Apple's new MacBook Pro with M2 Max packs up to 96GB of RAM (also: Mac mini M2)

[seanondemand]

17 minutes ago, Kisai said:

 

When someone does a teardown I'd be interesting in knowing if the memory or storage are soldered or proprietary again.

 

Memory's built into the M2 SoC (just like an ARM mobile chip)

 

1 hour ago, D13H4RD said:

 

Everything else is pretty eh. This is absolutely a release designed to get holdouts still on Intel MacBook Pros to upgrade. 

If you watch the video they say "x% faster than the fastest Intel MacBook/Mini" about 3 dozen times, so 100%; pros/businesses whose Macs are further along in their lifecycle and were holding out for the Apple Silicon wrinkles to get ironed out.

[Oliver Lopez Otero]

Do I read this right, on the Mac Mini M2 Pro I can't connect just 2 Display via Thunderbolt (DP)?

Either I use one Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI or 2 Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI?

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

 

I use a Mac Mini as my personal computer and a Windows PC just for gaming.

Both are connected to 2 1440p monitors via an 2 Port DisplayPort Dual Monitor KVM Switch - 4K 60Hz

https://www.startech.com/en-us/server-management/sv231dpddua2

 

So right now my 2018 i7 Mac Mini uses 2 USB-C to DP cables to connect to the KVM Switch. I didn't upgrade to the M1 Mac Mini, cause it didn't support dual monitors via Thunderbolt 3. And HDMI to DP cables don't seem to be a thing, just DP to HDMI, so I couldn't just use one DP and one HDMI-to-DP cable into the KVM Switch.

 

So will I be missing out on an upgrade again? Or that does that "Up to" mean I could use just 2 Thunderbolt-to-DP cables into my KVM Switch?

[Kronoton]

2 hours ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

6 channel memory, 16 per channel. Just a natural result of the chip architecture 

 Pretty sure it's 8 channels that can be filled with either 4,8 or 12GB chips (just like withe the 2 channels on the base M2).

[porina]

45 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

I think the biggest deal is that this is shared memory.

 

So if you’re currently using 16GB as RAM, you’d still have 80GB available as VRAM for the GPU. That’s bananas. No PC mobile workstation can match that. 

This. While a niche, there's complaints about not having enough VRAM for some GPU work. Not a problem if it's unified. I do wonder how much do those people really use though. Before the 4090 I think we only got up to 16GB on consumer offerings excluding Titans.

[Commodus]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I think the biggest deal is that this is shared memory.

 

So if you’re currently using 16GB as RAM, you’d still have 80GB available as VRAM for the GPU. That’s bananas. No PC mobile workstation can match that. 

Or various combinations, for that matter. I suspect you won't see that kind of memory usage often, but it means you don't have to think much about your display choices... you have enough video memory for it.

[DrMacintosh]

2 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

They should have kept the Mini at $699 and gave the base model 16GB of RAM.

 

I'm very disappointed that Apple continues to sell 8GB RAM computers in 2023.

The M2 Mac mini is a home computer or an office work station. For that 8GB is plenty. 

[DrMacintosh]

4 hours ago, Commodus said:

Might even be my next computer.

The Mac mini had been totally irrelevant until 2018 when it got 8th gen Intel processors. Then Apple Silicon happened and it became an awesome home desktop. Now with M2 Pro, that same awesome form factor can now support workloads that it never could ever since the product lines inception. The Mac mini is now definitely my favorite computer that Apple makes. 

[BondiBlue]

3 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Using what exactly?

 

For Chrome or Firefox that's not enough RAM and for any other program besides Apple Mail and Safari it's also not enough RAM.

That is entirely dependent on how you use those programs. I'm typing this on a 13" M1 MacBook Pro with 8GB of RAM. I've got multiple Edge windows open alongside two Chrome windows, and I've still got free RAM. 8GB is fine for most web browsing, and if it's not then you probably know you need more. Yes, it would be great to see the 8GB option disappear entirely, but saying that 8GB isn't enough for basically anything but the simplest of tasks just isn't true. I say that from many years of experience using MacBooks with 8GB of RAM. 

