Should I get 8GB ram or 16GB ram?

[glitchmaster0001]

Hi, so I just bought a new 2016 MacBook Pro 13 inch with touchbar  and I'm pretty happy with my purchase. However, I noticed that with about 7 tabs open in Chrome, the ram usage was sitting at 5.5GB out of 8GB total. The model I bought had a 256GB SSD and 8GB of ram. Should I return my MacBook and get the 16GB version because I intend to keep my MacBook for at least 5 or 6 years before I would replace/upgrade to another computer. The 256GB SSD doesn't bother me since I could always use external storage either an SSD or HDD to combat that, it's just the ram that raises questions for me since there really is no solution to that problem other than buying more from the start. It would cost roughly $306 more to upgrade the ram to from 8GB to 16GB. My question is that would it be worth it to buy the one with 16GB of ram? Or just stick to the 8GB one I have. I'll be honest, $306 to get 16GB of ram is a bit nuts. 

[Bazilias]

Depends on what you are going to use the Macbook for. Google Chrome uses a lot of RAM in general so try to use other browsers (Safari or Firefox) and see what happens with the RAM if you have multiple tabs open. If it still uses a lot of RAM then u might want to upgrade the the 16GB version. It sucks that you can't upgrade parts on the Macbook anymore but people are still down to pay for it anyways lol.

[crzyces]

So is spending the price Apple charges for a 13" MacBook Pro w/ such a tiny ssd and 8 gigs of RAM in 2016. Upgrade it to the 16 and pay the Apple tax. Better than bringing it in to an Apple certified shop and paying $350 for the RAM + another $100 for someone to take off a panel and put it in. Don't you do it, as there goes your warranty and support. Beh. I wish they used better hardware to go with their great optimization. Maybe then they would be worth the exorbitant cost.

 

Besides aesthetics, what benefit does it provide over a standard Workstation/Editing Windows Laptop? I am really curious, as for the price, I just don't get it. Less processing power, less RAM, worse gpu, less storage, less i/o options. Everything is proprietary... I'm not chastising, just genuinely befuddled as to the choice.

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, RaptorCandy said:

Depends on what you are going to use the Macbook for. Google Chrome uses a lot of RAM in general so try to use other browsers (Safari or Firefox) and see what happens with the RAM if you have multiple tabs open. If it still uses a lot of RAM then u might want to upgrade the the 16GB version. It sucks that you can't upgrade parts on the Macbook anymore but people are still down to pay for it anyways lol.

alright, ill try safari and firefox with the same number of tabs open and the same webpages in each tab. If the ram usage still sits at around 5.5 to 6GB then it looks like i'll have no choice but to bite the bullet and spend $306 to get the 16GB RAM model. You are right though, how it sucks that ultrabooks and laptops today mostly have their ram soldered onto the motherboard, thus causing the price to increase ram to skyrocket.  

[glitchmaster0001]

1 minute ago, crzyces said:

So is spending the price Apple charges for a 13" MacBook Pro w/ such a tiny ssd and 8 gigs of RAM in 2016. Upgrade it to the 16 and pay the Apple tax. Better than bringing it in to an Apple certified shop and paying $350 for the RAM + another $100 for someone to take off a panel and put it in. Don't you do it, as there goes your warranty and support. Beh. I wish they used better hardware to go with their great optimization. Maybe then they would be worth the exorbitant cost.

 

Besides aesthetics, what benefit does it provide over a standard Workstation/Editing Windows Laptop? I am really curious, as for the price, I just don't get it. Less processing power, less RAM, worse gpu, less storage, less i/o options. Everything is proprietary... I'm not chastising, just genuinely befuddled as to the choice.

because I like to use macOS in laptops. Plus final cut pro x is amazingly fast and works really well. Trust me man, I have a custom built windows desktop alongside my MacBook and I love both of them. It's just I wouldn't use a windows laptop. since I don't really like any of the windows laptops 

[Bazilias]

Just now, glitchmaster0001 said:

alright, ill try safari and firefox with the same number of tabs open and the same webpages in each tab. If the ram usage still sits at around 5.5 to 6GB then it looks like i'll have no choice but to bite the bullet and spend $306 to get the 16GB RAM model. You are right though, how it sucks that ultrabooks and laptops today mostly have their ram soldered onto the motherboard, thus causing the price to increase ram to skyrocket.  

