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 for a dozen VMs.
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.
Honestly, I think that for many people, if they’re using a laptop or phone, doing LLM stuff remotely makes way more sense. It’s just too power-intensive to do a lot of that on battery. That doesn’t mean not-controlling the hardware – I keep a machine with a beefy GPU connected to the network, can use it remotely. But something like Stable Diffusion normally requires only pretty limited bandwidth to use remotely.
If people really need to do a bunch of local LLM work, like they have a hefty source of power but lack connectivity, or maybe they’re running some kind of software that needs to move a lot of data back and forth to the LLM hardware, I think I might consider lugging around a small headless LLM box with a beefy GPU and a laptop, plug the LLM box into the laptop via Ethernet or whatnot, and do the LLM stuff on the headless box. Laptops are just not a fantastic form factor for heavy crunching; they’ve got limited ability to dissipate heat and tight space constraints to work with.
Yeah it is easier to do it on a desktop or over a network. That’s what I was trying to imply. Although having an NPU can help. Regardless I would rather be using my own server than something like ChatGPT.
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 of the cache increases.
That being said, if this is a laptop and if you shut down or hibernate your laptop on a regular basis, then you’re going to be flushing the memory cache all the time, and it may buy you less.
IIRC, Apple’s default mode of operation on their laptops these days is to just have them sleep, not hibernate, so a Mac user would probably benefit from that cache.
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.
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.
Apple helped spread that misinformation. So why would I hold some of their stock if I am trying to counter it?
No, I want companies to stop spreading this bullshit and for people to stop falling for it. I don’t hold any stocks at all. In fact that kind of bullshit I am fairly against.
They’re just popular ETFs which contain a lot of $AAPL. I was just commenting that even if someone doesn’t explicitly hold any $AAPL, if they own ETFs/mutual funds, they are likely exposed to $AAPL.
Doesn’t apply to you though since you said you don’t own any stock :)
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.
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
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.
A Windows application and a Mac application will use pretty much the same amount of memory regardless of operating system.
The real issue is how much memory the OS uses up. Windows is a massive waste of RAM but not enough to make any difference, certainly not with 8 GB versus 16 GB. You’re still better off on PC then.
While that might have some impact, it’s not really the main problem with Windows. For the most part it’s how it’s actually engineered. For a start look at their compiler.
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
That’s the real issue, isn’t it? The upgrade prices are disconnected from reality by a lot. If they were within the realm of sanity nobody would care much that the base is 8 GB.
I was saying this and my girlfriend when they first came out the whole thing is completely out of spec for everyone regardless of your use case.
She really only wants it for playing The Sims but you’ll run into RAM limitations there, and as you say it’s not worth paying so much more just to get a device that’s actually functional.
If you want to use it for basic word processing then you really don’t need that level of latency and you really don’t need a CPU of that level of performance. You’re just paying for stuff you’re never going to use.
If you want it for gaming there isn’t enough memory to make it worthwhile.
If you want it for intensive graphics editing work then there really isn’t enough memory for that to work.
If you want it for advanced computation then you’re probably not going for a laptop anyway. The M2 chip is obsessed with retaining battery life, which is fine in a laptop but if you want high performance applications you just want it to use more power.
It for some bizarre reason you wanted to do AI research on a laptop it’s not too bad but you’d still need the pro version and there are better things on the market but it wouldn’t be the worst I guess.
So outside of one very niche scenario it’s literally a pointless device for 99% of the user base.
In the end we got a framework laptop, which is more than capable of doing what we wanted and didn’t cost anywhere near as much. Plus it basically looks like a MacBook too. So even going to build quality wasn’t a consideration. I got one too for no particular reason, and it still ended up cheaper.
Memory is memory. If 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.
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.
Whoa, that’s like 32GB of Windows RAM. Seems excessive to me tbh
My Linux machine has 64 GiB of RAM, which is like 128 GiB of Mac RAM. It’s still not enough
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.
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 for a dozen VMs.
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.
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.
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.
That’s fair. I’ve put it there as more of a possible use case rather than something you should be consistently doing.
Although iGPU can perform quite well when given a lot of RAM, afaik.
Honestly, I think that for many people, if they’re using a laptop or phone, doing LLM stuff remotely makes way more sense. It’s just too power-intensive to do a lot of that on battery. That doesn’t mean not-controlling the hardware – I keep a machine with a beefy GPU connected to the network, can use it remotely. But something like Stable Diffusion normally requires only pretty limited bandwidth to use remotely.
