[quote=hrblaine]
jbk224 wrote:
👍
If cost is not an issue, most will advise 32-64GB RAM to future proof your purchase.
When I first got a PC (after years of working on a mainframe) I got 16mg of RAM. I soon found that I needed more so added to 32. Now my PC has 64 and works just fine. RAM is cheap, no need to stint. OTOH, I never saw a need for 128 but who knows what the future holds? [Not much for me as I'm 91. :-) ] Harry
The x86 architecture requires about twice as much RAM for the same results as the Apple Silicon architecture. They are structurally very different. It is CISC vs RISC, and system on a chip vs. system of chips on a board. The M1 bus speed is 100 GBPS. the M1 Pro bus speed is 200 GBPS. the M1 Max bus speed is 400 GBPS.
We bought one of our twins an 8GB/512GB MacBook Air M1 to do media development and other classwork at UNCG. To run the same set of applications on my Intel iMac, I need 16GB RAM and wish I had 32. Jay can run MORE apps simultaneously in 8GB than the iMac can run in 16GB. I didn't believe what I thought was hype until I saw it happen.
What you DO need for efficient use of the M1 is a half-empty SSD. The operating system and the M1 work together to use drive space as super-fast virtual memory. So don't fill up your internal drive, OR, get as large an internal SSD as you can afford so you can leave half of it empty.
We added an external Thunderbolt 3 SSD to Jay's computer so it can house all his data. That was after trying to edit a 4K video that took up 420 GB of his 512 GB drive (including apps and system). We had to move the video files to an outboard drive to make it work. It screamed through rendering after we did that. Lesson learned.
When I bought my MacBook Air, I got 16GB unified memory and 1TB SSD space. I haven't really seen it slow down at all in normal use. I do have over half the drive free, as I use a 2TB external SSD for file storage and a 16GB conventional drive RAID for backups and more file storage. Just for kicks, I fired up 47 apps at once, to see what would happen. About all that happened was, it took a little longer to switch between apps, and I could only edit 44 audio tracks with five plugin processors each, instead of 95 tracks with no other apps running. (I seldom edit more than ten tracks in a video production).
This system has NO FAN. Yet it barely gets warm. It won't "cook my 'nads" when using it on my lap! My old Intel MacBook Pro would burn my thighs after 20 minutes! Its battery lasted about 3.5 hours. The M1 Air's battery lasts 10-17 hours, depending on what I'm doing.
Supposedly, it will thermal throttle if you push it hard enough. I probably haven't noticed. It renders 30 full-sized JPEGs from heavily edited 16GB Lumix raw files in under 30 seconds. Photoshop Neural Filters run in seconds. 4K video renders very quickly. I can't wait to see what Apple does next. Their most powerful Intel Macs have yet to be replaced with Apple Silicon versions. Tuesday at 1:00 PM EST, I'll be watching the Apple live stream of their "Peek Performance" event.