Our long national nightmare is over: M4 Macs base memory reported to be 16GB, no more 8GB Macs

[saltycaramel]

Summary

Bloomberg reports that all M4* Macs will either have 16GB or 32GB of unified memory. Current M3 Macs are available with 8GB, 16GB or 24GB of soldered on-package 6400MT/s LPDDR5 unified memory at 100GB/s. Based on the M4 iPad Pro specs, the M4 Macs will move to 7500MT/s LPDDR5X at 120GB/s. 

 

*Note: by "M4" here I mean the base M4 (as in "not Pro, not Max, not Ultra"), not the whole M4 family. For "Pro and above" parts the baseline was already 16GB 18GB, and it may get even higher now.

 

Quotes

Quote

They all represent models with base-level versions of the M4 chip. Three of the Macs have 10 total cores in their central processing units, or CPUs, while one low-end version includes eight total cores — a measure of performance. The versions with 10-core CPUs also have 10-core GPUs, or graphics engines. The model with an eight-core CPU, meanwhile, has an eight-core graphics engine. They all have either 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory.

 

My thoughts

I see a number of implications to this. 

• quality of life implications: users of base Macs won't be at risk of hitting the 8GB memory wall (or excessively rely on swap) any longer
• CTO upsell (or lack thereof) implications: users will be less compelled to splurge for the "better" memory tier, because they may feel 16GB is good enough
• PR implications: this will put an end to the usual "8GB RAM is not enough" drama every time new Macs are released
• AI implications:  more unified memory allows for bigger local models
• gaming implications: again, this is not just system memory, this is unified memory, so it's both RAM and VRAM, so having 16GB as a baseline from now on will be like a "tide that raises all the boats" with regard to the gaming capabilities of the platform (of course they're just potential capabilities until there's software that leverages them)

 

Sources

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-23/when-is-apple-announcing-the-iphone-16-apple-planning-event-on-sept-10-2024?srnd=homepage-europe

[Hellowpplz]

So when do the ipads and iphones get this?  never

[saltycaramel]

1TB/2TB M4 iPad Pros already have 16GB RAM enabled.

 

If I were Apple I would do a mid-cycle minor refresh to the M4 iPad Pro next year with these changes

- 16GB RAM on all storage sizes, not just 1TB/2TB

- WiFi 7 instead of WiFi 6E

- some camera improvements

- [cellular models only]: Apple’s in-house 5G modem instead of the Qualcomm 5G modem

 

iPhone Pros will move to 12GB RAM next year. 

[PDifolco]

And dang they'll cost $500 more  

[grg994]

Can't wait for their flex this time: "our 16 GB memory is like equivalent to 32 GB on other systems"

[SansVarnic]

Another innovation. 

[anirudthelinuxwIzard]

Wow I'm impressed, I though M4 Macs would have 4GB be equivalent to 16GB so daddy Apple is now giving us 64GB equivalent /s

[RejZoR]

I'm more annoyed by the fact what an absolutely ridiculous extra they demand from users when going from 8GB to 16GB or 128GB of storage to 256GB. Something that costs 20€ or 50€ difference in retail prices of DDR modules somehow becomes a 200€ extra. F**k off with that. And they are all doing it on phones and also on laptops. Meanwhile if your phone still somehow has microSD card slot, you can stick a 1TB microSD card in it and voila, endless storage for what, 80€, 100€ ? How much are real 1TB microSD cards even going for these days? I just know it's not a 500€ upgrade...

[mariushm]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'm more annoyed by the fact what an absolutely ridiculous extra they demand from users when going from 8GB to 16GB or 128GB of storage to 256GB. Something that costs 20€ or 50€ difference in retail prices of DDR modules somehow becomes a 200€ extra. F**k off with that. And they are all doing it on phones and also on laptops. Meanwhile if your phone still somehow has microSD card slot, you can stick a 1TB microSD card in it and voila, endless storage for what, 80€, 100€ ? How much are real 1TB microSD cards even going for these days? I just know it's not a 500€ upgrade...

The flash memory in SSDs is a bit different than memory and controllers used in microSD cards ... microSD cards are optimized more for continuous writes, large chunks of writes (saving a 4-10 MB jpeg, dumping a video from camera etc), they're not optimized for random IO and concurrent reads and writes. The flash memory inside is also of higher endurance.

 

So the internal flash memory / SSD should be a bit more expensive but not to the degree Apple gouges people.