 

4 hours ago, nOm nom NOM3 said:

I understand why having a lot of memory is good for certain tasks, Im just stuck on the apple macbook needing that much memory. 

all I ever see those products used for are writing papers and general photo/video editing, and I thought that the applications made for those people were fairly light and well made. 

In addition to the 13" M1 MBP I mentioned directly above your quote, I also own and use a 2021 16" M1 Max MBP with 32GB of RAM. With the tasks I use that computer for I can easily get close to using all of that memory. I've pushed past it and used swap space on a couple occasions where I was running several things at once across multiple monitors. Having the option to have so much memory in a laptop is really nice, and it's certainly been nicer to use than 16GB. 

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, Oliver Lopez Otero said:

Do I read this right, on the Mac Mini M2 Pro I can't connect just 2 Display via Thunderbolt (DP)?

Either I use one Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI or 2 Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI?

https://www.apple.com/mac-mini/specs/

 

I use a Mac Mini as my personal computer and a Windows PC just for gaming.

Both are connected to 2 1440p monitors via an 2 Port DisplayPort Dual Monitor KVM Switch - 4K 60Hz

https://www.startech.com/en-us/server-management/sv231dpddua2

 

So right now my 2018 i7 Mac Mini uses 2 USB-C to DP cables to connect to the KVM Switch. I didn't upgrade to the M1 Mac Mini, cause it didn't support dual monitors via Thunderbolt 3. And HDMI to DP cables don't seem to be a thing, just DP to HDMI, so I couldn't just use one DP and one HDMI-to-DP cable into the KVM Switch.

 

So will I be missing out on an upgrade again? Or that does that "Up to" mean I could use just 2 Thunderbolt-to-DP cables into my KVM Switch?

This tends to be a math problem. What it really supports is X amount of bandwidth, which is enough to drive 3 1080p60, or one monitor at 1080p240

So as defined there it is

3 displays up to 6K@60hz (2 TB) as long as they are 60hz, with the last one HDMI

1 displays at up to 6K@60hz (1TB) + 1 up to 4K@144 on HDMI

1 display at 8K@60hz type-c (1TB)+ 1 4K@240hz HDMI

 

Basically "it supports 3 monitors" but the collectively they can't consume more than a fixed amount of bandwidth, which something you expect when you connect docks/dongles to TB ports. So however Apple implemented this, it's probably implemented like an internal DP switch with 120gbits of bandwidth, with the HDMI having an independent clock.

 

So in your case you're the first point. unless you try to run them at something other than 60hz.

Their 6K@60hz monitor requires 36.64Gbps.

So line one is 36.64+36.64+ 14.93 (88.21Gbps)

line two is 36.64+35.83 (total 72.47Gbps)

line three is 59.72+59.72 (total 120Gbps)

 

My strong guess here is that the two TB monitors can not collectively exceed 80Gbps, but collectively can not exceed 120Gbps when the HDMI port is in use. Which is similar to what you see in TB docks, usually it's limited to the speed of one TB4 port (40Gbps.) The lower end mini only permits one 2TB port be used for the monitor,  or 1TB and 1 HDMI, for two monitors. Which seems to confirm what I'm saying (36.64+26.54)(64Gbps) in which it might only have 80Gbps to work with which isn't enough to drive two 6k monitors.

 

The problem with the earlier mini was it seemed that it was Thunderbolt 3, not 4.

https://www.thunderbolttechnology.net/tech/faq

 

vs the previous model

 

[TetraSky]

7 hours ago, Commodus said:

The base M2 system is also cheaper than before at $599, although it still starts with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD.

Was wondering where this came from, considering the thread is about the macbook and that starts at $1300.
Looking it up further, it's just the Mac mini.

