“‘How much RAM do I need?'” Brian Westover writes for LAPTOP Magazine. “It’s one of the most frequent questions asked by anyone buying or upgrading a PC, and while there are some reasonable stock answers that people usually share, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, and very little of the advice you do see has any real testing to back it up.”
“We’re here to fix that,” Westover writes. “By testing a variety of use cases on different allotments of RAM, we can get a very good idea what sort of uses can be comfortably done on which allotments of RAM, and even give you an idea of how you can stretch the RAM you’ve got.”
“The answer to the question of how much RAM you need always will come back to what you want to do with it,” Westover writes. “To help you find the best answer for you, we tested for five specific use cases, each common but distinct in its memory demands.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As much as possible. Max it out. Macs last a long time and, if it’s not user-serviceable, it’s best to get as much RAM as you can afford (even at Apple’s healthy prices) when you buy your Mac.
I really enjoy the 96GB of triple-channel RAM my main 7-year-old Mac Pro has, which is an amount no current Mac can hold at any price.
The current, 2013 Mac Pro can run 96 GB of RAM under macOS even though Apple publicly states it only supports up to 64 GB of RAM.
If you want to run Windows or Linux on that 2013 Mac Pro you can run up to and including 128 GB or RAM.
Of course, in both cases (96 & 128) you’ll have to buy specific 3rd party RAM in order to do it.
Since 10.9 OS 10 can access 128GB of RAM.
Overkill.
Current Mac Pro can handle 128 GB, though there is a performance hit due to Intel’s chipset:
” will run at 1066 MHz due to limitations in Intel’s chipset for addressing the higher capacity of RAM. Lower-capacity RAM kits can run at faster 1866 MHz speeds, but OWC notes that the performance hit of the 128 GB kit is generally minor compared to the benefit of having much more RAM.”
https://www.macrumors.com/2014/03/26/more-128-gb-mac-pro-ram-upgrades/
More!
That’s how much, the answer is always just “More!”.
My lowly “Mid-2011” Mac mini has 16GB, double the official max (when configured by Apple). I gave it a DIY Fusion Drive (using 120GB SSD and stock 500GB HD) too. It still performs very smoothly, for what I do with it in 2017. I like it because it has discreet video hardware (AMD Radeon HD 6630M), unlike most Mac mini models with “shared” video. And it’s one of the last Macs with a real FireWire port.
Mine is similar (except for 240 gb SSD) going to hang on to it till the day it dies.
You can’t have enough RAM.
You can’t have enough cowbell either.
How much RAM do you need?
Always more than you currently have.
Well, let’s see. An orchestral template in Logic (or any other DAW) streaming multiple virtual orchestral instrument samples from the likes of Vienna Ensemble, East West, Kontakt, etc. (Macs are used for Pro audio remember 😉 ) can scrape by with 16GB with some judicious choices and potential need to shuffle resources – a maximum for some notebooks…
64GB is comfortable for many circumstances and 128GB can have breathing room to add alternate sample choices without having to be overly concerned about freezing tracks.
So, like everyone else has said here. The more the better 🙂
Support! Software instruments, samples, effects, automation, external controllers & instruments, and precise timing don’t play well when memory gets used up.
At Apple’s obscene RAM prices, it depends on who is paying for it.
Apple’s iMac 8GB to 32 GB “upgrade” is $600.
PC Workstations can upgrade to 64 GB for less than that, and 32 GB for less than half of that…
Margin, margin, margin…
Mac Pro (?) “upgrade” to 32 GB is $400, and 64 GB is $1,200.
Amazon’s highest rated 64 GB RAM kit is $524.
We don’t buy Mac’s to be cheap, we’ll pay for them… but we don’t like being ripped off.
Another good reason to stop buying Macs. I’ve just gotten to the point that with the lack of upgradability and ports, a Mac is just too impractical for me. Goodbye Mac, hello Linux!
You get what you pay for.
Macs have forever been susceptible to the usual complaints about upgradeability and ports. They have also forever been threatened with abandonment by supposed Apple loyalists for the frontiers of Linux and Windows. The bleeding away of these tens of malcontents have, however, failed to finish off the Mac. Despite desultory support from Apple, the Mac has shown dogged staying power in a declining PC market — a sure sign of its enduring value to a majority of actual users.
all you say is true…….However, there more reason to believe that the tipping point may be out there if Apple doesnt address the problem with a product.
This subject comes up almost every day on MacDaily and I think there is a reason for it. I want to be optimistic.
Easy way to get a lot of Mac RAM AND SAVE MONEY:
Buy a 2 year old Mac with the RAM you want.
Why buy a new Lexus, since you can buy a low miles off-lease model for BIG discount?
The comparison to a car is not apt: 2-year-old Macs have nowhere near the discount that a 2-year-old car does.