 

As for the decision to upgrade the memory, it wouldn't surprise me if it's just a matter of Micron or Samsung or whoever makes the chips no longer being willing / obsoleting the chips in that small size (ex the minimum ram chip size jumps from 2 GB to 4 GB or something like that)

 

 

 

[Kisai]

13 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Summary

Bloomberg reports that all M4* Macs will either have 16GB or 32GB of unified memory. Current M3 Macs are available with 8GB, 16GB or 24GB of soldered on-package 6400MT/s LPDDR5 unified memory at 100GB/s. Based on the M4 iPad Pro specs, the M4 Macs will move to 7500MT/s LPDDR5X at 120GB/s. 

 

8Gb stopped being enough when games started needing 8GB GPU's. End point.

 

16GB has to be the minimum just to tread water. For reference:

My DDR3 4th gen Intel system had 32GB when it got retired

My DDR4 11th gen has 96GB of RAM (+ 8GB GPU)

My current 14th gen has 128GB of RAM (+ 24GB GPU)

 

I bought "twice" what I felt I needed every time, because expressly like the response time. If I load something off a mechanical drive, I NOTICE. If I load something off a SD card, I NOTICE. It's just a pity that 4 lane PCIe5 SSD's don't exist, but PCIe3/4 SSD's are "Good enough" and barely noticed unless either 

a) a lot of small files are accessed in a short period of time

b) a large file copy happens FROM the SSD to the mechanical drive, which I've also noticed on Linux, where the system RAM will run out trying to disk cache it. With 32GB+ RAM this is rarely seen unless it's a video.

 

 

[RejZoR]

46 minutes ago, mariushm said:

The flash memory in SSDs is a bit different than memory and controllers used in microSD cards ... microSD cards are optimized more for continuous writes, large chunks of writes (saving a 4-10 MB jpeg, dumping a video from camera etc), they're not optimized for random IO and concurrent reads and writes. The flash memory inside is also of higher endurance.

 

So the internal flash memory / SSD should be a bit more expensive but not to the degree Apple gouges people.

 

As for the decision to upgrade the memory, it wouldn't surprise me if it's just a matter of Micron or Samsung or whoever makes the chips no longer being willing / obsoleting the chips in that small size (ex the minimum ram chip size jumps from 2 GB to 4 GB or something like that)

 

 

 

It's really not. Not by the ridiculous factor they are charging us. Memory is often very similar, it's the controllers that are very primitive in memory cards. But ultimately, the proportion overpaid doesn't make sense when controller is there, they need to use slightly more advanced one with more channels, but usually it's already there as they don't really change PCB's for different memory capacities.

[StDragon]

8 hours ago, RejZoR said:

I'm more annoyed by the fact what an absolutely ridiculous extra they demand from users when going from 8GB to 16GB or 128GB of storage to 256GB. Something that costs 20€ or 50€ difference in retail prices of DDR modules somehow becomes a 200€ extra. F**k off with that. And they are all doing it on phones and also on laptops. Meanwhile if your phone still somehow has microSD card slot, you can stick a 1TB microSD card in it and voila, endless storage for what, 80€, 100€ ? How much are real 1TB microSD cards even going for these days? I just know it's not a 500€ upgrade...

Are you asking a rhetorical question? Because Apple isn't stupid. Their "corporate DNA" has always been about upselling to the higher profit margin items.

I'm not going to diss on Apple for this, they're doing the right thing (being profitable). It's the consumer that needs to be informed as to what is and isn't a value.

 

And yes, I agree; the hardware is absurdly priced for what you get. It certainly isn't a value to me. Clearly others have a differing opinion based on their own purchasing choices.

[bcredeur97]

Apple has always been stingy with RAM as long as I can remember.

[Nat4Sail]

19 hours ago, Hellowpplz said:

So when do the ipads and iphones get this?  never

For their phones they haven't ever needed high ram. It's always been significantly less ram than same gen android devices. 

[Forbidden Wafer]

1 hour ago, bcredeur97 said:

Apple has always been stingy with RAM as long as I can remember.

And they continue to be. There is no reason to sell a 16GB RAM macbook. 32GB should be the base config. Heck, even phones have 8GB of RAM nowadays. And nobody is running compilers, CAD, wack ton of web apps with completely separate runtimes, etc on them.

[starsmine]

57 minutes ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

And they continue to be. There is no reason to sell a 16GB RAM macbook. 32GB should be the base config. Heck, even phones have 8GB of RAM nowadays. And nobody is running compilers, CAD, wack ton of web apps with completely separate runtimes, etc on them.

16GB is completely fine for a macbook. and im more then happy with that being the base configuration. 
The next step up should be 24GB though not 32GB. 

[saltycaramel]

13 hours ago, Forbidden Wafer said:

And they continue to be. There is no reason to sell a 16GB RAM macbook. 32GB should be the base config. Heck, even phones have 8GB of RAM nowadays. And nobody is running compilers, CAD, wack ton of web apps with completely separate runtimes, etc on them.

