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,...
I don't disagree that the M processors need less RAM, but the idea that they need half as much is bullshit. My poor little 8GB M1 struggles with more than 20 chrome tabs open, and it especially struggles when running apps that aren't built to be M1 compatible (through Rosetta).
They share ram with gpu, which means they need more of it for equivalent memory space, not less. There’s no magic that makes less memory work like more other than swap, and swap is slow as fuck, even with a high speed ssd (which the m3’s actually have slower ones).
It's an entirely different architecture, so every program needs less RAM (with exceptions like I mentioned above). That's why they're using shared RAM; because they can pull it off (mostly).
ARM is pretty efficient, that's true. But an 8 gig video will always be an 8 gig video. No amount of processing and compression and swap tricks will make it occupy any less space without a massive hit to performance that an x86-64 arch with 16+GB of ram won't have to endure.