You don't always need to upgrade to the 16GB model. Try to look for things that can cause your RAM usage to be high. If it's only the browser then you might want to try another one. And if the problem still exists try to look for other things that can occupy the RAM. You could try to send it to Apple and see if they can put in some new RAM and see if that solves the problem. Otherwise if there isn't an other option (except buying a Windows notebook like Asus Zenbook 3 for example) then you should upgrade to the 16GB model.

[crzyces]

Just now, glitchmaster0001 said:

because I like to use macOS in laptops. Plus final cut pro x is amazingly fast and works really well. Trust me man, I have a custom built windows desktop alongside my MacBook and I love both of them. It's just I wouldn't use a windows laptop. since I don't really like any of the windows laptops 

Because of how they look? As for the price, I'd think a Windows PC would fly through Final Cut pro, PSCS, 3dSMax, Maya, CAD, Premiere... everything people used to justify the expense for. It's the looks, it's cool to say it. It's like someone who buys a BMW instead of a loaded Passat. They both do the same things, the Volkswagen may actually do more, but that Beemer just looks a bit better, so we can sacrifice some performance and maintenance cost.

[Mooshi]

No. I don't care how much a person likes Macs, burning your cash to get ram directly from Apple is always a bad idea 100% of the time. You get more ram for macbooks 3rd party and install yourself, always.

[glitchmaster0001]

24 minutes ago, crzyces said:

Because of how they look? As for the price, I'd think a Windows PC would fly through Final Cut pro, PSCS, 3dSMax, Maya, CAD, Premiere... everything people used to justify the expense for. It's the looks, it's cool to say it. It's like someone who buys a BMW instead of a loaded Passat. They both do the same things, the Volkswagen may actually do more, but that Beemer just looks a bit better, so we can sacrifice some performance and maintenance cost.

I've used windows laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and the HP spectre before and I didn't really like them. Trust me, it isn't about the raw performance/horsepower numbers, it about the experience, macOS just runs much smoother than windows and everything you do is so much simpler and easier. About your BMW and VW reference, if you have ever sat in an BMW vs a VW the most noticeable difference is the ride quality. Ask any BMW or Mercedes owner and they would tell you the same thing. When you pay for a BMW, you are basically paying for an experience not raw horsepower. If you want raw horsepower then I would suggest you get a GM vehicle with a big block V8.

[glitchmaster0001]

Just now, Mooshi said:

No. I don't care how much a person likes Macs, burning your cash to get ram directly from Apple is always a bad idea 100% of the time. You get more ram for macbooks 3rd party and install yourself, always.

I would install it myself but the ram is soldered onto the logic board so im pretty much out of luck... Plus I don't think third parties have ways to solder ram modules onto a logic board yet because i think the tools needed to do that are extremely expensive. 

[crzyces]

Just now, glitchmaster0001 said:

I've used windows laptops like the Dell XPS 13 and the HP spectre before and I didn't really like them. Trust me, it isn't about the raw performance/horsepower numbers, it about the experience, macOS just runs much smoother than windows and everything you do is so much simpler and easier. About your BMW and VW reference, if you have ever sat in an BMW vs a VW the most noticeable difference is the ride quality. Ask any BMW or Mercedes owner and they would tell you the same thing. When you pay for a BMW, you are basically paying for an experience 

Yes I know, I had a Lexus LS300 and drove in a friend's Avalon and was stunned by the difference in the *smoothness*, but that was pretty much it. Everything else was just aesthetic and ergonomics.

[crzyces]

5 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

I would install it myself but the ram is soldered onto the logic board so im pretty much out of luck... Plus I don't think third parties have ways to solder ram modules onto a logic board yet because i think the tools needed to do that are extremely expensive. 

Lots of places do, it just voids the warranty. One of Linus' web buddies from NY has a shop that fixes Apples. And yes, the equipment is expensive. Apple is going to lose a huge civil suit soon where they will have to turn over their material to third parties to fix,as right now they use the "Well, people are going to steal our technology" which really means "We want to charge $250 an hour to replace a $3 capacitor, and if people know what type of capacitor it is, then they can charge $75 an hour and $10 for the part".

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, crzyces said:

Because of how they look? As for the price, I'd think a Windows PC would fly through Final Cut pro, PSCS, 3dSMax, Maya, CAD, Premiere... everything people used to justify the expense for. It's the looks, it's cool to say it. It's like someone who buys a BMW instead of a loaded Passat. They both do the same things, the Volkswagen may actually do more, but that Beemer just looks a bit better, so we can sacrifice some performance and maintenance cost.

