8GB vs 16GB M1 MacBook Pro - How much RAM do you NEED?!

Hey guys, this is Vadim with Max Tech, and in this video, I'm gonna answer the question that you guys have been asking me for days now, and finally, we have this video. Of course, we've been working overtime. I've got coffee right here, because I'm tired. Alright, we have 8GB of RAM on the M1 MacBook Pro right here. This is the base model for $1300, and this model has 16GB of RAM. This is the model that's $1500. In this video, I'm gonna be focusing on comparing the differences to see if the extra 8GB of RAM is worth it, and also to see if this model, the base model with 8GB, is enough because this new unified architecture for the memory, it's definitely so much better and so much more efficient than Intel machines as you guys saw in our previous videos when we compared the Intel models compared to the new M1 models. So without further ado, let's get into it. The first test we're gonna run is Geekbench 5, which is very sensitive to RAM or memory, so we have 8GB right here as you can see, 16GB right there. Let's go ahead and start the benchmark. Now what's really awesome about this video is Max was able to find an app that is able to measure the sensors correctly. Right here, it's iStatistica, I think. Right here, we show the RAM, we show the processor power, we show everything. And I've also got the temps. So this one is at 27 degrees, this one's at 30 right now. So that's awesome that we found that. Now this is interesting, the 8GB model has less than 1GB free as you can see right here, I don't know if you can see that. Less than 1GB free, whereas this one has 6.6GB free. So this is actually using more than 8GB of RAM to run this test. Look at that, this one has less than 200MB of RAM free. Look at that, less than 92. So it looks like it just used a lot of RAM for a test, so it's definitely being limited. Alright, we have our scores and this is hilarious guys. Basically the same exact score, only 2 points off on the multi-core, 7463 compared to 7465. So for Geekbench, even though we saw that RAM difference, the scores are identical. Alright, just because I'm curious, I'm just gonna run one run of Cinebench R23, and I'll also open up iStatistica to see if there's any difference in RAM usage. Right off the bat, we have less than 500MB free, definitely using it up, and over here on the 16GB model, less than 3GB free, so it's using much more than 8GB. So we're definitely getting an advantage here, let's see if it makes a difference in the final score. Guys, this is insane. As you guys can see on these temps, this one's at 59C, this one's at 57C while running Cinebench. This is crazy because the Intel models would hit close to 100C, like within 20 seconds. These are so cool, the fans are completely off and silent, I cannot believe this. Alright we have our scores, and they're basically identical, 7600, 7600, no difference here at all, so the RAM didn't really help, but I am gonna run this again, just because I'm curious about the temps, so I'm gonna run it a couple more times and I'll get back to you guys. Guys, this is extremely impressive, they're both at around 70C, nowhere near the 90-99C that the Intel models would always run while doing Cinebench. I have my thermal camera right here, as you guys can see, the 8GB model is at 35C, it's pretty cool, 36C for the 16GB model, so they're basically the same, and this is running so much more cool compared to Intel models, 70C, that's nothing. The fans haven't even turned on, it's insane. Now let's move on to the Logic Pro music production test. We have the new Logic Pro benchmark, you can just Google it and find it. Previously, we were able to run about 94 tracks around that, or we ran it again and we were only able to get like 85 tracks, so I have them both loaded up, 95 tracks, let's see if having more RAM, 16GB instead of 8GB, will basically give you better results, so let's go ahead and run this test. Ooh, that used all the RAM, used all the RAM, they both overloaded, okay, so I'm gonna turn some off here. Alright, I cut it down to 90, let's run it again. I mean, this one's only got 3GB of RAM free, so it's using more than the 8GB, this one's got like 121MB free, I mean, we're definitely using up that RAM. They're not skipping a beat, ha, alright, they both made it all the way through, so I think I'm gonna add two more tracks, retest it. They're both running 93 right now, as you can see, the CPU percentage is both at around 82, 83%, so it's using a lot of the CPU, and for this test, it's an overload test, so if the wattage spikes a little bit too high and you don't get perfect computation or computing, it'll overload the system, and so far, with 93, we're perfectly fine. Now this is interesting, the 16GB model overloaded on 94 tracks, but the 8GB didn't, so it looks like RAM isn't a big deal, at least when you're running a ton of tracks. If you have a lot of third-party plugins that you know use a ton of RAM, obviously, you already know that, so you're gonna wanna go with the 16GB model, but in a test like this, really no difference. Now let's move on to Xcode programming doing a build test, and I'm happy to report that Maxim Eremenko sent us a new updated version of the Max Tech Xcode benchmark, and it is working, so let's go ahead and run it! Alright, they are both building, and you guys should see the CPU going up to 