocon to software make up of these MacBooks.
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Caporegime
Yea for general use 8GB is fine, since any additional apps/tabs just get put into the swap and pulled up when accessed again. However, when you use anything that does require some active RAM (I use some cloud based apps that can hit 3GB RAM) then the system starts to choke hard. I used Lightroom CC a few days ago and hit 13GB swap, swapping between apps at this point was a slide show.
What you don't want is a few years down the line this issue coming up when your usage changes or an app requires more active memory, then you're stuck.
Hello,
So do you think i'd be ok with the base system 8/7/256 then go for 16gig ?
As i think i said he uses xbox for gaming etc this would only be for above all home work , web browsing , learning unity on the web site and some coding and playing Roblox which i'm guessing he can use the app to download from app store like phone ?
Thank you
Caporegime
As long as he doesn’t store a ton of files locally that spec will be good.
Yes. There’s a macOS App Store.
You can also download from Websites like on Windows.
Soldato
This something I never get. Amazon and a lot of other sellers, only ever seem to sell the base models. At the best you can buy the upgraded storage but usually never the 16gb ram models. Why do they assume that everyone whats the cheaper (arguably slightly less capable) model? Pretty annoying.
The good thing about Macs is that hey hold their value well. If in a year or slightly more you decide the ram etc.. isn't enough, you can usually sell it and get newer faster one, for not massive amounts more.
Yeah i'm looking now to order one tonight as it's for xmas and seems like delivery is up to 23rd Dec now .
Not to sure he'll use the 512gig so looking at the base unit with 16Gig for £1199 .
But then i'm wondering how much a difference 7 core GPU to the 8 core GPU will make? . Doesn't help not going to look at one and asking questions there being in a higher risk for covid need to try and stay away ( hence the questions here )
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Caporegime
Negligible difference.
Have read that searching on google 10 % diff i seem to have read .
Think after what yourself and others have said 16gig i'll go for . Assume if he started to run out of space you could just ad a standard usb drve and format it ?
Personally not sure he will to be honest . Whit the system Os Installed what do you have left out of that 256 please?
Caporegime
Yep, it’s not going to be the difference between an app running smooth and it being a shuttery mess.
Yes. External drives via Thunderbolt 3 are quite performant too.
On a fresh install it's about 190GB free space.
Associate
Just to throw my 2p in here and give some feedback on the 8gb models - I've got the 8/8/512 MacBook Air with 8gb ram. I'm a fairly demanding user, my thinking was I'd see how I get on with the 8gb, expecting to return it and upgrade to a 16gb model during the extended holiday returns period. To be honest, having used it flat out for everything for a week now I'm really not sure I'm going to bother. I've used Lightroom Classic with 42mp files, multiple 4k streams editing in Final Cut Pro, multitrack audio in Logic Pro and it honestly flies. I'm running the latest beta version of Microsoft Office which are built for Apple Silicon, and they use quite a chunk of ram (especially Outlook) but I still get no slow down when using the machine. I'm genuinely surprised and that doesn't happen very often.
The advice of going with 16gb ram for the long haul is sound advice, and I may still do just that, but I think Big Sur has been so well optimised for the M1 platform that it's really not anywhere near as much of a requirement as it would be on Windows (or an Intel Mac for that matter).
The advice of going with 16gb ram for the long haul is sound advice, and I may still do just that, but I think Big Sur has been so well optimised for the M1 platform that it's really not anywhere near as much of a requirement as it would be on Windows (or an Intel Mac for that matter).
Don
Yay. My MBP has shipped.
I don't do anything like video rendering. I got the Pro 8/256, I was very impressed with the memory management for my work loads, so I changed it to 8/512. 8GB of RAM is not for everyone, but its for a lot more people than people think due to the new CPUs/Big Sur.
Thank you so much for your time and help and other people that have helped me out here with answering questions
Ordered 8/8/16/512 Want it to last a good 4/5 years for him Only stress is hoping it arrives before Christmas day
Delivers 17 Dec - 29 Dec MacBook Air
Thanks again
Caporegime
@Matrix he's going to love it, great spec there.
Yeah i hope he does adding up there extra bits here and there from the base to that one thought over a few years as you said it's not that much
He's been very spoilt this year but been a tough year as it has for most people , ( he has a xbox X too ! ) And to be fair gave us no issue what so ever got his head down done his school work at home so why not ! .
Thanks once more most likely be asking questions when we have it ( please before xmas day )
