8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple

www.macrumors.com 8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple

Following the unveiling of new MacBook Pro models last week, Apple surprised some with the introduction of a base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip,...

8GB RAM on M3 MacBook Pro 'Analogous to 16GB' on PCs, Claims Apple::Following the unveiling of new MacBook Pro models last week, Apple surprised some with the introduction of a base 14-inch MacBook Pro with M3 chip,...

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Holy crap, apple charges $200 to add 8GB of RAM. I just bought 32GB of DDR5 for the Framework I have on order for $95.
- And now look at the actual chip prices and you'll know, why apple is so fucking rich
- They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it's a status symbol.
  Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
  
  The infamous Apple Water...
  
  They'd call it the AppleZeus
  
  That might be true but it’s also embarrassing for all pc brands who get slaughtered by apples performance as soon as they actually attempt to make things. For example there isn’t a single laptop in the windows world that can match anything apple does
  
  Any laptop with a recent GPU will beat an Apple Laptop for performance. Some higher end CPUs too.
  Apple has really good power efficiency, which is great when unpluged, but plugged in laptops with 200 to 300W TDPs are still better.
  
  lol sure if you don’t mind an aircraft carrier and mini oven on your legs. Trust me I used to use one of those 200W laptops and honestly I didn’t even need a blanket in the winter because they run SO hot. not to mention odds are it will last a lot longer not running at those insane temps (which literally approach the max safe operating temp of the CPU on some laptops)
  
  So? I know they get hot, that's what 200-300W means. But when you said "there isn’t a single laptop in the windows world that can match anything apple does", you were wrong. Laptops with GPUs still win in performance.
  Stop moving the goalposts.
  
  Looks like you need to go back to school because that wasn’t even me LMAO, you don’t even know who you’re responding to.
  Stop being so bad at reading.
  I know that there are several Windows laptops that can match M-series performance or even beat it but there are 0 laptops on the market that can do everything better the MacBooks can. With windows you choose between portability, performance, and power usage. You don’t have to sacrifice any on a MacBook.
  
  Hahahahaha
  I have friends who spec for their clients every day (I only do it occasionally). Mac laptops cost anywhere from 50% to 100% more than equivalent Dell and Lenovo laptops (ignoring the even less-costly brands, because none of us spec those).
  They all have access to the same hardware. And MacOS, despite the gaslighting in this article, isn't any more performant on the same hardware in the real world.
  
  They all have access to the same hardware. And MacOS, despite the gaslighting in this article, isn't any more performant on the same hardware in the real world.
  Ah yes please tell me which PC OEMs are using the M-series chips 🙄
  Also AFAIK no other company makes their laptop top case/lid and hinges out of a single piece of metal. ALL other laptops glue/epoxy the hinges to the lid and they will (sooner rather than later) break. So if durability is what you’re looking for Mac’s are still built better than all other laptops.
  
  What a strange boogeyman here. I have a 15 year old HP that was $400 when I bought it and the hinges are still fine.
  
  Literally a lottery. I used to do laptop repair for my job. HP makes the shittiest computers I have EVER seen so you’re extraordinarily lucky.
  I lost count of how many HP laptops with broken hinges came across my desk. Too many. If you don’t know this issues exists it’s willful ignorance
  
  Try buying laptops at same price as MacBooks. Of course they'll break if you buy a 100$ laptop from wish. Try galaxy books or Lenovo yoga
  
  Have you ever actually seen a laptop lid just break off because the epoxy failed, or is this just a hypothetical? I used my last laptop for around 8 years, I took it with me to college every day in a backpack, on public transit. It got thrown around, scratched up, but the hinges didn't break lol
  
  Have you ever actually seen a laptop lid just break off because the epoxy failed
  Macbook.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
  Macbook
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
  
  I have tbh
  It was a shitty gaming laptop, but the hinges broke within a couple years. Still cost me nearly $2k at the time. I highly regret not buying the equivalent MacBook I was offered
  
  Yes, several. Acer Nitro, Dell Inspiron 7000 series, several Lenovo Yogas, too many HPs to even keep track… If you have done laptop repairs at all for work in your life it’s honestly not even an uncommon sight.
  Now in the last generation of MacBook apple made it so that the flex cables were too short and flexing the hinge back and forth over time would cause the screen to go, but I’ve never seen a MacBook with broken hinges from normal use.
  Other brands do not do this because it is cheaper. Most do not pass those savings off to customers.
  
