- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
8GB RAM in M3 MacBook Pro Proves the Bottleneck in Real-World Tests::Apple’s new MacBook Pro models are powered by cutting-edge M3 Apple silicon, but the base configuration 14-inch model starting at $1,599…
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The sheer idea of selling a 8gb machine in 2023 is kinda wild
8 gigs of ram for some shitty laptop is fine. Like the air shipping with 8 gigs of ram is fine (not great, but fine)
But for a “Pro” machine, let alone a 1600 dollar computer is insane.
What is someone likely to use a shitty laptop for? Open a web browser to run ~1080p video?
Basically, yeah.
Anything you’d do on a basic Chromebook, I guess.
MacBook Air is a $1000 computer too though :/ I bought a Thinkpad t480s with 8gb of (upgradable) ram for less than that back in 2019. currently running it with 24gb.
I’ve been using an 8GB laptop for a few years now and don’t feel the need to have more. But if I’m paying that much I’d expect at least 16GB.
That’s my problem with the 8GB. I even have the Air with that much memory. It’s fine… but I also got it secondhand. For new, I can’t pay that much money for entry level RAM specs.
No doubt. Even wilder to me is the idea of buying a Mac with 8GB in 2023, speaking as a long time Mac owner. Mine is from several years ago. I wonder if Apple execs ever pull their heads out of their asses. This feels like the late 90s all over again.
Don’t tell that to Nvidia.
I bought a Dell 6core AMD laptop on some sale and it was little 345 after tax and shipping. Then I immediately replaced the nvme with a 1tb one for another 70? I think. Laptop is really nice for the price.
For $1,599 you’d at least expect 16GB+ RAM given how cheap RAM is…
I think Apple gets all their RAM from 2008, because they charge $50/GB for it.
Don’t they also solder it to the motherboard so you can’t upgrade your RAM as well?
It’s not so much soldered to the motherboard as much as part of the same package as the CPU. As in: there are no separate memory chips.
But they did indeed solder it in before that, on their old Intel laptops. I think they started doing that in 2013 or 2014 but I forget exactly.
That has more to do with faster traces; the ram is “closer” to the CPU so the signal is cleaner.
Not defending the move, I’d take upgradability in a laptop.
This is both great, and incredibly annoying because they selected 8gb as the base…
So wait- if you want to increase your RAM, you have to install a whole new CPU?
That’s soldered as well! It’s theoretically possible but way too involved for most to bother with hiring a professional to get it done or what have you.
You buy a whole new Macbook
No, you just buy one with the amount of RAM you need.
Imagine buying a laptop at all
Sincerely, A Framework user
You don’t buy a laptop, you have your employer buy it for you.
Well yeah, if you were paying $50 a GB wouldn’t you too? Got to lock that shit down!
Lol, the ram is part of the m3 chip That’s a reason why it is so efficient. The storage in m3 is for RAM and videoRAM.
Wikipedia: The M3’s Unified Memory Architecture features up to 24 GB RAM, the M3 Pro up to 36 GB, and the M3 Max up to 128 GB. Like the M2 generation, the M3 SoCs use 6,400 MT/s LPDDR5 SDRAM. As with prior M series SoCs, this serves as both RAM and video RAM.
How the fuck did Apple manage to be the largest company on the planet doing shit like this? Are Apple users really that fucking dumb?
Because they have an extremely consumer friendly UI/UX and a very stable OS.
And they’re much better at marketing than they are at making computers or phones. Apple is probably the most successful marketing company in the world.
Not sure “friendly” is quite the right word… you can argue it’s well designed or cultivated users but Apple is anything but a "friend"ly.
Apple loves under ramming (to give a word a new meaning) and forcing everyone to pay for upgrades. The problem is there are always people that buy the base.
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Maybe we should all start calling it the “MacBook Semi-Pro”.
8gb ram has been common for over a decade now. It’s what I would expect in a sub-$400 laptop.
Or a raspberry pi.
$75, 8gb, and this isn’t even the latest model. https://www.microcenter.com/product/622539/raspberry-pi-4-model-b-8gb-ddr4
And Apple charges $200 for just an additional 8GB of RAM.
The MacBook amateur. They should be called out on a viral scale.
Apple had to know these reviews were coming. A new iteration on their custom SOC is obviously going to make every tech site go bananas benchmarking and their claim that 8GB = 16GB is going to make them punish the machine even harder.
It’s like they decided a few bad reviews would cost them less than cutting their markup on RAM to make a 16GB entry level Pro machine for less than $2k.
What’s worse is that their “8GB = 16GB” claim has a tiny bit of truth in it: many apps that are GPU-accelerated usually load/generate stuff on host RAM and then transfer it to the GPU RAM to launch some shaders/kernels on it and they do this repeatedly. The idea with Apple (also AMD when you consider APUs) is that since the RAM is “unified” you just have one RAM and you probably don’t have that redundancy anymore if those apps are built with that in mind, so in a sense if previously you had a 1GB buffer that had to live on both CPU and GPU RAM, this time it will only live in as a single 1GB buffer on Apple’s “unified” RAM. That’s still very different from the “8GB = 16GB” deceptive marketing by Apple.
The worst part is that in many retail chains like Costco, you can only get the 8GB version. I suspect the review reading segment of the population is smaller than we’d expect for such an expensive purchase. Previously they’ve crippled M1 machines that have 256Gb storage, only including one controller instead of two as in the 512+ machines. It’s a shame for MacBook Air, but totally unacceptable for a computer marketed as “Pro”
My current phone, and my last phone both had more ram. For significantly less money.
They’ll still sell like hot cakes 😂
Money is the bottleneck.
It’s hard to take the Mac seriously. This is even more dumbfounding because they have an excellent processor. Then they pair it with anemic RAM and make demonstrably false statements about the system’s performance. I don’t get it.
“Pro”
Ahem. Yeah right
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It looks like the 24 GiB (?) real-Pro MacBook.
My four year old phone has more RAM than an expensive macbook? LMFAO 🤭🤭🤭
Um actthually mac is so oPtimized so 1gb mac = 12.3gb windows 🤓
STFU it physically has less ram than a potato while costing the price of a nasa rocket
The people to whom this discussion ought to matter (the prospective buyers of an 8GB RAM machine) are utterly oblivious to this discussion. They’ll continue to walk into an Apple Store and buy these machines. We are like body builders arguing about how obese people should stop eating shit.
Ok but……who the hell runs blender and FFP in 8GB?
The vast majority of users are NOT running pro apps like that.
It’s just a name. If you’re actually running pro stuff, you’d be an idiot to run that on 8Gb no matter what machine.
Apple’s argument that it’s the same as 16gb is dumb, but anyone actually using pro apps on 8Gb is dumber. The majority of browser(with sane numbers of tabs)/iPhoto/office users really are probably not gonna notice.
If it wasn’t $1600 maybe I could buy that. But at that price I am expecting a little bit more and only including 8 gb is pathetic.
No one is running those apps in 8gb, the point was is to prove that you will now need to buy a model up instead of the base model. Proving Apples BS marketing wrong
Well nobody wants to run those apps on those machines.
One of my co workers was unfortunate enough to have to do a lot of heavy photo and video editing on an 8gb ram 13" MBP. He says the machine crawls if he has basically anything open.
Its a 1600 dollar laptop of a supposedly premium brand that has almost as little RAM as the average smart phone.
Unfortunately a lot of consumers don’t understand this. Even if they use “pro” apps daily. These same people will fall for Apples marketing tricks here regardless.
Imagine buying a $1600 US laptop to use blender.
My laptop can’t run blender anymore. But, it’s 12 years old.
