Macbook Pro 16GB RAM Limit Exploration

[Gaary]

7 minutes ago, Hunter259 said:

I want to see if you can back up phils claim actually. Because we know that you have the new Pro (Talked about on WAN show) that maybe you should test the differences in different applications between a laptop with similar specs but 32gb of Ram. That way we know have actual information about Ram usage in certain tasks and whether or not that SSD can help to alleviate the bottleneck. Other wise, yes this video has its flaws but I feel it is still a correct conclusion. That being said you will definitely need to have some kind of video discussing RAM sizes in "Professional" applications on laptops.

I came here to write something similar. I'd like to see under what use cases it will exceed 16GB of RAM. And when it happens what kind of performance bottleneck is introduced due to pagefile especially since the SSDs they use are over 1GB/s read and write. It'd be a much more informative video and would be a more meaningful conclusion overall. They could also use the opportunity to compare Windows 10 vs MacOS in regards to memory management and pagefile performance.

[PeterBocan]

@AxelRantila there is a word for it: 'scrutiny'.

@Gaary from memory usage, Windows wins, no matter what memory compression and swapping they use in backend, they have different approaches to memory: 
Macs are like: 'we have X GB of memory, we will use it all'
Windows are like: 'we need X GB of memory, and we won't need more than that'

I think Windows approach is better, because you have a memory always ready to be used. Not on Mac. It has to be somehow "managed".

[atrash]

37 minutes ago, PeterBocan said:

Guys, Apple Macbook user here.

I do have 8GB memory in 13" Macbook Pro Retina, and I have to say, it's not a lot, if you OS takes up 2GB of memory, your Firefox/Chrome/Safari 4+ GB and then I have no physical memory left to boot up VMWare to work on Windows. HOW IS IT POSSIBLE?! "The Pro"... no, not pro, not cool.
 

Ever thought of getting the 16GB version instead?

[brenan999]

2 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Is just a video, just for comparison, just to check if Apple's argument was real or total bullshit. Yes, more RAM increases power consumption, so they didn't lied. Why do they limited the memory to 16GB even in professional gear? Because they wanted to do so. If you need more RAM, buy an older model that you can swap memory sticks or buy a Windows/Linux laptop. 

The last model that could change out it's RAM was a mid 2012 unit pre retina display and the max is 16GB. Only option would be a PC or Linux unit that had more. Also MacBooks have had the 16GB limit since 2010. That's a big part in why there was a lot of hope to have a 32GB model.

[PeterBocan]

Just now, atrash said:

Ever thought of getting the 16GB version instead?

And pay another 200$ ? that's 1999$. (I do have 2013 version)...

[2FA]

2 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

Is just a video, just for comparison, just to check if Apple's argument was real or total bullshit. Yes, more RAM increases power consumption, so they didn't lied. Why they limited the memory to 16GB even in professional gear? Because they wanted to do so. If you need more RAM, buy an older model that you can swap memory sticks or buy a Windows/Linux laptop. 

LPDDR3 is limited to 16GB by the memory controller on the CPU, not something Apple has a control over. It is the mobile variant which allows for a small package size while also having low power consumption. LPDDR4 technically exists but isn't supported by the CPU used in the Macbook Pro and regular DDR4 would likely take up too much space for the size of this machine.

[PeterBocan]

1 minute ago, DeadEyePsycho said:

LPDDR3 is limited to 16GB by the memory controller on the CPU, not something Apple has a control over. It is the mobile variant which allows for a small package size while also having low power consumption. LPDDR4 technically exists but isn't supported by the CPU used in the Macbook Pro and regular DDR4 would likely take up too much space for the size of this machine.

Yes, but they would have to have DIMM slots, which would lead to make Macbooks a bit thicker and not having excuse to remove all fucking ports, thinner and "better" keyboard, thinner battery and having the ability to upgrade on your own. That's not the way they wanted to go. 

[79wjd]

Just now, PeterBocan said:

@AxelRantila there is a word for it: 'scrutiny'.

