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Comment by LeifCarrotson | Hacker News Reader

I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:

> ...the new MacBook Pro starts with 16GB of faster unified memory with support for up to 32GB, along with 120GB/s of memory bandwidth...

I haven't been an Apple user since 2012 when I graduated from college and retired my first computer, a mid-2007 Core2 Duo Macbook Pro, which I'd upgraded with a 2.5" SSD and 6GB of RAM with DDR2 SODIMMs. I switched to Dell Precision and Lenovo P-series workstations with user-upgradeable storage and memory... but I've got 64GB of RAM in the old 2019 Thinkpad P53 I'm using right now. A unified memory space is neat, but is it worth sacrificing that much space? I typically have a VM or two running, and in the host OS and VMs, today's software is hungry for RAM and it's typically cheap and upgradeable outside of the Apple ecosystem.

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> I'm pleased that the Pro's base memory starts at 16 GB, but surprised they top out at 32 GB:

That's an architectural limitation of the base M4 chip, if you go up to the M4 Pro version you can get up to 48GB, and the M4 Max goes up to 128GB.

The "base level" Max is limited at 36GB. You have to get the bigger Max to get more.

The new mac mini also has an M4 Pro that goes up to 64GB.

The M4 tops off at 32 GB

The M4 Pro goes up to 48 GB

The M4 Max can have up to 128 GB

It doesn't look this cut and dry.

M4 Max 14 core has a single option of 36GB.

M4 Max 16 core lets you go up to 128GB.

So you can actually get more ram with the Pro than the base level Max.

It seems you need the M4 Max with the 40-core GPU to go over 36GB.

The M4 Pro with 14‑core CPU & 20‑core GPU can do 48GB.

If you're looking for ~>36-48GB memory, here's the options:

$2,800 = 48GB, Apple M4 Pro chip with 14‑core CPU, 20‑core GPU

$3,200 = 36GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 14‑core CPU, 32‑core GPU

$3,600 = 48GB, Apple M4 Max chip with 16‑core CPU, 40‑core GPU

So the M4 Pro could get you a lot of memory, but less GPU cores. Not sure how much those GPU cores factor in to performance, I only really hear complaints about the memory limits... Something to consider if looking to buy in this range of memory.

Of course, a lot of people here probably consider it not a big deal to throw an extra 3 grand on hardware, but I'm a hobbyist in academia when it comes to AI, I don't big 6-figure salaries :-)

Somehow I got downvoted for pointing this out, but it's weird that you have to spend an extra $800 USD just to be able to surpass 48gb, and "upgrading" to the base level Max chip decreases your ram limit, especially when the M4 Pro on the Mac Mini goes up to 64gb. Like... that's a shit load of cash to put out if you need more ram but don't care for more cores. I was really hoping to finally upgrade to something with 64gb, or maybe 96 or 128 if it decreased in price, but it's they removed the 96 and kept 64 and 128 severely out of reach.

Do I get 2 extra CPU cores, build a budget gaming PC, or subscribe to creative suite for 2.5 years!?

I haven't done measurements on this, but my Macbook Pro feels much faster at swapping than any Linux or Windows device I've used. I've never used an M.2 SSD so maybe that would be comparable, but swapping is pretty much seamless. There's also some kind of memory compression going on according to Activity Monitor, not sure if that's normal on other OSes.

Yes, other M.2 SSDs have comparable performance when swapping, and other operating systems compress memory, too — though I believe not as much as MacOS.

Although machines with Apple Silicon swap flawlessly, I worry about degrading the SSD, which is non-replaceable. So ultimately I pay for more RAM and not need swapping at all.

Degrading the SSD is a good point. This is thankfully a work laptop so I don't care if it lives or dies, but it's something I'll have to consider when I eventually get my own Mac.

No it's true.

Apple has hardware accelerated compressed swapping.

Windows has compressed swapping.

And Linux is a mess. You have to manually configure a non-resizable compressed zram, or use it without compression on a non-resizable swap partition.

On the standard M4 processor. If you move the M4 Pro it tops out at 48gb or moving to the M4 Max goes up to 128gb.

Weird that the M4 Pro in the Mac mini can go up to 64GB. Maybe a size limitation on the MBP motherboard or SOC package?

Probably just Apple designing the pricing ladder.

It looks like different versions of the ‘Pro’ based on core count and memory bandwidth. Im assuming the 12c Mini M4 Pro has the same memory bandwidth/channels enabled as the 14c MBP M4 Pro, enabling the 64GB. My guess would be related to binning and or TDP.

The 96GB RAM option of the M3 Max disappeared.

The max memory is dependent on which tier M4 chip you get. The M4 max chip will let you configure up to 128gb of ram

It looks like the 14 core M4 Max only allows 36GB of ram. The M4 Pro allows for up to 48GB. It's a bit confusing.

Interesting tidbit: MacBook Airs also now start at 16GB. Same price!

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