8GB vs 16GB

roxics

roxics

Veteran
I'm looking for a new computer I can edit on. Mostly GH4 footage and 1080p off Canon cameras.
I've spent two weeks now researching as much as I could. I've been looking to switch from my macs to a PC laptop.
My conclusion so far:
Tons of awesome specs on the PC side, but everyone tells horror stories about tech support and quality control issues.
It's scared me enough to go back to looking at Apple machines. But price is a factor, I don't want to go north of $2000 including tax. Honestly I didn't really want to go north of $1600 when I was looking at PC machines but Apple is pushing me there.

I priced out a new 13" macbook pro with 3.1GHz i5, 8GB of ram and a 512GB SSD for $1900. $100 less than what Apple sells it for. Bumping the ram to 16GB pushes this machine to $2200. Is 16GB worth $300 more?

I've got 16GB in my 2012 mac mini and 8GB in the late 2008 macbook. Honestly I can't tell the difference. I also edit on a PC at my day job that only has 8GB of ram and everything seems fine. So am I just concerned for no reason?

I want the Kabylake CPU because I want the H.265 support, so nothing older in on the table for me.
 
Dell and HP both make workstation laptops that fall into your prices, support shouldn't be an issue at that level and they should have real graphics cards that can be upgraded in this price range. If you really want a PC, you should be able to get a decent one. If you want to stay with Apple, then choose wisely because few of the laptops can even have the RAM upgraded.

One thing to mention, if you are using Adobe products, they have a lot of render to RAM features where more RAM is definitely better (much faster than render to storage).
 
I have a 13" Macbook Pro from last year. Work gave me 16 GB, despite me saying I didn't need it, because I use the command line and a web browser. And yet it's using 7 GB for "App Memory" and another 5.5 GB for "Cached Files." This doesn't mean you need 16 GB. It just means your computer will use most of it, because it can. It moves more stuff from the drive into RAM, because it's faster to reach there.

I don't have Final Cut Pro installed, but I bet most of the 16 GB would be used by then. That doesn't mean 8 GB would be too little. SSDs are much faster than spinning-disk hard drives, so even if your laptop had to use RAM less and the SSD more, it should still be okay.

I still can't believe we need gigabytes of RAM. I remember when I had like 512 MB for Final Cut Pro, back at the turn of the century ;)
 
I decided to just go crazy and get the 15" Macbook Pro with 16GB of Ram, 512GB SSD and 4GB Radeon 560 GPU. I bought it open box so I saved $250, but still spent $2600 including tax. Way more than I was looking to spend. But all my other personal machines are mac, most of my external drives are formatted for mac and I like that I can walk into an Apple store for support if needed.
I figure I could have saved $1000 buying a Dell XPS 15, but 3-4 years from now after the money is long gone and doesn't matter anymore, I'll be stuck with whatever machine I decided on back then. I've had a good track record with Apple so I'm fairly confident this will still be humming along, whereas I'm not sure what shape the Dell would be in or where I'd go for support if needed.
Plus this way I can run FCPX or even Windows 10 if I want. Which I probably will at some point.

So far so good. My only real complaint is this ridiculous sized trackpad which doesn't have very good palm rejection and is constantly jumping me around while typing. Other than that and the dongle hell I'm now living in, I'm pretty happy with my choice. Owned it for two days and have already been editing on it.
 
You got it right, you spent $1000 more than you needed. New MBPs cannot be upgraded, the 15" trackpad is ridiculous and the new Touchbar is, well, lets say it will either be a free standard feature or discontinued. You're joking me about where to go for Dell support? ANYWHERE! They probably got you for Applecare, huh? And, Dell isn't the only game. Asus ROG, MSI GT, etc. make custom machines all with plug-in componentry. BTW, I own all mentioned including the MBP 15" and the XPS. The MSI being the oldest at 5 yrs. new and still used in the field with Vegas Pro.
 
I really didn't because there is no way I could get a 2017 15" Macbook Pro for any less money. Overall I'm pretty happy with it and that matters the most.
 
Getting 16GBs of RAM was the right choice, Apples recent OS's use a lot of RAM, and apps use a lot of RAM these days too. PC's seem to depreciate much faster than Mac's, but since you pay more for a Mac, it's kinda a wash.
 
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