MacBook Pro 13" Retina - do I need 16gb RAM

[MHB]

I'm looking at one of these, which has 8gb Ram and 512SSD as standard. I had planned to upgrade to 16gb Ram as a bit of 'future proofing', but based on that fact it'll only be used for general office duties and watching a few movies, wondered if it's needed?

I'm also at Gatwick today, and they have the standard 8gb model at a £150 saving on the price from Apple??

Any thoughts welcome.

[AndrewEH1]

16GB of RAM is pretty big, unless you are doing lots of media creation (music, HD/4K Video)

[BigJonMcQuimm]

As you cannot upgrade it - I would say yes.

That is the decision I went for ;-)

[Shaoxter]

You'd struggle to use 8GB of RAM just using office, watching the videos and surfing the internet. Unless you have some really really complicated spreadsheets.

At the prices Apple charge for RAM upgrades it's not worth it... but then there's lots of people who buy £2k laptops to do nothing other than a bit of web browsing

[Jakg]

BigJonMcQuimm said:

As you cannot upgrade it - I would say yes.

That is the decision I went for ;-)

^ this ^

I had a first generation one with 8GB of RAM and it wasn't enough (although I use it very heavily). On the next one I made sure to configure it properly because it couldn't be changed later.

[AndrewEH1]

I think I put the max RAM on my MBP 15" Retina when I bought it in 2012 (12GB?). Completely solid when editing video, and photographs.

Although I have managed to slow it down when I once opened 100+ tabs on FireFox accidentially!

[theboss]

Just get it... it's much better to have 16GB and not need it, than 8GB (non-upgradeable) becoming a constraint. The modest additional outlay might well extend the useful lifetime of the machine by a couple of years.

[Riff Raff]

Just out of interest, will the fact that the machine has a SSD make a difference to the amount of RAM you need?

I'm thinking that when you run out of RAM, the OS uses a swap file on the hard disk. In times gone bye, reading and writing to a conventional hard disk was comparatively s l o w. Reading and writing to a SSD won't be as quick as reading and writing to RAM, but it will be pretty quick.

So what's the answer?

[The Nur]

Mine has 8gb and I haven't slowed it down yet, had it nearly a year.

Which reminds me, I really should renew that Applecare...

[JulianHJ]

BigJonMcQuimm said:

As you cannot upgrade it - I would say yes.

That is the decision I went for ;-)

Me too.

[MHB]

Thanks for all the replies, and in usual PH fashion opinions are divided!

From a purely financial perspective, I can get the 8gb version for £1,249 or the 16gb for £1,559 - so the question is, for those who recommend going for the 16gb, is it worth £310 more for an additional 8gb?

[AndrewEH1]

If you have the cash and want the higher spec then go for it!

£300 isn't too much and you can't do it later, might give it a better second hand value too.

[GregK2]

£310 for 8gb of extra RAM is insane IMO. I have a small form relatively powerful laptop and with 8gb of good quality RAM has never suffered with any slow down in the slightest.

[mojitomax]

Last year I bought a fully specced 15inch MacBook Pro.

I specced up the ram to 16GB.

My thinking was that previously I had had a white MacBook for 6 years. During that time I upgraded the ram to get a couple more years life from it. You can't do that with the new ones.

Whilst 8GB may be enough for now (especially with apples memory compression and an sad swap disk) putting 16GB in may extend it's life for a few more years.

I can run aperture and photoshop side by side with Safari, mail and other guff on a second monitor with no problems.

Hope that helps

[GregK2]

I've just opened 8 webpages in seperate tabs, stuck a blu ray video on, opened itunes and put a youtube video on all simultaneously, 35% usage of 8gb memory just for a vague idea of what general use would use. Admittedly it's Windows 8.1 and not a Mac though.

[Shaoxter]

MHB said:

I can get the 8gb version for £1,249 or the 16gb for £1,559 - so the question is, for those who recommend going for the 16gb, is it worth £310 more for an additional 8gb?