@Gaary from memory usage, Windows wins, no matter what memory compression and swapping they use in backend, they have different approaches to memory: 
Macs are like: 'we have X GB of memory, we will use it all'
Windows are like: 'we need X GB of memory, and we won't need more than that'

I think Windows approach is better, because you have a memory always ready to be used. Not on Mac. It has to be somehow "managed".

Unused RAM is worthless RAM. 

[PeterBocan]

Just now, djdwosk97 said:

Unused RAM is worthless RAM. 

Unless you want to quickly boot up Windows, and VMWare tells you, that it has not met a required limit for a physical address. You have to shutdown your funky browser. How Pro is that? 

[2FA]

5 minutes ago, gabrielcarvfer said:

In which Intel documentation that is written? In Intel website and datasheets theres nothing about that limitation of 16GB. It has a limitation of 2 channels and max out at 32GB.

The Skylake extended spec sheet http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/processors/core/desktop-6th-gen-core-family-datasheet-vol-1.html

 

Go to the memory section of the PDF. They only support two channels of memory and the max DDR3 capacity for a single channel is 8GB. Two maxed out channels is 16GB total supported.

[zelexenred]

While i understand an avg user only uses 8gbs of ram and 16 seems like a huge amount;

Who is the pro aimed at?

My assumption is creators

You cant justify an "upgrade" from the 3year old to this one

Its a refresh

A bad one at that..

Mac users buy it and be done

But dont rub in our pc faces that its mac so its better

Because its not

You are limited in hardware.

You bot into the less is more bs

Stop defending this purchase

[mrchow19910319]

5 hours ago, Mr.Meerkat said:

I think a better example would be something like a dodge viper versus a ferrari or lambo  

The dodge viper has as much power (or more) as the ferrari or lambo and being as fast if not faster while costing cheaper but why do people still buy ferraris or lambos over the Viper? Just because it has a 8.4 liter V10 producing 640HP does not make it any better than a ferarri with a 4.5 liter V8 engine. They buy it because they're refined much better.

 

Although you can buy a gaming PC with much more power than a Mac for the same price, Mac OS is a much better OS compared to windows so it's like the same situation here. It's down to what's more important to the buyer, refinement or pure power to price. 

Yes, this is what we need. Critical thinking and reasonable comparison. 

 

[Nilz11]

I'm currently using a Mac Book Pro 2015 with 16gb maxed out for work on the go.

And the laptop is really frustrating me because of the 16gb limit. When i have some virtual machines booted up, some java applications which take a whole lot of memory and e.g. photoshop, browser etc, I habe around 5-6gb in swap.

 

As soon as the swapped memory is swapped into memory again, i have freezes of the whole computer. It takes sometimes minutes until i can use the computer again. Even the clock is freezing.

 

I could not work on an everyday basis like this, computer is just too slow and frustrating for me. Love really my desktop pc with 64gb ram.

[captain_to_fire]

But then again, what constitutes "Professional" then? The word itself is equivocal especially when "Pro" is slapped to a piece of tech. If by "Pro" from Linus's definition as well as others is a laptop with memory beyond 16 GB, aren't they creating a myopic view to the rest of professionals who don't really need a lot of memory.

[gonvres]

11 hours ago, Squirrelthroat said:

No. That's not the story here.

You're a professional in your field. But there is a category of apple devices especially tailored for users like you. It's the "air" series.

The 'pro' series was - and should always be - for the "power" users that need every bit of power they can get.
This is what was destroyed by this power saving thing, that's closer to an air or usual MacBook than to what has been the Macbook Pro.


and when i'm already giving my two cents, i completely agree with the opinions stated from all the people above.
The ram chipset that is used is limited to 16GB.
Testing the power usage of other RAM technologies is a interesting story, but has close to nothing to do with what's the problem in the Macbook.
I really hope, the videos like this stay a rarity on the LTT channel.