  Ah yes please tell me which PC OEMs are using the M-series chips 🙄
  RP2040. Cortex M-series. :wheeze:
  hinges out of a single piece of metal.
  I'm trying to imagine hinge that is one solid object. I guess you bend you laptop to close it.
  
  I’m trying to imagine the mental gymnastics you must have gone through to conjure that up :wheeze:
  
  Circumstances outside gaming where any high end laptop isn’t good enough is pretty niche and I don’t think this really matters to most consumers. I would prefer to run Linux but at work, my options are Windows or MacOS. It’s a pretty easy choice. Apple products are great when someone else is paying for them.
  
  This is mainly due to Windows being incompetent getting an ARM version of Windows in a usable state.
  Snapdragon claims to have a M2 level ARM chip for desktop/laptop. It will likely be pretty comparable to the M2, but what OS will it run? Not Windows. In fact at the enterprise level, Lenovo is selling laptops with Android in desktop mode.
  So, once that chip is released, I am guessing you will see great options with Linux and Android. Who knows, maybe Microsoft will surprise us with an update that lets Windows run reasonable well on ARM.
- Won't someone please consider that Apple has to spend all the extra effort soldering the ram to the motherboard?? Only $200 extra is a steal!
- They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it's a status symbol.
  Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
- They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it's a status symbol.
  Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
- They have so much prestige and influence under their name that their super fans would buy anything from them at 1000% markup all because it's a status symbol.
  Hell, they could sell bottles of piss and the super fans would gladly sell off all their sperm/eggs and all unnecessary organs just to get a drop of it because sTaTuS SyMbOl.
- DDR5 runs at 52GB/s. Apple uses RAM that runs at up to 800GB/s (if you have enough, gets faster the more you have since it runs in parallel... but it's never as slow as DDR5).
  
  Huge doubt here. Apple RAM is LPDDR5. That's Low Power DDR5.
  Citing this site:
  LPDDR5 runs up to 6400 Mbps with many low-power and RAS features including a novel clocking architecture for easier timing closure. DDR5 DRAMs with a data-rate up to 6400 Mbps support higher density including a dual-channel DIMM topology for higher channel efficiency and performance.
  I'm looking at the Apple M2 Wikipedia page and it has the 800GB/s number you have, but that's gotta be something like RAM speed times number of RAM unit blocks for overall bandwidth.
  Apple RAM is not magically 15 times faster than DDR5.
  
  tl;dr
  The memory bandwidth isn't magic, nor special, but generally meaningless. MT/s matter more, but Apple's non-magic is generally higher than the industry standard in compact form factors.
  Long version:
  How are such wrong numbers are so widely upvoted? The 6400Mbps is per pin.
  Generally, DDR5 has a 64-bit data bus. The standard names also indicate the speeds per module: PC5-32000 transfers 32GB/s with 64-bits at 4000MT/s, and PC5-64000 transfers 64GB/s with 64-bits at 8000MT/s. With those speeds, it isn't hard for a DDR5 desktop or server to reach similar bandwidth.
  Apple doubles the data bus from 64-bits to 128-bits (which is still nothing compared to something like an RTX 4090, with a 384-bit data bus). With that, Apple can get 102.4GB/s with just one module instead of the standard 51.2GB/s. The cited 800GB/s is with 8: most comparable hardware does not allow 8 memory modules.
  Ironically, the memory bandwidth is pretty much irrelevant compared to the MT/s. To quote Dell defending their CAMM modules:
  In a 12th-gen Intel laptop using two SO-DIMMs, for example, you can reach DDR5/4800 transfer speeds. But push it to a four-DIMM design, such as in a laptop with 128GB of RAM, and you have to ratchet it back to DDR5/4000 transfer speeds.
  That contradiction makes it hard to balance speed, capacity, and upgradability. Even the upcoming Core Ultra 9 185H seems rated for 5600 MT/s-- after 2 years, we're almost getting PC laptops that have the memory speed of Macbooks. This wasn't Apple being magical, but just taking advantage of OEMs dropping the ball on how important memory can be to performance. The memory bandwidth is just the cherry on top.
  The standard supports these speeds and faster. To be clear, these speeds and capacity don't do ANYTHING to support "8GB is analogous to..." statements. It won't take magic to beat, but the PC industry doesn't yet have much competition in the performance and form factors Apple is targeting. In the meantime, Apple is milking its customers: The M3s have the same MT/s and memory technology as two years ago. It's almost as if they looked at the next 6-12 months and went: "They still haven't caught up, so we don't need too much faster, yet-- but we can make a lot of money until while we wait."
  