£310 is ridiculous when the market price for 8GB of RAM is £50-60. I know there's a markup on Apple upgrades but didn't think it was that bad.

It's really up to you and your usage but unless you're doing serious work 8GB is more than enough. "Future-proofing" applies more to games and photo/video editing which get more powerful, watching videos and surfing the internet don't really. Also like options on a car they depreciate to almost zero when you come to sell it because 32/64GB RAM will probably be standard by then.

I keep a 7 year old laptop (Windows 7) in the kitchen for watching stuff and surfing the internet - it has 3GB RAM and still runs fine. You can avoid slowdowns by formatting your laptop once in a while and keeping your SSD in good shape (would advise you to read up on this if you're not sure), it's not always because of insufficient power/RAM.

[IATM]

I am the type of person that if I think it is worthwhile to pay for the extra or it will be 100% needed for an upgrade or item then I will do it.

However in this case I would not; there are a few reasons for this.

1) The IOS software is very good and has very light use of resources
2) 8GB by any standards and I would say atleast 5 years to come will be fine
3) There WILL be a way in a couple of years time to upgrade the ram - not officially from apple but 100% there will be a way created by all the apple repair shops we have
4) as someone has indicated even under heavy use the 8GB copes very very well - some people have a 16gb in their PC but it is still laggy and this is because they do not have an SSD drive or I trust Apple used a PCI-E SSD of some sort; what ever it is, it is a bloody fast disk drive.
5) Unless you are going to be using photoshop daily for loooong periods of time with other editing software - you will not need 16gb. I use photoshop and website building software that was very software intensive and 8gb is still enough for that.

With the information I have provided above coupled with the fact that its 310 pounds for an extra 8gb is crazy.
So unless you are very very wealthy and just don't give a crap about money then get 16gb or if you are a very wealthy but still care about spending/wasting money then just get 8gb. the 512GB SSD is more important in my opinion!

[Jakg]

IATM said:

I am the type of person that if I think it is worthwhile to pay for the extra or it will be 100% needed for an upgrade or item then I will do it.

However in this case I would not; there are a few reasons for this.

1) The IOS software is very good and has very light use of resources
2) 8GB by any standards and I would say atleast 5 years to come will be fine
3) There WILL be a way in a couple of years time to upgrade the ram - not officially from apple but 100% there will be a way created by all the apple repair shops we have
4) as someone has indicated even under heavy use the 8GB copes very very well - some people have a 16gb in their PC but it is still laggy and this is because they do not have an SSD drive or I trust Apple used a PCI-E SSD of some sort; what ever it is, it is a bloody fast disk drive.
5) Unless you are going to be using photoshop daily for loooong periods of time with other editing software - you will not need 16gb. I use photoshop and website building software that was very software intensive and 8gb is still enough for that.

With the information I have provided above coupled with the fact that its 310 pounds for an extra 8gb is crazy.
So unless you are very very wealthy and just don't give a crap about money then get 16gb or if you are a very wealthy but still care about spending/wasting money then just get 8gb. the 512GB SSD is more important in my opinion!

The MacBook Retina has been out for 2 years - people have managed to upgrade the hard drive, but not the memory. It's soldered to the motherboard. Other manufacturers have done the same thing - no-one has been able to upgrade them. I really doubt anyone will think of a way, either.

I would also say 5 years is pushing it - 5 years ago the very first generation i7's came out for example. That's a long time ago!

Plus, it's £160 extra for 16GB vs 8GB. It's not cheap - but it's not £310!

[GregK2]

As already pointed out by IATM, the hard disk makes much more difference than RAM.

4gb of RAM with SSD is quicker than 5400RPM HDD with 16gb RAM
Difference between 8 & 16 with SSD is negligeable

[MHB]

Jakg said:

Plus, it's £160 extra for 16GB vs 8GB. It's not cheap - but it's not £310!

The 8GB version is £1,249 in Dixons at Gatwick (£150 off the Apple price), but they can't do the 16GB version as this is only available on line. This would be the Apple price + £160 for the extra 8GB - hence the £310 difference.