Software Updates on the Mac is not as annoying and obtrusive like Windows 10. Premiere Pro may have more features than FCP X but FCP destroys Premiere Pro in rendering times and smooth scrubbing of timelines.

A Mac works with your existing iOS devices (Continuity) unlike Windows which offers no similar thing with its Windows Phone platform. A lot of Windows laptops have terrible displays with muted color gamut and awful viewing angles (a lot of PCs still use a TN panel, not IPS LCD), Macs have good viewing angles and the color gamut is wide. I don't think a lot of Windows laptops can compete with Apple's multitouch trackpad with smooth gestures. Also, Safari's WebKit rendering engine is still way better than Microsoft Edge's EdgeHTML especially considering the fact that I experience more blank web pages with Edge than in Safari or Chrome. 

 

But of course, I was disappointed with Apple's 2016 MacBook Pro with them using crappy AMD Radeon Pro 450/455 discrete graphics instead of NVIDIA GTX 1060m/1070m and having a paltry RAM options as well as their removal of the MagSafe charging port which is one of the best features of Apple laptops. That's why I skipped it and I'll wait for their 2017 refresh. 

[captain_to_fire]

10 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

Trust me, it isn't about the raw performance/horsepower numbers, it about the experience, macOS just runs much smoother than windows and everything you do is so much simpler

This makes me think that the UNIX kernel used by Apple is way better than the NT kernel of Microsoft. 

 

46 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

Or just stick to the 8GB one I have. I'll be honest, $306 to get 16GB of ram is a bit nuts. 

Chrome is notorious for being a memory hog. I suggest you go with Safari. 

[glitchmaster0001]

1 minute ago, crzyces said:

Yes I know, I had a Lexus LS300 and drove in a friend's Avalon and was stunned by the difference in the *smoothness*, but that was pretty much it. Everything else was just aesthetic and ergonomics.

Oh and I forgot to mention that Apple laptops tend to hold their resale value much better than windows laptops do. That was one of the minor reasons but the main reasons why I chose Mac was the experience and simplicity. In my personal experience mac computers just work and are much simpler whereas windows computer you'd have to fiddle around with it to get it to work the way you want it to. Say if something were to go wrong with a macbook within warranty period. Then all I would have to do is drive 10-15 mins over to the Cupertino Apple Store in the Infinite Loop Campus and they would fix it there. But if that were to happen with a Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, etc computer then I would have to RMA the computer over to India or some third world country for repair and wait 2-4 weeks for it to get back to me. 

[soup]

12 minutes ago, crzyces said:

 One of Linus' web buddies from NY has a shop that fixes Apples.

What Louis Rossman?

More two people in the "same industry" than buddies.

 

No warranty anymore if you use ANY repair shop that isn't an Apple store.

[SCHISCHKA]

1 hour ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

Hi, so I just bought a new 2016 MacBook Pro 13 inch with touchbar  and I'm pretty happy with my purchase. However, I noticed that with about 7 tabs open in Chrome, the ram usage was sitting at 5.5GB out of 8GB total. The model I bought had a 256GB SSD and 8GB of ram. Should I return my MacBook and get the 16GB version because I intend to keep my MacBook for at least 5 or 6 years before I would replace/upgrade to another computer. The 256GB SSD doesn't bother me since I could always use external storage either an SSD or HDD to combat that, it's just the ram that raises questions for me since there really is no solution to that problem other than buying more from the start. It would cost roughly $306 more to upgrade the ram to from 8GB to 16GB. My question is that would it be worth it to buy the one with 16GB of ram? Or just stick to the 8GB one I have. I'll be honest, $306 to get 16GB of ram is a bit nuts. 

thats just cache and recently used applications. if anything you're wasting 3.5GB of ram. My mac has 8gb and iv never run out of ram. I think 8gb of ram for non gaming is going to be useful for quite a while

[crzyces]

11 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

Oh and I forgot to mention that Apple laptops tend to hold their resale value much better than windows laptops do. That was one of the minor reasons but the main reasons why I chose Mac was the experience and simplicity. In my personal experience mac computers just work and are much simpler whereas windows computer you'd have to fiddle around with it to get it to work the way you want it to. Say if something were to go wrong with a macbook within warranty period. Then all I would have to do is drive 10-15 mins over to the Cupertino Apple Store in the Infinite Loop Campus and they would fix it there. But if that were to happen with a Dell, HP, IBM, Lenovo, etc computer then I would have to RMA the computer over to India or some third world country for repair and wait 2-4 weeks for it to get back to me. 