Spoiler

 

The fact they charge an extra $200 to double the SSD capacity is outright robbery, though. A 500GB SSD is about $40.
Plus, the damn thing is soldered in, so you can't even upgrade the storage yourself. Unless you go with external ones.

[D13H4RD]

7 hours ago, Lightwreather JfromN said:

You're seriously underestimating the capacity of these Browsers including Chrome to conserver resources.

I think it's more to do with the fact that unlike before, the performance of SSDs has come quite a ways, to the point where it being swapped to brings little noticeable performance blows.

 

I've swapped quite a bit on the 32GB M1 Max when doing very heavy tasks (I've actually swapped up to 16GB on it at one point), but I don't really feel an absolutely massive hit in performance. The heavier tasks do definitely start slowing down quite a bit, but just switching between desktops, Spotlight searching, and general use all still feel relatively normal. Obviously, having more physical memory to begin with is still going to be a lot better, but depending on your use case, you might be able to get away with it, so as long as you don't swap too much.

 

The software itself absolutely plays a role as well, but I think a lot of people don't really realize that with computers basically all coming with half-decent SSDs as standard, using it as a swap drive doesn't bring the entire system slowing to an absolute crawl unlike with spinning drives before.

[saltycaramel]

9 hours ago, Oliver Lopez Otero said:

Do I read this right, on the Mac Mini M2 Pro I can't connect just 2 Display via Thunderbolt (DP)?

Either I use one Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI or 2 Thunderbolt (DP) and one HDMI?

 

Nope, you read that completely wrong.

Of course you can just connect 2 monitors via 2 tb/DP ports. And then also use the HDMI at 4K60 on top of that, for a grand total of 3 monitors.

 

The tricky part is only if you wanna use the HDMI port at higher than 4K60. 

 

If you use the HDMI at 4K144, you lose one DP monitor.

 

If you use the HDMI at 8K60 or 4K240, you lose two DP monitors. 

[saltycaramel]

6 hours ago, Kisai said:

So in your case you're the first point. unless you try to run them at something other than 60hz.

 

 

Other than 6K 60Hz.

 

If they say “up to 6K 60Hz”, lower than 6K resolution at higher than 60Hz are included, including configurations using DSC.

 

So he could probably run two 4K 120Hz monitor over two TB/DP ports. The safest bet is to wait for early buyers to test all of this. 

[hishnash]

9 hours ago, igormp said:

RAM is likely soldered, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get all of that bandwidth in a dense package. CAMM isn't really a standard as of today, sadly.

Evene CAMM would not be able to provide this level of bandwidth without massive power draw impact.  Traces with CAMM are still a LOT longer and have much more resistance and other noise issues compared to the very short traces within the chipset substrate. For Apple knowing the memory will be a given short distance from the chip and connected through a soldered substrate means they can build much lower power memory controllers as the noice floor they need to handle in the single is a faction of that in a mechanically attached solution like CAMM. 

 

[AlTech]

11 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I wanna add that adjusted for inflation 699$ dollars from November 2020 are like 800$ in 2023 dollars.

So I guess we should be congratulating them on not price gouging their customers for inflation caused by completely unrelated things such as petrol/diesel prices and natural gas prices?

11 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

So at 599$ Apple has slashed the price by 200$ if adjusted for inflation. Pretty good deal for all the people that don’t need more than 8GB+swap, and institutions buying thousands of these in bulk. No need to force 16GB onto everyone, yet.

Because destroying SSDs instead of providing enough RAM is the right decision?

11 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 (12GB as the new base tier in the M3 generation would be nice tho)

 

[saltycaramel]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

So I guess we should be congratulating them on not price gouging their customers for inflation caused by completely unrelated things such as petrol/diesel prices and natural gas prices?

Because destroying SSDs instead of providing enough RAM is the right decision?

