How Much RAM Do You Need? Your Guide To Unified Memory.

I'd go out on a limb and say, if you're trying to decide between 8GB and 16GB that you're on a tight budget. If that is the case, I'd say 8GB/512GB makes more practical sense than 16GB/256GB. No?

Something Ive noticed yet not seen talked about is memory efficiency seems to go down with increased GB I have 5 safari tabs, a powerpoint, and a word doc, and a citation manager open, and it's using 30 GB of ram on my M1 16inch MBP with 64gb. The same tasks I could do on my 13inch 2016 MBP with 8gb of ram total! what is going on!!??

They listened :D 16GB is the lowest now.


Worth adding that if you swap a lot, you wear your SSD drive and it's lifespan. And since SSDs in Mac are also not (easily) removable you can brick your Mac that way :(.

Apple made a smart choice for their finances, but no good for customers with the M4 Pro ! For those that would like a bit more than 24Go RAM, there is no choice but going to 48Go at high cost. 32Go is only for Max that’s another big jump in cost to a machine that not many users need…

With that money i can easily built 2 monster pcs 💀 that can take multiple dumps on those m123 combined

Sorry but Macs are basically just toys 8GB of unified RAM. 😂

unified sounds more like 'compiled" lumped together making differentiation important between memory module hardware and other components

I’m a programmer. I work a lot with IDE’s like VisualCode and JetBrains variants like IntelliJ and PHPStorm. I also make a lot of music in my free time using FL Studio, and of course having tabs open in chrome and maybe some casual gaming from now and then but that’s not a priority. The laptop I’m looking at is the new MacBook starting at 24GB of RAM. I can upgrade to 48GB of ram for 460 dollars more which I find a lot so if I do that I want to be sure that I actually use de extra RAM I payed for. I want to keep the laptop for 6+ years so it needs to be future proof as well. What would you recommend?

The problem with this video is that Apple is not allowing you to upgrade RAM on your current Macs.

You can’t test your future Mac until you purchase it, then you’re stuck again.

Just say “DO NOT purchase a Mac under 16GB and 1TB har drive- There fixed it for everyone.

Hard to tell if 24gb unified memory is enough. Currently have a 2020 intel iMac with 128gb installed. I do know it struggles to edit 4k/60 fps video edits in Adobe Premiere that's 41 minutes long.

Your microphone placement is distracting and you're making it take up a lot of frame space by angling it that way. Move it off to the side

Excellent overview. Thanks.

While we're at it, GPU makers, please stop making 8GB video cards... :)

I'm still mad they start at two hundred GB Of storage and even if you pay 200 more you're still getting The amount of storage. I had fifteen years ago. I don't even think they sell p c's with that little storage

Thank god. I bought 16gb variant..

I would just subscribe just for the Viewfinder reference. Nobody knows how cool it used to be back in the day.

Lets call it what it is they want you to constant swap to kill your product faster so you buy another pretty obvious

Dude what happened to your channel? You breakdown these concepts better than most other tech channels. Come baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

Waste of 7 minutes

Got the M3 Pro with 18Gb - now regretting not getting the 36Gb model...CPU and GPU always use around 5-15% of capacity at max, but memory is always above 60-70%. RAM is the worst bottleneck in otherwise so powerful laptop... And it is the most common one.

VERY helpful! Thanks!

Well said: to future-proof, go one step above what you need today.

Thanks, this info is invaluable

Very informative, Professor, is the Apple, MacBook Pro 16" (2021), M1 Max , 10 Core CPU with 64 GB Memory, 32 Core GPU , 1TB SSD , a good Buy in 2025?

Okay how about the people that dont have a mac yet?

32 GB needs to be standardized and cheap at this point

The Dumb new Apple math for deceiving gullible users.

Just bought my first macbook. From the base price it very quickly became expensive...

Any laptop with less than 1Tb and 16gb is useless.
For a professional editing machine 32gb and 2tb should be an absolute minimum.

But. For the same price I have a lower spec macbook and a mac Studio. Best of both worlds. Travel with a very capable decent laptop. Spec the Studio with very good specs. The only price difference is the extra screen(s).

No less than 128GB. Apple is full of shit.

One thing that was true about Apple Macs in the past with the Intel CPU based models was that RAM could be upgraded on many models. Now with Apple Silicon and its unified memory the RAM cannot be upgraded after purchase. I am an Apple user that wants somewhat more memory than I need, because over time computer operating systems and programs get larger. When I ordered a 15 inch MacBook Air, I decided to configure the MacBook Air when ordered with 24 gb of memory which was the maximum memory for the MacBook Air.

I think broadly speaking that this is a good message to tell people who are considering how much ram they're gonna buy, but I think it's not all that black and white. I've been using an 8gb Mac Mini M2 since it came out, and I'll say that I never have had my Mac slow down at all. I've run photo editing software while watching videos on Chrome, and my Mac didn't break a sweat. It's truly remarkable how good the SoC architecture works in practice. That said, I'm buying a 16" MacBook Pro M4 Pro now, so I do still echo what you said about buying more ram. Great video, thanks

This was such a great video! Incredible visuals :)

Good info. Just bought my wife a Mini with the 16. She’s a packrat so we got 500 SSD. I have a 2 YO mini 8/500 and wish I had more SSD (dang Apple tax).

When we changed the SSD size the processor HAD to be upgraded. I’ve seen that with memory too. Looks like Apple has minimizing SKUs. Interesting.

Question: why is memory now offered in non base 2 numbers like 24 and 48? Odd…

FINALLY, a useful video on this subject! Thank you! A someone with ADHD, who regularly has hundreds of safari tabs open at any given time, I was guessing I was going to need to go into expensive territory lol. Tbh, I forgot the Activity Monitor even existed.

The most interesting thing about this is most people who have a MacBook (Ram:16,32,etc) don’t need to spend that much on the computer because they will never use it for its full potential, and can get a PC laptop for half the price and be fine. Unless you’re running heavy programs for video editing or creating music,etc the MacBook is a pointless purchase.

You can purchase whatever you want but for 99% of people there is no reason to spend on a MacBook.

The Asus laptop I have was around $700, and had it been a MacBook with the same specs it would easily cost $2000 plus.

Random Access Memory.

You won me over when you put your cat on your computer :-P

So what to choose, an older m1 mbp with 16gb of ram or a newer m3 mbp with 8gb of ram? Price is near equal and so are the storage and screen size.

no man, apple its 2025 and ddr4/5 dont cost $200 for 8 GB and 256GB of SSD space doesnt cost $200 more... AND ITS SO EASY TO REPLACE IT. Apple living in the 90s still.

so what do I do if my memory bar is yellow with only having 4 tabs open on safari? 😅

It's actually worse than normal ram, if you have a small amount like 8GB because it's shared between GPU and CPU.

It also means the memory bandwidth is about halve of what's listed half of the bandwidth goes to cou and the other halve goes to the GPU.

It's better at lower latency since there is less space to travel so very snappy.

However it definitely is hard on ssds if you have little ram because the SSD is doing double duty as fake ram.

And once your apple SSD dies and it's soldered in your machine will not boot even from an external drive, this is planned obselenee.
Because all will eventually fail and need a complete new motherboard to boot again there is a hack in some minis that allow you to upgrade the SSD before it fails.

Great video - thanks.

I getting 128gb of ram future proofing myself. Make sure I've got enough for years and years to come

Just got your video recommendation and what a quality for a new channel. However sad ro see that you stopped making videos after just making 3 videos. Hope all is well at your end and that you start making videos again soon. Best of luck! 💐