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

[saltycaramel]

Paradoxically, I think it may be easier to guess how they'll do the M5 "Extreme" (they're going to use TSMC's SoiC-X 3D packaging in the M5 generation, so I guess they'll do a reticle-sized 3nm mega-die on top of a 4nm I/O die for the Apple Fabric connections, and put 1-4 of these units on a super carrier interposer) than to guess what they'll do for the M4 "Extreme". 

 

Unless they'll begin to use SoiC-X on the M4 "Extreme" already. After all, the actual availability of the new Mac Pro may very well be in December 2025. Apple is rumored to begin using SoiC-X in the "second half of 2025". 

 

As for the RAM, if we assume 64GB LPDDR5X packages become available in late 2025, then 512GB on the Ultra (64GB x 8) and 1024GB (64GB x 16) on the "Extreme" would be possibile. In the craziest scenario (the top "Extreme" configuration being made up of 4 units on a super carrier) the fully decked out Mac Pro may reach 2TB of unified memory (and probably cost upward of $100K).

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

Paradoxically, I think it may be easier to guess how they'll do the M5 "Extreme" (they're going to use TSMC's SoiC-X 3D packaging in the M5 generation, so I guess they'll do a reticle-sized 3nm mega-die on top of a 4nm I/O die for the Apple Fabric connections, and put 1-4 of these units on a super carrier interposer) than to guess what they'll do for the M4 "Extreme". 

There isn't and hasn't been shown a need for an SoC this large though, unless Apple thinks there is actually a need for it they won't create it. This is the reason everything is getting M4 now, in every product. Apple is unifying everything to the same NPU capability standard so they can have consistent feature support across a minimum product generation level, it's actually a very logical and well thought out thing to do. This isn't just for Apple products too, Microsoft Office/365 Co-Pilot would also be capable of being supported across all Mac OS devices too, or anything else that needs a minimum TOPs/NPU performance level.

 

Connecting 4 dies now or 3-4 years ago was possible, there just wasn't a proven need and market for it. Reviews and benchmark hype doesn't actually support a product so as cool as it might be to have a super chip is also the same reason Ryzen is Ryzen and Threadripper is Threadripper etc. Can do is almost never the problem.

 

Edit:

There would actually be more interest and demand for such a large SoC if Apple brought back Xserve and you could rent compute capability from Apple or Apple partners. Then you don't need to invest a huge amount of capital in to hardware you may not be able to fully justify because you might not be fully time utilizing that hardware, that's were Cloud is a good option. So if you foster that kind of usage then it also creates demand by those users to also own that hardware once they sufficiently need to.

 

Plus I just want to see Xserve come back.

[DavidTechSe]

I believe this solution is somewhat outdated, given that many people now rely on laptops, especially following the COVID-19 pandemic. The shift towards portable and versatile devices has changed how we approach tech solutions.

[suicidalfranco]

Welp there goes the argument "8gb of ram is good enough cuz muh magic oPtIm1z4tI0n"

Glad to see apple enter 2024/25 with a higher degree of reason.

Next phase: cooling. The day that apple finally accepts the existence of the laws of thermodynamics

[Monkey Dust]

1 hour ago, suicidalfranco said:

Welp there goes the argument "8gb of ram is good enough cuz muh magic oPtIm1z4tI0n"

Glad to see apple enter 2024/25 with a higher degree of reason.

Next phase: cooling. The day that apple finally accepts the existence of the laws of thermodynamics

The cooling is fine on the M chips. The top end GPUs in the 14" MBP is a bit marginal, but otherwise they are fine. The old Intel Macs were, quite literary, hot garbage. Being surrounded by 5–6 people using Intel MBPs for Google Meets (of all things), is like having a fucking helicopter in the room.

 

For the MB Airs, the lack of active cooling, now they are on ARM, is also fine. Yes, it is leaving performance on the table, but if you are worried about performance, the Pro exists. The lack of a fan, and resulting dust ingestion, is good for lifespan. In the Intel era, the fanless design was monumentally stupid.

 

The next phase should be ditching the soldered storage. It is a wear part, and is probably the biggest piece of douchebaggery that Apple inflicts on Mac users. The cost of RAM and storage runs it pretty close though...