 

 

I just think they struck the right price/substance balance for the “barebonest” of the barebone basic Macs. 

[D13H4RD]

2 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I just think they struck the right price/substance balance for the “barebonest” of the barebone basic Macs. 

You'd be surprised at how much you can get away with doing on a machine with a mere 8GB.

 

When my computers were out of order during the worst of the pandemic, I had to fall back on a then-10-year-old Acer Aspire that has a Sandy Bridge Core i3 and a mere 6GB of RAM.

 

Now, I wouldn't edit my photography portfolio on it at all, let alone run Lightroom at all, but for Chrome, Discord, and Zoom sessions all happening at once, it's surprisingly not terrible. I'd actually daresay that it was plenty usable. A lot of why is likely because it has an SSD in it, which it was likely swapping into, but the limited memory didn't really prove to be a huge bottleneck.

 

I still think we should be seeing these premium-tier machines come with 16GB as the baseline, just because, but I was genuinely surprised how much I could get away with very limited memory when it comes to daily use, especially since all my machines up to that point were 16GB.

 

All that being said, there are still plenty of benefits to 16GB on the Macs. The first being that you won't be upgrading it after purchase since it's part of the SoC, so you'll want more of it if you plan on keeping it for a while. The second is that the OS does actually cache a good amount into memory for performance benefits.

[Sauron]

18 hours ago, Commodus said:

that's more than rivals (64GB is often the limit)

it's just a little funny they'd brag about this after years of being dead last on memory limits  

[Sauron]

4 hours ago, AluminiumTech said:

Because destroying SSDs instead of providing enough RAM is the right decision?

non replaceable ssds I might add

8 hours ago, D13H4RD said:

I think it's more to do with the fact that unlike before, the performance of SSDs has come quite a ways, to the point where it being swapped to brings little noticeable performance blows.

there's still an order of magnitude difference in speed even compared to DDR4, not to mention latency and flash cycles.

40 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

When my computers were out of order during the worst of the pandemic, I had to fall back on a then-10-year-old Acer Aspire that has a Sandy Bridge Core i3 and a mere 6GB of RAM.

which was likely not sold at 1.5 grand in 2023.

41 minutes ago, D13H4RD said:

I still think we should be seeing these premium-tier machines come with 16GB as the baseline, just because, but I was genuinely surprised how much I could get away with very limited memory when it comes to daily use, especially since all my machines up to that point were 16GB.

most importantly they should be expandable. and also over 1k the bare minimum should be 32gb at this point.

[saltycaramel]

40 minutes ago, Sauron said:

which was likely not sold at 1.5 grand in 2023.

 

So 599$ is “1.5 grand”, that’s gotta be a slang I wasn’t aware of.

[Sauron]

4 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

So 599$ is “1.5 grand”, that’s gotta be a slang I wasn’t aware of.

which macbook is 599?

[saltycaramel]

26 minutes ago, Sauron said:

which macbook is 599?

 

I thought we were talking about the Mac Mini and not the M2 Air from last summer?

 

But yes, you’re right, there’s one single Apple SKU that fits your extreme description (8GB and 1500$), only one. 

 

But your whole “anything above xxxx$ should have yyGB of RAM” is just not how the market works, how the laws of demand and supply work and how the price of goods is determined. In other words Apple products offer Apple users a great (real/perceived) value overall (especially those products with no easily comparable competition, like the M1 and M2 Macs, what’s the fair price for market leading efficiency and battery life?), that’s why we put up with the nickel and diming on RAM/SSD upgrades and the upselling psychological warfare. (if Apple offered a base tier that wouldn’t leave some users itching for an upgrade, they would be failing their investors; on the other hand even the base configurations are pretty amazing machines anyway, that wasn’t necessarily true in the Intel era)

[Kisai]

44 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I thought we were talking about the Mac Mini and not the M2 Air from last summer?

 

But yes, you’re right, there’s one single Apple SKU that fits your extreme description (8GB and 1500$), only one. 

