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Need Help with MacBook Pro Purchase
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Need Help with MacBook Pro Purchase
My son is heading to college this fall and will be majoring in Graphic Design / Marketing. The university suggests a mac book pro. We are looking at getting a 14" m2 macbook pro with some upgraded storage. His budget allows for 1 more upgrade, we are trying to decide between upgrading the processor to either the M2 PRO 12/19/16 or the M2 Max 12/30/16, or upgrading the Ram to 32GB. I understand the basics of what the benefits of each are but with regards to a college curriculum in his major i am not sure what the software he will be using will best take advantage of. Thanks in advance for any help.
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rm5
I would upgrade the RAM.
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rm5
rm5
macrumors 65816
Mar 4, 2022
1,448
1,370
United States
I also recommend upgrading the RAM to 32 GB! The machine will last him longer.
OldMacs4Me
macrumors 68000
May 4, 2018
1,805
24,173
Wild Rose And Wind Belt
Apple has become more and more dependent on file swapping to the HD or more correctly the SSD. It also has a history of increasing RAM requirements almost annually. As a result I have seen recommendations to maintain as much as 50% of the SSD as free space. Extra RAM should help relieve some of that additional strain on the SSD, and give some leeway for future system updates.
dmccloud
macrumors 68030
Sep 7, 2009
2,583
1,342
Anchorage, AK
Anyone recommending users keep 50% of the SSD as free space is literally recommending people spend money for something they aren't getting the full benefits from. With that being said, going to 32GB would minimize the amount of swap needed (let alone used), so there would be no need to use 50% or less of the SSD at all times. Right now I have Firefox, VS Code, and Docker running and I'm not using any swap on my Mac.Apple has become more and more dependent on file swapping to the HD or more correctly the SSD. It also has a history of increasing RAM requirements almost annually. As a result I have seen recommendations to maintain as much as 50% of the SSD as free space. Extra RAM should help relieve some of that additional strain on the SSD, and give some leeway for future system updates.
Memory is a good idea. Why? If the CPU is a bit slow then everything takes longer. But if you run out of memory, the system will grind to a halt. 16GiB RAM are already the lower limit for any professional use, whereas the 10 CPU cores are plenty.
Reactions:
rm5
I would also recommend upgrading the ram with one caveat. You didn't mention the storage plan. If you subscribe to Apple's 2TB iCloud plan and he's on your plan, I'd probably keep the storage at 512 GB. If you think he will need more local storage (and graphic design could get into large files), then you might want to go back up to 1 TB or so. I got my daughter max storage of the MBA 24GB and 1Tb so she always had her files locally. I would not upgrade the processor since Silicon is so powerful.
JPack
macrumors G4
Mar 27, 2017
10,942
19,725
Neither. I'd put that money towards a better external monitor.
If you look at real world benchmarks, the performance difference from 16GB to 32GB is small except for working professionals. Unless you're working with massive 300MP panoramas or running virtualization, that 32GB option won't make a difference. Someone in college simply isn't running those workloads. Keep in mind MacBook Pro already has excellent SSD storage speeds in the unlikely event you exceed physical RAM.
If you look at real world benchmarks, the performance difference from 16GB to 32GB is small except for working professionals. Unless you're working with massive 300MP panoramas or running virtualization, that 32GB option won't make a difference. Someone in college simply isn't running those workloads. Keep in mind MacBook Pro already has excellent SSD storage speeds in the unlikely event you exceed physical RAM.
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