 

The base M4 among other things goes into products like the 599$ Mac Mini and the 1099$ Macbook Air, seems a bit of a stretch to expect those to start at 32GB. 

 

I wonder what the new baseline will be for the Pro chip (currently starts at 16GB 18GB) and the Max chip (currently starts at 32GB 36GB). 

 

I can't see the M4 Pro starting at 16GB 18GB now that the base M4 also starts at 16GB. 

 

Imagine if the M4 Pro starts at 32GB and the M4 Max starts at 64GB, and the M4 Ultra starts at 128GB, and the M4 "Extreme" in the Mac Pro starts at 256GB. 

[thechinchinsong]

53 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

 

I wonder what the new baseline will be for the Pro chip (currently starts at 16GB) and the Max chip (currently starts at 32GB). 

 

I can't see the M4 Pro starting at 16GB now that the base M4 also starts at 16GB. 

 

Imagine if the M4 Pro starts at 32GB and the M4 Max starts at 64GB, and the M4 Ultra starts at 128GB, and the M4 "Extreme" in the Mac Pro starts at 256GB. 

Why not also start at 16GB? Don't the Pro and base M3s already overlap (not actually sure on this)? I mean I think it would be fine as long as its priced right. If not, I'm sure Apple can segment by 8GB chunks as well so a 16GB m4 followed by a 24GB m4 pro seems reasonable as well.

[saltycaramel]

11 hours ago, thechinchinsong said:

Why not also start at 16GB?

 

 

Don't the Pro and base M3s already overlap (not actually sure on this)? 

I double checked and currently the M3 Pro starts at 18GB, not 16GB.

 

So, currently in the M3 era (and LPDDR5 chips):

- the base M3 starts at 8GB

- the M3 Pro starts at 18GB

- the M3 Max starts at 36GB 

- the M3 Ultra doesn’t exist (skipped a generation)

 

Whereas in the M4 era (and LPDDR5X chips):

- the base M4 in the 256GB/512GB iPad Pro has 12GB (2 x 6GB modules, because there are no LPDDR5X 4GB modules available from Micron) but only 8GB are enabled for commercial segmentation reasons

- the base M4 in the 1TB/2TB iPad Pro has 16GB (2 x 8GB modules)

 

- the base M4 in Macs will start at 16GB (2 x 8GB modules) and for the first time go up to 32GB (2 x 16GB modules)

 

- the M4 Pro will start at…? (20GB? 24GB? 28GB? 32GB?)

- the M4 Max will start at…? (double the Pro)

- the M4 Ultra will start at…? (double the Max)

- the M4 “Hidra/Extreme” will start at…? (double the Ultra)

 

If the M4 Pro was to keep the current M3 Pro memory baseline (18GB) in my opinion it would feel too close to the base “el cheapo” M4 baseline (16GB). I could see the M4 Pro starting at 20GB or 24GB. 

[saltycaramel]

40 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

- the base M4 in Macs will start at 16GB (2 x 8GB modules) and for the first time go up to 32GB (2 x 16GB modules)

 

Reminder that up until summer 2022 the Macbook Air would max out at 16GB. (then it went up to 24GB with the M2 and M3)

 

If you wanted an abundance of RAM, you couldn't get a MacBook Air, there was no way around it, you had to get a MacBook Pro.

Now in spring 2025 we're gonna get 32GB Macbook Airs.

Doubled the top RAM in less than 3 years.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

- the M4 Ultra will start at…? (double the Max)

- the M4 “Hidra/Extreme” will start at…? (double the Ultra)

Larger than Ultra is quite unlikely to exist and I don't see an actual workload need for it either. None of the dies have any connectivity capability beyond connecting two dies so it would require making dies completely unique only to this mythical 4 die product that hasn't need demonstrated a need for.

 

I suspect M3 Ultra was skipped over due to the lack of need for it and to give time for LPDDR package density to increase so they could deliver a product with a large increase in memory sticking to two dies.

 

An M4 Ultra with 384GB memory is sufficient for even the most memory demanding workloads and anyone that needs more would be such a small market would make it an unjustified cost sink hole.

 

There isn't much point in holding out any hope for a product that has literally no indications of ever existing outside of people's wants and dreams.

[Kisai]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

An M4 Ultra with 384GB memory is sufficient for even the most memory demanding workloads and anyone that needs more would be such a small market would make it an unjustified cost sink hole.

 

*cough*cough*

 

Always buy about twice what you think you "need" if you intend to hold onto it for 5-7 years.