Weird, if someone has a prebuilt laptop (Dell, HP, Lenovo etc) they call a local contractor and they go there to get it fixed. It's common to RMA parts, but not computers (unless they are Apples). I live 30 minutes from an Apple store, but they have to ship iPads, Laptops, and iPhones too Boston (about a 90 minute drive if I am in RI, 65 minutes if I am in Ma.), then pick it up either a week or two later if I have it shipped from the nearby store, or drive 80-110 miles to pick it up when it is done. Not convenient for me.

 

I understand if you are just more comfortable with it and it is simpler fr you. My grandmother was like that with cable TV. Confused the heck out of her ;^) . All she wanted was to find "Her stories" (Soap Operas). I'm kidding though, and I do get a kick out of seeing people using Surface books saying they do all their animation for Marvel movies on it (another way overpriced product). At least Apple does do what it says it does.

[glitchmaster0001]

7 minutes ago, SCHISCHKA said:

thats just cache and recently used applications. if anything you're wasting 3.5GB of ram. My mac has 8gb and iv never run out of ram. I think 8gb of ram for non gaming is going to be useful for quite a while

But it says in activity monitor in the memory used amount 5.0-5.5GB out of 8GB ram. And I am using safari right now with the same amount of tabs open. I think ima go for the 16GB ram option here since just on the first day with my current workflow I have roughly 2.5GB give or take of RAM headroom, which is not good since applications in the future would only get more demanding even with optimization. I intend to keep my new MacBook for at least 5 or 6 years so it would be 2022 or 2023 the time I would upgrade/replace the MacBook. 

[SCHISCHKA]

11 minutes ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

But it says in activity monitor in the memory used amount 5.0-5.5GB out of 8GB ram. And I am using safari right now with the same amount of tabs open. I think ima go for the 16GB ram option here since just on the first day with my current workflow I have roughly 2.5GB give or take of RAM headroom, which is not good since applications in the future would only get more demanding even with optimization. I intend to keep my new MacBook for at least 5 or 6 years so it would be 2022 or 2023 the time I would upgrade/replace the MacBook. 

Take a screen shot of your activity monitor. People always read RAM wrong and think they need 32GB of RAM just to run chrome.

[glitchmaster0001]

10 hours ago, SCHISCHKA said:

Take a screen shot of your activity monitor. People always read RAM wrong and think they need 32GB of RAM just to run chrome.

Ok here is the screenshot. My friend's late 2013 MacBook Pro has 8GB of ram and a 512GB SSD and he uses 7.3GB of ram with just 13 chrome tabs open, skype, discord, and MS word. 

[glitchmaster0001]

11 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

But of course, I was disappointed with Apple's 2016 MacBook Pro with them using crappy AMD Radeon Pro 450/455 discrete graphics instead of NVIDIA GTX 1060m/1070m and having a paltry RAM options as well as their removal of the MagSafe charging port which is one of the best features of Apple laptops. That's why I skipped it and I'll wait for their 2017 refresh. 

I kind of am disappointed in this generation of MacBooks Pro as well due to having 8GB of ram as baseline. I might just wait return the computer entirely and wait for the 2017 refresh then just upgrade then. 

[glitchmaster0001]

14 hours ago, hey_yo_ said:

This makes me think that the UNIX kernel used by Apple is way better than the NT kernel of Microsoft. 

 

Chrome is notorious for being a memory hog. I suggest you go with Safari. 

I think the only reason why apple uses Radeon video cards instead of nvidia card are that final cut pro likes a card that can do OpenGL tasks while nvidia cards are much better at using directx. 

[crzyces]

3 hours ago, glitchmaster0001 said:

I think the only reason why apple uses Radeon video cards instead of nvidia card are that final cut pro likes a card that can do OpenGL tasks while nvidia cards are much better at using directx. 