100% here, there you go, 100% right there, 100%, almost, 94 actually, it's not fully maxing out, that's interesting! There you go, now it's 100%, both are 100, let's see which one finishes faster, look at that guys, we're at over 3600, 3800 on that build, only passing 3000 right now on this one, so, so far there's a difference! Looking at the RAM usage, this one has 5.4GB free, this one only has 500MB free. 122 seconds on the 16GB model, the 8GB is still going, 136, so 136 seconds on the 8GB, 122 on the 16GB. So for this Xcode test, the 16GB RAM model of the M1 MacBook Pro is 11% faster than the 8GB model. Now of course, this is gonna change based on how RAM-intensive your builds are in Xcode, but to see an 11% difference with 16GB vs 8GB is pretty refreshing because so far we haven't seen any differences, so at least in Xcode, you do get a little bit more performance. Now it's up to you to decide if spending $200 more for 16GB is worth 11% more performance, but what's really impressive is that 8GB isn't really limiting it that much, at least not as much as people would expect because when they see 8GB, they're like whoa, 8GB is nothing but obviously this unified memory is extremely efficient, so.. Honestly, it's not really bottlenecking it so far. Alright guys, this right here is the ultimate test. Out of all of the apps we've ever run before, Lightroom Classic is the most RAM-intensive app. As you guys can see, on our 27-inch iMac for $2300, the 8-core model, there was a massive difference just by upgrading the RAM as you can see in this chart. Now what makes this test even more interesting is that Lightroom Classic is not updated for Apple Silicon. It's still running the old x86 model that's optimized for Intel, so it's running under Rosetta 2 emulation, so it's not gonna be perfect and it's not fully utilizing that unified memory, so it's gonna be interesting to see if 16GB really helps this test out. The first thing I want to test is simply switching between photos, so a lot of photo editors do this. Let's see if the 16GB is faster. Alright guys, I don't know about you, but 16GB is not really making it have less lag. Now these are large RAW photos, 42MP, and they also have a lot of added changes and effects on them, so really no difference switching between them. Now I want to test out some adjustments. Look at that, perfectly smooth for exposure. Contrast, perfectly smooth. Guys, this is under Rosetta. If you thought you had to wait for an updated Apple Silicon version, you're wrong! I mean, both of them are the same. This one was perfectly smooth. Ah, it's so impressive. Now for the main test, we are going to export these photos, and this is where we should be seeing a difference. Hopefully we should be seeing a difference. Alright, I got my stopwatch ready right here, and we're about to export. I am gonna open up iStatistica to see the RAM usage. Guys, this is insane, look at that. We have less than 400MB, less than 300MB free of memory on the 16GB model, it's utilizing everything. Same thing with the 8GB, so this is obviously being limited in Lightroom Classic, and I can already see the progress bar advancing on the 16GB model. This is interesting, I'm now starting to hear the fans on both of them, and that's because we are using some graphics as well. Up to around 44% of the GPU is used along with 100% CPU, so the fans are definitely on. Alright guys, I have the results, and I don't know if this is impressive or not, but the 8GB model finished in 3 minutes, and the 16GB model finished in 2 minutes and 43 seconds, so you're really only saving 17 seconds with the 16GB of RAM, even though we saw that it was completely using all of it. I mean, so far, the 8GB model is very impressive because that's not that big of a difference. But what will blow your mind is that we already ran this test with the 2020 iMac, the 27-inch 8-core model with 16GB of RAM just like this M1 MacBook Pro, it cost $2300 and it finished this exact test in 2 minutes and 50 seconds. This M1 MacBook Pro with 16GB of RAM is faster than the desktop iMac with 16GB of RAM that cost $2300. Now we are seeing a difference between the 8GB model and the 16GB model, but to be completely honest, 17 seconds that you're saving going for 16GB honestly isn't that much. I totally expected a much larger difference because this is running under Rosetta, and this was using all of the available memory. The main takeaway for this test is that 8GB is not really limiting you because it's running under Rosetta, and it's almost as fast as a $2300 iMac that was just released like less than 6 months ago. Now let's finally get into video editing with Final Cut Pro. I have a 5-minute test, it's 4K H.264 which is a very standard format that a lot of YouTubers use, and this also has extra LUTs and added film grain, and let's go ahead and export and see if there's gonna be a difference in the time. Now looking at our RAM usage, we've got less than 700MB on this MacBook Pro, and less than 3GB on the 16, so it is using more than 8GB to run this export test. Alright, they both just finished with the exact same time for exporting this, 3 minutes and 5 seconds. That is actually very impressive, you know why? Because even the best i9 16-inch MacBook Pro took around 3 minutes and 20 seconds. The reason for that is because that speed on the 16-inch was limited by the video encoders. The GPU was