Just how much RAM does an M1 Mac need?

So, if you are not familiar with Max Tech, man he's making great videos and he does a

lot of comparisons. Let me go into full browser mode here. Full browser mode engaged

And he does videos of different Apple products and he compares them

And his newest video is actually great because a lot of people have been wondering, well

do I need 16GB of RAM in the new MacBook Pro or can I get away with 8GB

And so he went through and he does all these benchmarks and it's actually really surprising

So just to kind of give you a high level of what he found

In most instances having 16GB of RAM, it of course speeds up the computer

But in most instances it's not a dramatic speed up. It depends on what you're doing

So he did a test with Xcode and in his test he found that the 16GB MacBook Pro, the M1

gets the job done about 10% faster, 90% faster if you have 16GB of RAM versus 8GB of RAM

If you have 16GB of RAM it will get the Xcode test done 10% faster. Right

So that's pretty good. That's not bad. But that's actually surprising that there's not a bigger disparity between 8 and 16. Okay

So here's where the big difference comes in. And if you are a video editor, this might put the old nipperoo's at full springboard. Okay

8K Red Raw to 4K export. Check this out. So I'm looking at bar graph

8GB MacBook Pro with M1. It got the test done in 13 minutes and 57 seconds

Adding an extra 8GB cut that time down to 5 minutes and 59 seconds

That is a 46% increase in performance with the extra 8GB of RAM

And imagine if we had 32. You'd basically be done in 16 seconds

I'm just extrapolating here. So it could be a little bit more, give or take

But that is a 46% increase in speed by adding 8% or 8GB more RAM

What Lewis? What you said those numbers were? 13 down to 5? Yeah

He got it in... That's way more than 46%. He got it from 13 minutes and 57 seconds down to 5 minutes and 59 seconds

Is it more than 46%? Yeah. I'm doing the math in my brain in real time here. You might be right

Maybe I did the math wrong. In any case, it's a heck of a lot faster. So putting 16GB of RAM in the M1 MacBook Pro brought the machine to about the same speeds

as a 32GB i9 with the 5500M in Final Cut Pro. Dude, that's the machine that I have

It's $3,400! And the 16GB MacBook Pro I think maxed out as like, well, I don't know, is it like $1,700

or something? Somewhere in that range? It's crazy. So the other test is Lightroom Classic

He did a 42MP RAW export and having 8GB of RAM in the M1 MacBook Pro took about 3 minutes

with 16GB of RAM. The M1 MacBook Pro brought that down to 2 minutes and 43 seconds, which is faster than

the 16GB 2020 27-inch iMac. And by my calculations, that was about 7% faster

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