[bluedino]

There's this hivemind on Reddit that believes M1 chips use memory 'more efficiently' and an '8GB machine is like a 16GB machine'

Having run Linux side by side with Mac OS since 2010, I'm not sure if it amazes me how much more memory the Mac uses or how efficient Linux is.

[ehutch79]

Nope that first line is not true. 8gb does not feel the same as 16gb

I had the 8gb for work, and i was routinely using about 10gb. Switching apps or desktops meant changing chunks of memory in and out of swap. it was noticeable most when switching 'spaces', since video memory is shared with that 8gb and was also swapped.

Honestly it was ms teams that was the worst offender for ram, even running all my dev environment stuff and other electron apps.

[bombcar]

The M* chips have a very fast connection to the SSD so swap is less noticeable if you're basically running two memory heavy programs but only using one at a time (the other will swap out and can swap back in very fast).

[GrabbinD33ze69]

Don't M1 chips just have some advantage with using hardware dedicated to constantly compress & decompress memory based on whether it's relevant or not to what the user is doing? Obviously this isn't unique to apple, I just read it was something the m1 chips could do quickly.

[imwillofficial]

It’s not a hive mind, I had my intel MacBook Pro and M1 MacBook Pro side by side with the same apps open.

One was using 10GB, the M1 was using a little over 5GB of memory.