AMD licensed OpenGL before the release of the 9 series I believe, and NVidea has been using them along with CUDA ever since. I think it is price per unit. If a 450/455 is the equivalent of an rx 550 (which I doubt), it is a very inexpensive piece of hardware. If Apple used top end parts, with their tech optimization, they would be the pre-best computers in the world (consumer market). Unfortunately, they do not. That is what angers me most about Apple. It's not the price, it is the price for the hardware and the profit margin they have to keep. When a $700 laptop has better components than a Macbook Pro, well that's sad. The cheapest 13" MacBook Pro is $1500.

 

Imagine a Mac with A real i7 Mobile? A decent gpu, not one that most high end tablets might say "Hey, that's where my APU went. Give that back to Qualcom!". No scaled down underclocked i5's/i7's they use in cheap notebooks w/ 2 real cores/4 threads). This is a fricken Macbook Pro! In general laptops we rank 8! Behind the Air! In Workstation/Productivity we don't rank? In Notebook check we must...They are the most accurate non biased mobile pc site on the web. No? Seriously? Tech Radar? They love Apple now that we use Intel. Someone help us, we are better than this. Yes! We are...............................#8, and the Air is ahead of us again? What?

 

Let's get back to imagining Apple's pre-tweaks with real hardware. We have $1500-$1600 to work with. We'll compare it to $1600 and under notebook specs. Oh my goodness. Look what I'm building... (Not realy me, I'm just spec checking)

CPU Intel Xeon E3-1505m 4 cores, 8 threads @ 3.3GHz and turbo 3.7GHz

Graphics (We will skimp out here to save $: NVidea PQuadro 4000+ w/ 1792 CUDA Cores, 8GB DDR5, 256 bit interface, 192.Gbps transfer speed, Open Gl 4.5, shader model 5.1, DX 12, PCIex16 gen 3.0?!? And this is the cheap one...32 floating points, Single precision (This is the cheap one), Core clock: 1596 (4x336@475) Memory Clock: 1200MHz Shader Clock: 950, VR, Mosaic, nView, Optimus tech

RAM: 16 gigs DDR4 2133

Storage: Samsung SSD SM951a 512GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe (MZVKV512), 512 GB

Display: 17.3 inch 16:9, 3840x2160 pixel 255 PP Color Space AdobeRGB 74 Color Space sRGB 100

It's heavy though. 2.1 lbs

Windows 10 Professional

Best Price: $1,579

 

Oh, it's a Lenovo

 

Now shrink that screen to 13" retina display, and imagine what Apple could do with that hardware? And they could, if they wanted to. Granted, it's been out a year and released at 4 grand or so, but the MBP has been out for roughly that. And that, that is what makes me crazy. They could do this, and they put out the MacBook Pro with an i5 or i7 (which adds $500) and an apu solution that would cost $50 as an HD card for a PC with no integrated graphics.

 

Let's just imagine... Quadro m4000 8 gig or intel 440/540... i5 or Xeon...

Quadro P4000 Quadro P3000 Quadro M2200 Quadro M1200 Quadro M620 Quadro M520 CPU/Mobile Platform Generation Kabylake Kabylake Kabylake Kabylake Kabylake Kabylake Kabylake GPU Architecture Pascal Pascal Pascal Maxwell Maxwell Maxwell Maxwell NVIDIA® CUDA® Parallel Processor Cores 2048 1792 1280 1024 640 512 384 Memory Size 16GB 8GB 6GB 4GB 4GB 2GB 2GB Memory Type GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 GDDR5 Memory Interface 256-bit 256-bit 192-bit 128-bit 128-bit 128-bit 64-bit Memory Bandwidth 192GB/sec 192GB/sec 168GB/sec 88GB/sec 80GB/sec 80GB/sec 40GB/sec Max Power Consumption, TGP (Graphics Sub-System) 100W 100W 75W 55W 45W 30W 25W OpenGL 4.5¹ 4.5¹ 4.5¹ 4.5¹ 4.5¹ 4.5¹ 4.5¹ Shader Model 5.1 5.1 5.1 5.0 5.0 5.0 5.0 DirectX 12² 12² 12² 12² 12³ 12³ 12³ PCI-E Generation 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 Display Port 1.4 1.4 1.4 1.2 1.2 1.2   Precision FP32 FP32 FP32 FP32 FP32 FP32 FP32 NVIDIA® VR Ready           3D Stereo Support NVIDIA® Mosaic Technology   NVIDIA® nView® Display Management Technology NVIDIA® Optimus™ Technology - See more at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/quadro-for-mobile-workstations.html#sthash.EzvhVJIh.dpuf