The Air is dead and has been for some time. There are two options now, the Macbook, or the Pro. The Macbook being the ultra portable, the Pro being the mainstream.

[Razor512]

With Linux, windows, and Mac OS, the more RAM you have, the more RAM it uses up to a certain level, but each modern OS is designed to take advantage of systems with ample RAM in order to improve the user experience.

 

Many applications will also perform differently depending on how much RAM you have. While this is an older video, it still holds true today, with video editors being significantly hindered by 16GB of RAM, even if working on just 1080p video. When working on larger projects, I found in to an extent, a RAM upgrade, provided a better user experience as compared to a CPU upgrade. There it just so much in video editing that demands large amounts of RAM, that up to around 64GB of RAM, many other things take a back seat.

 

The macbook pro simply isn't a professional product. It is not good for gaming, and it is not good for professional work.

 

PS, also know that you cannot have a workflow involving adobe premiere CC and Davinci resolve in use at the same time with just 16GB of RAM, thus if you are the type of user that likes to jump between them, or use them for preparing certain assets for use in your premiere CC timeline, then you are in for a horrible experience where just about every action you do is followed by heavy thrashing of the virtual memory and multiple TB of writes being added to the SSD in a short amount of time (and if the virtual memory is on a HDD, then you will risk brain damage from overwhelming frustration).

 

The macbook pro is just a system that is designed to have as large of a profit margin as possible. The specs are far below what is expected in its price range, (e.g., look at a similarly priced Lenovo P50 and you will see a system that offers a better CPU, faster GPU, More storage, more ports, 64GB of RAM, and a better display. (though you do not get the OLED touch bar)

 

LPDDR3 is likely used because it is slightly cheaper than DDR4 due it being produced in larger quantities, and due to the budget market gravitating towards it. They want to improve their profit margin as much as possible, as well as cater to planned obsolescence, with 16GB already being not enough, and no way to upgrade it, or even the SSD on the 15 inch touch bar models.

 

[gonvres]

4 hours ago, LinusTech said:

And this is a super solid argument for YouTube giving some creators the ability to make edits to videos instead of taking away the tools we have at our disposal to make corrections after the fact (annotations don't appear on mobile, which is a HUGE chunk of viewers now).

 

Unfortunately for us, the repercussions of pulling/re-posting a video are usually MUCH greater than leaving it and putting in (which understandably feels half-assed, but is all we really have to work with) a correction link.

 

Its still pretty common for 8/16gb to be the maximum amount of ram anyway. As far as I can tell the Razor Blade isn't available with any more than 16gb and if I go to Dells website I can't see any options to configure the XPS13 with over 8gb of memory. 

 

I'm not sure what all of these ultrabook sized laptops with 32gb of ram or more are. 

[gonvres]

9 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

The macbook pro simply isn't a professional product. It is not good for gaming, and it is not good for professional work.

 

I think its fairly obvious its not good for gaming, its not marketed at gaming and the word "pro" never even implies gaming.

[Razor512]

2 minutes ago, gonvres said:

I think its fairly obvious its not good for gaming, its not marketed at gaming and the word "pro" never even implies gaming.

That is the point, I am trying to make, they did not spec it to a pro level, and they went with a combination of parts that are not very good for gaming either. It doesn't fit in the gaming category, or the pro category.

 

Unless you are a pro who spends their time in Microsoft office, the macbook pro lacks the hardware specs to meet the needs of many professionals, and most of that is due to the limited RAM.

[gonvres]

2 minutes ago, Razor512 said:

That is the point, I am trying to make, they did not spec it to a pro level, and they went with a combination of parts that are not very good for gaming either. It doesn't fit in the gaming category, or the pro category.

 

Unless you are a pro who spends their time in Microsoft office, the macbook pro lacks the hardware specs to meet the needs of many professionals, and most of that is due to the limited RAM.

Depends what you mean by professionals really. What industry specifically are you talking about? Maybe not IT professionals (although I bet most will do just fine with 16gb ram, not everyone has to run 5 vms at once).