completely fine, but these are limited by the GPUs. That's because these new M1 MacBooks have new video encoders that are faster than the ones that are in the 16-inch MacBook Pro, so these are blowing away every 16-inch, at least for regular 4K H.264 video editing, which is absolutely mind-blowing. Now to make it a little bit more interesting, I have a 10-bit HEVC 60FPS clip, it's 1 minute on each of these, and I'm going to export this. Alright, there you go, the 16GB finished a split second sooner, but 1 minute and 12 seconds for both of these, so for this kind of task, no difference in RAM. Alright, let's run one more test, this is 8K Red Raw, a 1-minute clip which is gonna be exporting to 4K UHD, so let's go ahead and start it. Alright guys, this is actually very interesting. The 16GB model, the GPU is 100% maxed out, as you guys can see right there, but on the 8GB, it's only running at about 80%, which means it's probably being limited by the memory. As you can see, there's about 100MB free on the 8GB, and about 1GB free on the 16GB, so it looks like in this more extreme 8K Red Raw test, we're finally starting to see a difference in video editing. This is actually very interesting because the 8GB should be maxing out the graphics to export this as fast as possible, but it's not. And because of that, looking at the temps, the 16GB is at 62 degrees Celsius right now, but this one's at 47! It's staying cool because it doesn't have to do that big of a workload, just jump down to 42 degrees! Now just because I'm curious, I wanna look at the temps here, the 8GB is at 32 degrees Celsius compared to 35 degrees Celsius on the 16GB, so this one's definitely being used much more, as I can see it's 70 degrees Celsius on the chip itself, compared to 50 degrees Celsius on the chip, wow, this is a big difference, it's being used much more. This is insane guys, these are the results that I have been waiting for! The 16GB is currently at 76%, 77, the 8GB is only at 16%, guys, the 16GB model just finished, the 8GB is at 21%, that is incredible! I'm gonna wait for this to finish. While the 8GB model is finishing up, I'm about to blow your mind! This 16GB M1 MacBook Pro for $1500 finished the export in 5 minutes and 59 seconds! Guess how long the export took for the 16-inch MacBook Pro with the i9 8-core processor and 32 gigs of RAM with the 5500M graphics, that model is priced at $3500, compared to $1500 with the 13-inch M1 MacBook Pro, that model took 5 and a half minutes, compared to this one taking 5 minutes and 59 seconds. Keep in mind that the 5500M graphics is much more powerful than the one in this model, and with 16GB of memory compared to 32GB on that 16-inch, 29 second difference is honestly not that much, so if you're thinking that 16GB is a limitation, not really, I mean this is performing close to the best 16-inch, that is just mind-boggling! Alright guys, the 8GB model is finally finished with the export, let me remind you that the 16GB took 5 minutes and 59 seconds, the 8GB took 13 minutes and 57 seconds, so the 16GB model is over 2.3x faster in this crazy 8K export, and that is definitely worth the extra $200 for the 16GB RAM upgrade! Now let's finally answer the main two questions that we have, is it worth upgrading from 8GB to 16GB of RAM? Well, for the most RAM-intensive app, which is Lightroom Classic, we only got 10% faster or better performance with the 16GB model, which is honestly not that much, and even in Xcode, it was 11% faster with 16GB of RAM. Now I personally think that it's not worth spending the extra $200 unless you're extremely serious about squeezing every little bit of drop of performance out of the M1 chip, because 10% performance, that's not a deal-breaker for most people unless you're doing this kind of stuff all day and you need it to happen ASAP. However, in the most extreme video editing, it is definitely worth it because you're getting 2.3x faster performance with 6GB of memory. But for anything else, for regular 4K editing, HEVC, things like that, there really isn't a difference, so 8GB is surprisingly totally fine and it's performing so well compared to the previous Intel MacBooks, even the 16-inch model. So in my personal opinion, most people should be fine going with the base 8GB model and they really shouldn't worry about performance because it's doing so well, better than we expected. And to make it even better, Amazon is currently selling the base model for $50 off, so if you're interested in buying this model, definitely check out the link down in the description below. Now to answer the second question, is 16GB of RAM limiting, I would say NO, because this is performing almost the same as a crazy high-end $3500 16-inch MacBook Pro that had 32GB of RAM. This is performing almost the same with a weaker GPU with only 16GB, so Apple's unified memory is extremely efficient, and it seems like 16GB on Apple's unified memory is similar to 32GB with the old Intel systems, so it's extremely impressive and 16GB isn't really gonna limit you. So there you guys have it, hopefully this test answered your questions on memory, and if it helped you out, go ahead and click that circle above to subscribe because we're really trying to hit 500K subs before the end of the year, thank you guys so much, and definitely check out those two videos of the M1 MacBooks Thanks for watching and we'll see you in the next video!