KITA

mpantone said:

Dead_Pool said:

But I thought Macs were so efficient that they needed only 8 GBs?

It was pre-Apple Intelligence.

Many closely watching Apple’s AI efforts expect their LLM to take up around 6GB of RAM leaving little for applications. Increasing RAM to 16GB provides far more headroom which will be crucial if the user enables Apple Intelligence.

16 GB should have been the minimum when the M1 launched to provide the longevity and premium experience that Apple aims for.

StrangeDays said:

KITA said:

debonbon said:

Slow news day,

There are plenty of more interesting things to report on at Computex than this.

For example, AMD's new mobile chips (Strix Point) shipping July 2024:

Raw performance is not the draw. Compute power per watt, is. How power efficient is this chip being compared to Apple Silicon? Is it fanless?

TDP = 28W
cTDP = 15W-54W

The M3 used in their testing was in a MacBook Pro 14"

Implementation by each OEM will differ (a number of devices have already been announced). I doubt it will be used in a fanless device though.

For thin and light devices, expect the 15W TDP or 28W TDP.



For larger and higher end configurations, we'll probably see this with a higher TDP and paired with a dGPU - likely NVIDIA in some devices:



Here's a laptop with it from ASUS at Computex (seen in the NVIDIA slide above), the Zephyrus G16:

- AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX 370
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
- 16" 240 Hz OLED, 100% DCI-P3, NVIDIA G-Sync
- 4 lbs

debonbon said:

Slow news day,

There are plenty of more interesting things to report on at Computex than this.

For example, AMD's new mobile chips (Strix Point) shipping July 2024:

Mike Wuerthele said:

KITA said:

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

y2an said:

Given the Surface has a fan, why compare it to the MacBook Airs rather than the MacBook Pros?

Surface Laptop 15" is $1299 for Snapdragon X Elite with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

MacBook Air 15" is $1299 for M3 with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

Microsoft doesn't mention unified memory in its marketing, so it could be DDR for the Surface which is approximately 50% as efficient as unified memory. If so, the RAM difference in this comparison is negligible. I also wonder what the SSD speed is for the Surface. The M3 MBA SSD has a read speed of 2880 and a write speed of 2108. 

8 GB of RAM is still 8 GB of RAM.



The NPU may take 8 GB of RAM just for itself at times. 16 GB was chosen as the minimum for a reason.

How do you explain this video? It compares a 16GB $2000 Mac laptop with unified memory versus a 16GB $2100 Windows laptop with DDR. If what you were saying were true, then the results could be expected to mostly similar. Instead, the Windows laptop isn't even remotely close to the performance of 16GB unified memory. There are other tests by the same channel where an 8GB unified memory system is only beaten by 10% or 11% in performance versus a 16GB DDR system. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al1OAg9Gin8

The comparison was 8 GB vs 16 GB. When the ram usage is maxed out, clearly, unified or not, it has to swap with the SSD. Hence my statement about 8 GB still being 8 GB.

If you want to pay even more for 16 GB on the Mac, that's fine, but that's not what I wrote in my earlier post, nor is what you quoted.

I'd also point out the test I listed was done by the same channel as the video you posted:

"So you guys can see that 8 GB is not the same as 16, especially when you're actually going to be using the system" 

I urge you to exercise caution with this YouTube channel.

They generally start with a conclusion that they want to prove, and concoct a scenario to get there to "prove" it.

Was there a big falling-out when Vadim departed?

I'm usually cautious with most YouTube channels (along with the majority of things I read or hear online). In this case though, their testing methods appear reasonably transparent.

This is another video that does a nice job of breaking down potential issues with RAM limitations and swap-memory:



My point still stands on the limitations of 8 GB of RAM compared to 16 GB. Traditionally, this may have varied depending on what the user was doing with their device. Moving forward, the limitation may be especially true when running inference on an NPU. This is a scenario where the RAM usage can be quite heavy, similarly, this is a task that may enter many mainstream user's regular workflows - hence, the RAM availability may not just be an issue anymore for power users that are trying to do large tasks, or many smaller tasks at the same time.

So contrary to what foregoneconclusion suggested, 8 GB of unified memory does not become a "negligible" comparison with a traditional 16 GB.

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

foregoneconclusion said:

KITA said:

y2an said:

Given the Surface has a fan, why compare it to the MacBook Airs rather than the MacBook Pros?

Surface Laptop 15" is $1299 for Snapdragon X Elite with 16 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

MacBook Air 15" is $1299 for M3 with 8 GB RAM and 256 GB SSD

Microsoft doesn't mention unified memory in its marketing, so it could be DDR for the Surface which is approximately 50% as efficient as unified memory. If so, the RAM difference in this comparison is negligible. I also wonder what the SSD speed is for the Surface. The M3 MBA SSD has a read speed of 2880 and a write speed of 2108. 

8 GB of RAM is still 8 GB of RAM.



The NPU may take 8 GB of RAM just for itself at times. 16 GB was chosen as the minimum for a reason.

How do you explain this video? It compares a 16GB $2000 Mac laptop with unified memory versus a 16GB $2100 Windows laptop with DDR. If what you were saying were true, then the results could be expected to mostly similar. Instead, the Windows laptop isn't even remotely close to the performance of 16GB unified memory. There are other tests by the same channel where an 8GB unified memory system is only beaten by 10% or 11% in performance versus a 16GB DDR system. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Al1OAg9Gin8

The comparison was 8 GB vs 16 GB. When the ram usage is maxed out, clearly, unified or not, it has to swap with the SSD. Hence my statement about 8 GB still being 8 GB.

If you want to pay even more for 16 GB on the Mac, that's fine, but that's not what I wrote in my earlier post, nor is what you quoted.

I'd also point out the test I listed was done by the same channel as the video you posted:

"So you guys can see that 8 GB is not the same as 16, especially when you're actually going to be using the system"