[suicidalfranco]

46 minutes ago, Monkey Dust said:

The top end GPUs in the 14" MBP is a bit marginal, but otherwise they are fine

Not what I'm hearing from the likes of snazzy labs... might not be as bad as the intel ones but it still thermal throttle when under load.

 

[igormp]

49 minutes ago, suicidalfranco said:

Not what I'm hearing from the likes of snazzy labs... might not be as bad as the intel ones but it still thermal throttle when under load.

As someone with a MBP 14 M3 Max (not even the actual high end), cooling is fine.

Reminder that this is a portable laptop that manages to deliver more perf than competitors at 70W total for the package.

 

The Air ones are totally passive, but that's a feature tbh, as already mentioned above.

1 hour ago, Monkey Dust said:

The next phase should be ditching the soldered storage. It is a wear part, and is probably the biggest piece of douchebaggery that Apple inflicts on Mac users.

Agreed, close to 0 benefit to having it soldered (unlike RAM).

[Kisai]

8 hours ago, igormp said:

The Air ones are totally passive, but that's a feature tbh, as already mentioned above.

The Air's selling point is being thin, light, and quiet. Not powerful. Exactly what you want in an office or school classroom.

 

8 hours ago, igormp said:

Agreed, close to 0 benefit to having it soldered (unlike RAM).

I really, REALLY, want there to be a standard eject-able NVMe (with passive cooler) drive system that all laptops use (eg remove a screw and it removes a cover that also secures the drive to the frame. Wishful thinking, I know.

 

[saltycaramel]

I remember when people would be against soldered RAM, now this year we have:

- Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus PCs --> soldered RAM

- AMD Strix Point laptops --> AMD guidelines tell OEMs to use soldered RAM

- Intel Lunar Lake --> soldered on-package 16GB or 32GB RAM 

- Apple --> 12th year of soldered RAM on laptops and counting

 

2024, the year of soldered RAM. 

[igormp]

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

I remember when people would be against soldered RAM, now this year we have:

 

Many people still do, and they're pretty vocal about it. However, manufacturers don't really care much about said people, and the actual mainstream consumer doesn't care or has no idea that they can upgrade RAM anyway.

I personally like the benefits of soldered RAM.

 

3 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

- AMD Strix Point laptops --> AMD guidelines tell OEMs to use soldered RAM

 

Strix halo is going to be soldered only.

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, Kisai said:

I really, REALLY, want there to be a standard eject-able NVMe (with passive cooler) drive system that all laptops use (eg remove a screw and it removes a cover that also secures the drive to the frame. Wishful thinking, I know.

EDSFF E1.S?

 

 

Laptops don't use it but they could, and hotswap is supported.

[starsmine]

5 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

I remember when people would be against soldered RAM, now this year we have:

- Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite/Plus PCs --> soldered RAM

- AMD Strix Point laptops --> AMD guidelines tell OEMs to use soldered RAM

- Intel Lunar Lake --> soldered on-package 16GB or 32GB RAM 

- Apple --> 12th year of soldered RAM on laptops and counting

 

2024, the year of soldered RAM. 

we still are, but we also recognize the value of lpddr and that its all trade offs.
This is also why we are so hyped for camm2, and most laptop makers are as well as it reduces sku counts. They dont particularly like having to make 12 motherboard varients they have to keep track of PER laptop model and have to balance sales of. they would rather cut it back down to three. 

 

lpddr you get higher bandwidth, at lower power, at the cost of latency. for APUs the latency does not mater. the biggest bottleneck in APU systems is bandwidth. and in laptops power is king. Its not so much they are being told to use soldered ram, its that they are being told DDR5 tanks the performance and increases wattage. all for a feature a minority of the market uses. 

[Four-three]

I think in the way Apple has always been, the new Mac will probably start with 12GB of RAM. 8G to 16G to upgrade is a bit of a hassle for Apple, after all, they will not choose to give users a better experience if they waste 4G on the iPad pro.

[LAwLz]

PCWorld did a really interesting video about 8GB of RAM in laptops just now.