Computational Fluid Dynamics or Electron-Proton-Photon transport codes and such end up thrashing a current Mac Pro with even 64 GB of RAM. (For those who don’t know, thrashing is when the computer spends more time paging data and instructions onto and off from the physical drive [even an SSD] than it spends doing everything else.) If the compute spends 80% of its time moving data to and from storage, it does not get a lot done, and you’re beating that storage device to death.
The bottom line really is, “How big is your data set?” and “How fast do you need to have the CPU(s) access that data?” and “Is that data stratified, i.e., is the data such that the “next” data is most often local to the “previous” data on the storage device?”
If you have big data, need fast access to it, and the data is dispersed in the data set, then you need as much RAM as you can get. Period.
Conversely, if all you ever do is surf the web and do email and the like, you can probably get buy with just over twice whatever the OS itself takes.
Not sure why you’d need more than 640K.
Hey MDN, ads are covering content! RAM? All my Mac can take!
FWIW, my general rule of thumb has been:
“4x current.”
This applies to RAM, CPU performance, Storage … what have you.
My Mac Pro 2013 has 12GB of RAM, swap shows 8GB most of the time, so I guess 16GB more would be good. And…I have that in the box but even it’s supposed to work I just got “Beeb”, sound, seems like the timings are not right, it should say 13-13-13 but instead it has C2-9-11 or something like that.
For Windows (64 bit):
Entry :8gb
Power user:16 gb
Graphics (Solidworks) : 64 or 128gb
Fast, fast vid cards help immensely
For Mac: that depends on how much extra cash you don’t mind blowing. Since most Macs don’t require much, 8gb hits the sweet spot.
I thought 20 GB was good but now I find that 48 GB is better in my Mac Pro ( Cheese Grater ).
I found that some programs don’t clear their RAM when you close them, so it’s good to have an app like Free Memory to clear the RAM.
Right now my system is using 14 GB with two browser and several apps open.
Typing the above I just used Free Memory and it got me back 2.4 GB (I had exited Photoshop CC and another graphics program earlier and some RAM had stuck ).
some people don’t realize they’ve run out of memory (due to this not clearing issues) and they are running using their scratch disks — though if you have SSDs it can be quite fast.
(My Cheese Grater has a 980 ti connected to two 27 inch monitors. The 980 has 6 GB RAM so I’m not sure how this affects usage as the newer GPUs like this are supposed to handle some computing tasks
and btw Photoshop CC runs much much faster than CS6 on Sierra. So optimized software counts too… )
.
According to MacTracker, the Mac Pro Server (mid-2012) has a maximum memory of 64 GB (12-Core) according to Apple — but 128 GB (12-Core) actual real-world capacity in 8-slots.
(I didn’t look up other models)
That’s pretty impressive for a five year-old cheese grater Mac Pro, especially now 3rd party RAM’s dropped in price since then.
Does anybody really pay Apples’ crazy rip-off RAM prices? MDN was clearly being overly loyal describing them as “Healthy”! 😲
“Does anybody really pay Apples’ crazy rip-off RAM prices?”
Ever since Apple made the business-smart (but consumer-hostile) decision to solder the RAM at time of assembly for most Mac lines, even for the iMac that have zero need for thinner body, the answer is “yes”. And the prices they charge are extortion, almost double the usual 3rd party prices.
Macs that can’t exchange/upgrade RAM suck!
Sorry but this had to be said.
It would be nice to see this stress test done on Macs.
Also with OS X 10.11 and 10.12 to see what 10.12 changed, since we hear from Apple that 10.12 is more efficient with ram usage.
The article is optimistic. It doesn’t test actual photo editing with real cameras. Using a 30MP image at 16 bits, I find that 16GB of RAM is barely enough to scrape through. Doing compas, I find that I’m exceeding 32GB regularly, and sometimes, with larger images, pushing my 64GB. So how much RAM you need really depends on what you do, and assuming that people only edit smartphone images isn’t viable.
Even leaving your browser open for days, with just a few tabs open can bring a machine with 8GB or RAM to its knees, because pages grow in size over time because of the Ads. As they change, the page doesn’t release the RAM used by the previous Ad. Check it in Activity monitor, and you’ll see the pages there. Some can reach 1GB in size over time.
A 32 GB upgrade for my iMac (4×8 GB from Kingston) was less expensive than +8 GB from Apple. Shame.
Just throwing this out there, but…
Has anyone ever gotten 16GB of RAM to work in a Mid 2010 15″ MBP?
I know it works in my Mid 2010 MacMini and it also works in the Mid 2010 13″ MBP.
My 15″ is running macOS Sierra. Haven’t tried the 16GB in it until I know it won’t kernel panic or some other crap. Can’t find any word on why there is a problem other than firmware that artificially restricts it. Maybe something has changed.