 

Like I surely could find a use case for it, I just don't think it justifies a mac in the first place. Past a certain point the Mac stops being a good value at all. The MacMini has generally been a good value, the performance of a laptop without all the annoying expensive parts of a laptop (screen and battery.) The Mac Pro has been a pretty poor value for about 10 years. Heck it is still only offered as a M2. So for something like a Mac Pro, I would just pick the highest tier SKU just so I don't have to throw the thing away from worn flash storage in the time frame it takes for them to update it.

 

For the Macbook Air and Macbook Pro, these are always bad values when they have anemic RAM. The Air is probably the only "laptop" I would consider if the iPad wasn't "good enough" for a project, because there is no way overpaying for the pro is worth it when you should just get the MacMini instead.

 

[leadeater]

12 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Always buy about twice what you think you "need" if you intend to hold onto it for 5-7 years.

That would be 384GB heh, I mean that is a heck of a lot even for the most demanding things.

 

13 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Like I surely could find a use case for it, I just don't think it justifies a mac in the first place. Past a certain point the Mac stops being a good value at all. The MacMini has generally been a good value, the performance of a laptop without all the annoying expensive parts of a laptop (screen and battery.)

The Mac Studio with the Ultra chip always looked like a sweet buy if you needed the Ultra. Although it did make the Mac Pro look a little pointless at the same time.

[saltycaramel]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

There isn't much point in holding out any hope for a product that has literally no indications of ever existing outside of people's wants and dreams.

 

It's not much, but there is a vague indication of it existing. (which of course it's not a guarantee of it coming to market) 

Based on the wording form Bloomberg's Mark Gurman's articles and newsletters, it is my understanding the M4 generation chips being tested at Apple are the following:

 

- "Donan" (base M4) [already released in the iPad Pro, soon to be released in iMac 24", base Mac Mini and base MBP 14"; slated for spring 2025 in Macbook Airs]

- "Brava" small (M4 Pro?) [soon to be released in premium Mac Mini and MBPs 14"/16"]

- "Brava" bigger (M4 Max?) [soon to be released in MBPs 14"/16"]

- "Brava" biggest (M4 Ultra?) [Mac Studio exclusive, H2 2025]

- "Hidra" (M4 Extreme?) [Mac Pro exclusive, H2 2025]

 

Maybe "Hidra" is not 4 dies "stitched" together but another kind of advanced packaging. If I had to guess, we'll hear about it (if it exists) at WWDC 2025, and we'll also hear about why the Mac Pro still needs to exist in its current big and empty form. 

 

As for the RAM, it's funny that the current (Apple Silicon) Mac Pro still has to match the 1.5TB RAM cap of the 2019 Xeon-based Mac Pro.

[leadeater]

18 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

Maybe "Hidra" is not 4 dies "stitched" together but another kind of advanced packaging. If I had to guess, we'll hear about it (if it exists) at WWDC 2025, and we'll also hear about why the Mac Pro still needs to exist in its current big and empty form. 

The best or most believable indication I have seen around Apple silicon changes is that Ultra is not going to feature any E cores and be P core only and not be derived from the other M4 dies.

 

I'm not sure based on this that continuing with the 3 current actual dies in the M3 generation makes sense, it could but depends. You could have M4, M4 Pro and M4 Max still but the last 2 could actually share the same die but have different configurations and memory pairings. That would mean if Ultra was no longer derived from M Max dies that the Ultra die was the third die and wouldn't be splitting Apple's fabrication allocations and then if they needed some extra super chip they could pair two of these Ultra dies. That all relies on whether or not the Ultra die isn't simply powerful and scalable SKU wise itself since adding the interconnect capability has a cost to it.

 

I certainly do believe that the new M Ultra will be it's own die, that does make a lot of logical sense, P core only and no E cores that's a neither here nor there for me. I can see it going both directions.

 

18 minutes ago, saltycaramel said:

As for the RAM, it's funny that the current (Apple Silicon) Mac Pro still has to match the 1.5TB RAM cap of the 2019 Xeon-based Mac Pro.

That really is an arbitrary metric though, it's a capability derived from Intel product capabilities targeted at server use cases and needs where the Mac Pro back then was choosing that Intel platform primarily for the core count and PCIe lanes and inherited that maximum supported memory possibility. I don't think we need to aim for that if it's actually not needed.

 

Depending on what Apple does the Ultra die could support 512GB and that makes quite a bit of sense, 384GB would also be fine too, comes down to how much memory bandwidth desired. That also means if there is to be a SKU above that then it would be 1TB or 786GB. 384GB, 512GB 786GB and 1TB are awesome configurations so wherever it lands on that scale I think would be great.