  Faster isn’t everything. Less, faster ram is only applicable to a few application, where more, slower ram is going to benefit everything.
  It’s definitely comparable because that’s what it’s competing against. 16gb of Ram is 16gb of Ram, no matter how fast it is. Pricing it at 2-3x the cost for any other equivalent isn’t competitive at all.
  
  You're comparing single channel performance to entire system performance.
  That statement simply means the most highest of the high end Mac has 16 memory channels (admittedly more than EPYCs 12, but EPYC is in the ballpark). The mere mortal entry M2 has two channels, just like almost every desktop/laptop grade x86 CPU. They are not getting 800 out of only 8Gb of modules.
  
  I'm really interested in this kinda thing, do you have sources I can read?
  What I found was DDR5 runs at a max of 64 GB/s, and the M2 Pro runs at 400 GB/s. ~~I can't find anything about it being faster due to running in parallel.~~ Edit:I found it, looks like the M2 Ultra runs at 800 GB/s, cool. If I'm reading correctly, this was done by connecting two M2 Pros
  Also, the PS5 allegedly has over 400GB/s bandwidth just for perspective
  
  Note those are comparing different numbers.
  The number you quoted was for a single memory channel.
  A processor has as many memory channels as it feels like. So that 800 number basically means about 16 channels. The M2 plain seems to be about two channels.
  For comparison, x86 desktop CPUs have long been 2 channel designs. You go up the stack and you have things like EPYC having 12 channels.
  So for single socket design, apple likely has a higher max memory performance than you can do single socket in x86 (but would likely turn in lower numbers than a dual socket x86 box).
  
  So to clarify, the M2 Ultra runs at 800 GB/s because it's utilizing multiple memory channels, which is like running dual/quad/etc. channel RAM in an x86 PC. So at the max 64 GB/s bandwidth of DDR5 ram, you could run quad channel and get 256 GB/s right? And getting up to 12 channels of DDR5 could mean a bandwidth of 768 GB/sec?
  Yeah, in that case Apple is definitely over charging. To be fair, my mb can't run 12 channels of RAM but it also won't cost me an arm and a leg and a kidney to have similar performance per GB
  
  Note that I can't think of modem four channel x86. Either they are the usual two channel (two dimms per channel is how four dimm slots are organized) or have way more (Sapphire Rapids, Bergamo)
  To map the M2, the base is about the same as most x86 consumer grade, the Pro is about Threadripper, and the ultra is somewhere between single or dual socket Bergamo, at least in terms of memory bandwidth, which is a highly specific metric.
  
  Oh gotcha, thanks for straightening me out on that. I'm still learning tech so the examples are really helpful
  
  The PS5 uses a unified 16gb of GDDR6, which has really high bandwidth for graphics applications. Apple is full of shit about their LPDDR5.
  
  Sorry you got down voted so hard. Your comment spawned a lot of discussion which is a good thing.

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