 

They did run some benchmarks like Cinebench, but since a lot of benchmarks aren't very heavy on RAM, and you typically run the benchmarks by themselves, there was little to no difference between the laptops. So instead of just saying "they are the same", Gordon instead recreated some more real-world scenarios by running multiple programs at once and then using a single set of mouse and keyboard to control both laptops at once, doing things like running Chrome with 24 tabs while being in a Zoom call and so on.

 

I won't spoil the results but I highly recommend checking it out.

 

 

 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

PCWorld did a really interesting video about 8GB of RAM in laptops just now.

 

They did run some benchmarks like Cinebench, but since a lot of benchmarks aren't very heavy on RAM, and you typically run the benchmarks by themselves, there was little to no difference between the laptops. So instead of just saying "they are the same", Gordon instead recreated some more real-world scenarios by running multiple programs at once and then using a single set of mouse and keyboard to control both laptops at once, doing things like running Chrome with 24 tabs while being in a Zoom call and so on.

 

I won't spoil the results but I highly recommend checking it out.

 

 

I have had 16GB on my desktop at home for a very long time now, very long. One thing I will say about the above testing is there are a few reasons why it may not be as noticeable when you don't have sufficient memory however the primary reason is we have very fast SSDs not HDDs.

 

I very often am running with my memory fully used and there actually is a major downside to this, pagefile size bloat. I've had my page file bloat out to almost 100GB many times, it's typically around 11GB to 30GB but this is actually a significant factor for devices that only come with 8GB memory and also likely smaller sized system drive SSDs, a lot of usable storage space getting wasted to the page file.

 

If you are always memory constrained, always heavily paging in and out and have a low grade SSD that is cacheless or suffers from performance degradation under heavy write usage then you will experience periods of signficant system performance slowness you wouldn't get with more system memory.

 

While all of this is a "it depends" mine and everyone's counter to this is the actual cost of DRAM modules is insignificant, there is no manufacture cost reason to be selling average laptops with 8GB. If we are talking very cost down laptops/netbooks/chromebook then you have some justification but not anywhere else.

 

"Isn't as bad" is not a sufficient reason for say Apple and the cost of their laptop products. A poor excuse is a poor excuse every single time.

[Kisai]

7 hours ago, leadeater said:

While all of this is a "it depends" mine and everyone's counter to this is the actual cost of DRAM modules is insignificant, there is no manufacture cost reason to be selling average laptops with 8GB. If we are talking very cost down laptops/netbooks/chromebook then you have some justification but not anywhere else.

 

"Isn't as bad" is not a sufficient reason for say Apple and the cost of their laptop products. A poor excuse is a poor excuse every single time.

This is why I've always upgraded every device. The ASUS Zepheryus had soldered ram, but also one unpopulated slot. The only laptop I haven't upgrades was the Lenovo because that one wasn't meant to be my primary laptop, it was something I bought so I had "something" to travel with.

 

Desktops, I'll just max out. Like the DDR4 96GB was originally purchased with 32GB because "I needed something" and added the 64GB later and didn't want to throw away the 32GB module. The new PC I just bought with 128GB.

 

Laptops, likely don't really have a good use case for having oversized RAM, but they have a better reason to do so, since they are hard to upgrade, and when both the RAM and SSD are soldered, you want it to last as long as possible, which more RAM gets more life out of it. Where as in a desktop, you can buy as little or as much RAM as you need at any time, so there is no need to min-max the desktop's initial life span when you can upgrade the ram and disk space.

 

14 hours ago, leadeater said:

EDSFF E1.S?

 

 

Laptops don't use it but they could, and hotswap is supported.

Yeah, something like that. The present situation is a problem because we can't upgrade soldered storage, and M2's are fine, but they're fragile and many MB's don't support heatsinks on them because they put the SSD under the GPU heatsink or under heat spreaders, or in the case of laptops, there's like a thermal pad and then it just contacts the metal chassis.

 

[GeorgeB123]

and now the base model will probably be more expensive than the M3 with 16 GB upgrade.

[Obioban]

This is going to be a rough change for people that like to whine about Apple. Easily the lowest hanging fruit.

 

... My expectation is 12gb as base on the M4, not 16. But, I guess we'll see.

[Obioban]

17 hours ago, LAwLz said:

PCWorld did a really interesting video about 8GB of RAM in laptops just now.