If people really need to do a bunch of local LLM work, like they have a hefty source of power but lack connectivity, or maybe they’re running some kind of software that needs to move a lot of data back and forth to the LLM hardware, I think I might consider lugging around a small headless LLM box with a beefy GPU and a laptop, plug the LLM box into the laptop via Ethernet or whatnot, and do the LLM stuff on the headless box. Laptops are just not a fantastic form factor for heavy crunching; they’ve got limited ability to dissipate heat and tight space constraints to work with.
Yeah it is easier to do it on a desktop or over a network. That’s what I was trying to imply. Although having an NPU can help. Regardless I would rather be using my own server than something like ChatGPT.
Photo Editing, Video Transcoding.
k8s
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 of the cache increases.
That being said, if this is a laptop and if you shut down or hibernate your laptop on a regular basis, then you’re going to be flushing the memory cache all the time, and it may buy you less.
IIRC, Apple’s default mode of operation on their laptops these days is to just have them sleep, not hibernate, so a Mac user would probably benefit from that cache.
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.
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.
You should have said “sure buddy” and ignored them.
The problem is they will then keep spreading misinformation.
And that’s your problem? Do you hold $AAPL
Apple helped spread that misinformation. So why would I hold some of their stock if I am trying to counter it?
No, I want companies to stop spreading this bullshit and for people to stop falling for it. I don’t hold any stocks at all. In fact that kind of bullshit I am fairly against.
…or $SPY, or $QQQ, or…
What even are those?
They’re just popular ETFs which contain a lot of $AAPL. I was just commenting that even if someone doesn’t explicitly hold any $AAPL, if they own ETFs/mutual funds, they are likely exposed to $AAPL.
Doesn’t apply to you though since you said you don’t own any stock :)
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.
Sure buddy.
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
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.
Oh totally, Linux is in the same ballpark as, if not better than, Macs when it comes to RAM usage. Windows is just a hog
Until you open a web browser or an Electron app. Them folks don’t really seem to give a shit about RAM usage.
A Windows application and a Mac application will use pretty much the same amount of memory regardless of operating system.
The real issue is how much memory the OS uses up. Windows is a massive waste of RAM but not enough to make any difference, certainly not with 8 GB versus 16 GB. You’re still better off on PC then.
We are talking about PC vs Mac. Both have the same problem when it comes to chromium based things.
That’s probably all the telemetrics in Windows taking their toll.
While that might have some impact, it’s not really the main problem with Windows. For the most part it’s how it’s actually engineered. For a start look at their compiler.
Does it?
Previous benchmarks have shown the 8 GB models seriously fell behind in performance.
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.
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.
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
That’s the real issue, isn’t it? The upgrade prices are disconnected from reality by a lot. If they were within the realm of sanity nobody would care much that the base is 8 GB.
I was saying this and my girlfriend when they first came out the whole thing is completely out of spec for everyone regardless of your use case.
She really only wants it for playing The Sims but you’ll run into RAM limitations there, and as you say it’s not worth paying so much more just to get a device that’s actually functional.
If you want to use it for basic word processing then you really don’t need that level of latency and you really don’t need a CPU of that level of performance. You’re just paying for stuff you’re never going to use.
If you want it for gaming there isn’t enough memory to make it worthwhile.
If you want it for intensive graphics editing work then there really isn’t enough memory for that to work.
If you want it for advanced computation then you’re probably not going for a laptop anyway. The M2 chip is obsessed with retaining battery life, which is fine in a laptop but if you want high performance applications you just want it to use more power.
It for some bizarre reason you wanted to do AI research on a laptop it’s not too bad but you’d still need the pro version and there are better things on the market but it wouldn’t be the worst I guess.
So outside of one very niche scenario it’s literally a pointless device for 99% of the user base.
In the end we got a framework laptop, which is more than capable of doing what we wanted and didn’t cost anywhere near as much. Plus it basically looks like a MacBook too. So even going to build quality wasn’t a consideration. I got one too for no particular reason, and it still ended up cheaper.
I’ve been considering Framework for my next machine, AFAICT you made a great choice.
I realize this should be a joke, but I am still unsure if it is.
It is 100% a joke. Literally other than Windows being slightly more RAM hungry, there’s not a huge difference between it and Mac’s RAM
Memory is memory. If 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.
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.
Is it like SI RAM vs US Customary RAM?
Yes. Freedom RAM equals approx. 1.6 metric RAMs. Unless your computer is on water, in which case it’s 1.857
Is that calibrated against the Universal Prototype Kilobyte in Paris?
iirc that one is outdated as it’s 1024 bytes. They haven’t been able to shave off the extra 24 bytes
1 GB is equivalent to 127,549,349,788 boron atoms.
AI Models needs that RAM to work