 

But your whole “anything above xxxx$ should have yyGB of RAM” is just not how the market works, how the laws of demand and supply work and how the price of goods is determined. In other words Apple products offer Apple users a great (real/perceived) value overall (especially those products with no easily comparable competition, like the M1 and M2 Macs, what’s the fair price for market leading efficiency and battery life?), that’s why we put up with the nickel and diming on RAM/SSD upgrades and the upselling psychological warfare. (if Apple offered a base tier that wouldn’t leave some users itching for an upgrade, they would be failing their investors; on the other hand even the base configurations are pretty amazing machines anyway, that wasn’t necessarily true in the Intel era)

The difference between 8 and 16GB memory is about $50. I can't imagine Apple has any excuse for the 8GB version other than they still have stock of 8GB memory configured SoC's. In DDR4, 8GB is about $25, 16GB is $60, and 32 is $105.

 

The M2 uses LPDDR5 and also NAND from SK Hynix. You know the company that is on track to lose money this quarter due to a chip glut.

 

A quick look on mouser shows that the 4GB chips equivalent that Apple is using costs $36, each. So if we look at the 8GB chips instead they're $64, and 16GB chips are $137. So the LPDDR5 is slightly more that twice the cost of DDR4.

 

Apple's price? $250 upgrade to go from 8 to 16, $500 upgrade to go from 8 to 24.

 

This has always been the problem with buying Apple, is that the RAM and Storage upgrades are VERY out of line from other computers. Like if you look on another OEM like Dell, a ram upgrade tends to not be that steep. Like a Dell 8GB to 16GB upgrade is 200$, but a 16 to 32 upgrade is $300.

 

Dell

Apple:

 

Like these are prices don't make sense. The bulk cost is nowhere near that, and that 24GB option is a very bad value, essentially saying that you're paying $250 per 8GB where as in the Dell it's $150. I'd even say the Dell is overpriced when a 2x32GB module set is $350 for a FASTER set.

 

The point I'm making here is that upgradable memory is how you get away from these default, under-sized, overpriced BYO options. When the memory was still upgradable, people would buy the cheapest model and then immediately upgrade the RAM and hard drive because Apple's options were too small even though that would be like throwing away half the value of the macmini.

 

[Sauron]

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

I thought we were talking about the Mac Mini and not the M2 Air from last summer?

We're talking about the m2 macbooks, hence the comparison with a laptop.....

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

But your whole “anything above xxxx$ should have yyGB of RAM” is just not how the market works, how the laws of demand and supply work and how the price of goods is determined.

I don't care. This is my personal estimation of the value and what I would expect when paying this amount. By your logic it would be impossible to criticize a product's price and feature set so long as it sells... and if that's the case you're on the wrong forum.

 

Also next time don't feel the need to write a hakf baked economics 101 comeback just because you got called out on not knowing what was being talked about. What, you think you're giving me new information here?

1 hour ago, saltycaramel said:

that’s why we put up with the nickel and diming on RAM/SSD upgrades and the upselling psychological warfare.

Maybe you put up with it, I don't. If for whatever reason you absolutely need a mac or it is especially effective at something you need to do then you're welcome to pay whatever you want for it, that doesn't mean you can't be aware of and call out obviously insane pricing and underwhelming feature sets.

[Obioban]

20 hours ago, nOm nom NOM3 said:

I understand why having a lot of memory is good for certain tasks, Im just stuck on the apple macbook needing that much memory. 

all I ever see those products used for are writing papers and general photo/video editing, and I thought that the applications made for those people were fairly light and well made. 

 

Maybe I just dont see the people who were asking for this in the day to day repairs world

 

On Macs, RAM and VRAM are one and the same. So, if you're working on a HUGE 3D file, the ability to load all of it into VRAM/RAM is game changing.

 

Edit: should have read the entire thread before posting-- this was already covered.