 

They did run some benchmarks like Cinebench, but since a lot of benchmarks aren't very heavy on RAM, and you typically run the benchmarks by themselves, there was little to no difference between the laptops. So instead of just saying "they are the same", Gordon instead recreated some more real-world scenarios by running multiple programs at once and then using a single set of mouse and keyboard to control both laptops at once, doing things like running Chrome with 24 tabs while being in a Zoom call and so on.

 

I won't spoil the results but I highly recommend checking it out.

 

 

 

Before watching that, I'd say-- already self defeating by using Chrome for the tab test. Always really, but especially if you're RAM constrained-- Safari >>>> Chrome.

[ToboRobot]

Cool, I look forward to the freedom of the low hanging fruit complaints (often from people with limited or zero experience with the thing they whine so vociferously).

Posted from my 8GB M1 Macbook Air.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Obioban said:

My expectation is 12gb as base on the M4, not 16. But, I guess we'll see.

Possible, there are 6GB (48Gb) LPDDR5X memory modules so it is a configuration that is possible, so long as Apple is using BGA 315/441 and Samsung. The next capacity size up has 315/441/496/561. I just don't know which Apple has been using or if they would change to be able to offer 12GB if they couldn't otherwise.

 

Edit:

Micron 48Gb come in BGA 315/441/496.

[Shreyas1]

On 8/28/2024 at 1:34 AM, GeorgeB123 said:

and now the base model will probably be more expensive than the M3 with 16 GB upgrade.

I'd doubt they'd raise the starting price imo, because that would severely disincentivize people on the older 8gb pros/airs to upgrade to new macbooks and these people might just take used or old stock M1/2/3s with higher ram instead.

[saltycaramel]

New details revealed (in Bloomberg’s “Power On”) about the M4 and M4 Pro MacMini

- still internal PSU even in its new diminutive form factor

- 2 usb-c ports on the front 

- 3 usb-c ports on the back

- for the first time ever on a Mac mini, no usb-A ports 

- HDMI

- Ethernet 

- headphone jack

 

Available in early November probably.

[thechinchinsong]

9 hours ago, saltycaramel said:

New details revealed (in Bloomberg’s “Power On”) about the M4 and M4 Pro MacMini

- still internal PSU even in its new diminutive form factor

- 2 usb-c ports on the front 

- 3 usb-c ports on the back

- for the first time ever on a Mac mini, no usb-A ports 

- HDMI

- Ethernet 

- headphone jack

 

Available in early November probably.

Seems pretty nice overall. Honestly expected Apple to get rid of USB-A ports earlier. Does the article say how the USB-C ports handle thunderbolt (does the base M4 have enough lanes for all of them to be thunderbolt 4, will the Pro have all thunderbold ports)? Do they share the same exact USB-C port count or does the pro have more like the current minis?

[saltycaramel]

1 hour ago, thechinchinsong said:

Seems pretty nice overall. Honestly expected Apple to get rid of USB-A ports earlier. Does the article say how the USB-C ports handle thunderbolt (does the base M4 have enough lanes for all of them to be thunderbolt 4, will the Pro have all thunderbold ports)? Do they share the same exact USB-C port count or does the pro have more like the current minis?

 

I guess something like this would be plausible (similar to current Mac Studio):

- M4 Mac Mini: 3 x TB4/USB4 40Gbps ports on the back, 2 x usb-c 10Gbps ports on the front

- M4 Pro Mac Mini: 3 x TB4/USB4 40Gbps ports on the back, 2 x TB4/USB4 40Gbps ports on the front

 

Note that in the previous generations 

- the base chip had 2 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

- the Pro/Max chips had 4 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

- the Ultra chip had 8 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

 

Whereas in the current M4 generation

- the base M4 chip has 4 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

- probably the M4 Pro/Max chips are going to have 8 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

- probably the Ultra chip is going to have 16 Thunderbolt I/O blocks visible in die shots

 

This could mean that overall they may double the TB ports compared to previous generations (or…introduce Thunderbolt 5?). 

 

Here you can see the M4 die shot (from the M4 iPad Pro) with double the Thunderbolt I/O blocks compared to the M3.