 

Apple would have endless data on the actual use cases for their systems. They would know how much ram people need and how many people purchase ram updates. My bet is simply that 32gb ram is needed by such a small niche the compromises in size and/or battery life weren't worth it. 

[Razor512]

For the RAM, I am mostly focused on photography, graphic design, and video editing.

 

There are a wide range of professional tasks that are done by people, but the only tasks that the macbook pro will be good with are ones that are light on RAM and heavy on the CPU, with little to no GPU acceleration.

 

PS, 16GB is not enough for even photoshop if you are working with many layers, and multiple smart objects (e.g., retouching a set of photos). Even with an NVMe SSD, when they start to bump into the RAM limit and start using virtual memory, performance slows significantly, as even if an SSD can write at 1.5GB/s and read at 3+GB/s, it does not help much for a memory hard task that is reading and writing to a device that is offering around 40-50GB/s and 40 nanosecond response time.

 

To comfortable do even basic photo editing (retouching photos after a photo shoot where you have a ton of 14 bit raw files to work on), 32GB is he bare minimum.

 

16GB is fine for content consumption, but not enough for content creation.

 

For the price you are paying for the macbook pro, it is sad that you have to compromise in this way, where as on other professional systems, that kind of money means that you do not have to compromise.

[79wjd]

1 hour ago, Jack_of_all_Trades said:

bullshit , its always better to have it and not need than to not have it and need it

That's not what I meant. Id rather an OS fill my ram with things it thinks I may need rather than just leaving it empty.

[othertomperson]

On 17/11/2016 at 8:27 PM, colejohnson66 said:

Now, I'm not defending Apple here. If you're going to market it as a "Pro" laptop, 16 GB of RAM is just wrong. Sure, the majority of people don't need more than 16 GB, but that doesn't mean EVERYONE can get by with 16 GB. Apple's obsession with thiness has clearly gotten in the way of making a "Pro" laptop.

"Pro" is relative to their "Macbook" product. The Macbook is a Core M based ultra low power laptop. Next to that this line of ultrabooks, with optional discrete GPU and up to 16GB RAM, is "pro".

 

At the end of the day rendering on a laptop on battery doesn't make sense. Either you have a laptop like this which isn't that powerful but lasts the duration of a long-haul flight, or you go for a more gamer-oriented laptop with a strong dGPU, a quad core CPU and a battery that will be dead in 40 minutes of use. If you want a Mac for rendering right now the best option is still the LGA 2011 based Mac Pros with one or more AMD FirePro GPUs.

 

On the topic of this video specifically: this was the video that finally pushed me to unsubscribe from LTT entirely.

 

5 hours ago, Mr.C said:

So I watch some FREE content on YouTube and I can stop at any time and not watch it and then complain that their opinion is a crusade against a brand,  smart shit.

If I put the time to create something stupid/smart/crap it's my creation and my opinion, you guy's are like a house that it's beeing built, empty inside and pissed on the outside.

Linus don't apologize for shit!

A free video that is designed to give consumer advice based on misinformation. Trying to divert sales from a brand due to some kind of twisted fanboyism and bandwagon hate is not something you should give journalists a free pass to do.

[S w a t s o n]

On Topic: Yea apple pretty much just wants muh thinness and are basically lying.

Off Topic: Why, WHY did you guys switch to using that awful orange filter. First it showed up in some ad spots where the original content didnt even have the filter, and now it seems like entire videos have it. It's actually awful, please go back to #nofilter

[riklaunim]

If you put a "pro" tag on your product expect shit-storm to hit it if it's not actually designed for a shit-ton of pros / content creators. If you call it "2016" then nobody cares about the name and that name doesn't categorize the hardware in any way like a "pro" does. If LTT is right that Macbooks for Apple should be less upgradable and more replaceable then in 2017, maybe spring, we will get new macbooks pro that will have quad core kabylake and 32 GB RAM. But they will still find something for autumn/winter so that your spring laptop should be replaced with a new model