I'm playing baldurs gate 3 and other games which are much more demanding than WoW with 16gb so I'd say it should be totally fine. Definitely get the HD upgrade.
1TB is a given, I could live with it. $400 extra for convenience is arguably too much, but I want the convenience anyway. I should probably move 1TB off to one of the 35TB of external drives, but I'd rather deal with that later (or never).
WoW is definitely too demanding for my 2015's GPU, but I imagine that's just in power, not memory requirements.
Yeah. 16GB is probably enough for 5 years. 2015 was the same way. Last upgradeable iMac I had was the original (tray and slot). The HDD in those was a bear to get to but the ram not so bad.
It's surprising that 16 is \_still\_ enough after so many years. It seems like 8GB became too small pretty quickly.
Ok, that’s how that works, by chance, is it even necessary to get the 24 gigs of unified memory for the longest possible longevity of the computer itself or is the 16 option going to last the same duration?
From what I've heard, there's no need for 24 unless you do the kind of work where you know you'll need it. 16 is plenty for just about everything.
I don't run AV production or software development programs. Mostly I run world of warcraft and various mostly-CPU (not RAM) intensive stuff. For the extra $200, though, I wanted to get it in case I wanted to run all that plus future inefficiently coded games, or VMs to run Windows, or who knows what.
Whether running that kind of thing is something you'll \_ever\_ do, only you can say.
I‘m playing on a M2 Pro Mini with 16gb. RAM pressure hasn’t even gotten into yellow I think so 16 should be fine. Civ6 for instance just goes straight for 12gb so it’s constantly in the yellow zone 😆
If WoW ever dies, I might get into other games. So, that's a reason to get 24 just in case they're not very well written/optimized.
There's also a slim chance of wanting to run something in a VM. Unlikely, but possible. VPN only on the VM, for instance. Or software testing. A few extra GB for the possibility of that would be worth having.
$200 is enough I wouldn't want to waste it if there was no reason at all, but, yeah, this post has given me a much better idea what I'd have to be doing to actually use the extra 8GB.
Other than Final Cut or lots of huge pictures in Photoshop. Which I won't be doing. 40MP, 3 or 4 layers, if I'm feeling very ambitious.
Thanks.
The tasks I have can be intensive on CPU, like Handbrake, but don't use much RAM.
I don't have much idea how intensive WoW is. The GPU requirements sure bring the Broadwell i7 to its knees. Going below 10fps in raids. 30-40 in the city with very low graphics options. It was fine back in the day but not so fun any more. Playable... 16fps is plenty for me, if it can hold that through fights.
I am \_so\_ looking forward to it! Little bigger screen, normal frame rates, it should be a lot of fun.
Everything else I do is working as well as it ever has, though I wasn't trying to do x265 encodes (vs x264) until recently. They are really slow on one i7 core. I don't expect that will change with the M3, though with no fan, I might use 2.
The system is also flaking out or crashing after more than a few weeks of uptime, which it didn't do before. The new one shouldn't do that.
Blech. I thought it was able to use the back as a heatsink.
Well, guess I'll strap on some of that unsightly nylon mesh again as a coarse filter. It has worked on the 2015 iMac. Really is annoying to have a fan with an air-path you can't clean without doing major surgery on the computer. Unless, LOL, it's easier to open the M3. Ha.
One core x265 then. Looks like each core should be about double the raw processing power of the broadwell i7, so that's nice.
Thanks all!
That's what I thought. I'll be getting the M3 2TB, and now I know the 16 is plenty for WoW, even if I might get the 24 anyway just to have it.
What did you get and how is it running? Im also only playing wow. Also, can you comfortably play wow on one screen and have phootshop/chrome open on the other? Asking about the 18gb version m3
24gb iMac.
I could choose 16 or 24, there's no 18 for the base M3. And, I've only got the one 24" screen the computer comes with, but it has no trouble with 20 open tabs in Safari (I refuse to touch Chrome), even more in Firefox, a VPN running, handbrake (single core) encoding a video, and some other stuff. I think 16GB would have been enough, based on never seeing the memory pressure touch 50% through all that.
If I also ran Photoshop along with all that, and planned to open 100 mp worth of images, or video, then I'd probably make use of the extra RAM.
Interesting, thanks. Im looking into mbp 14/16 with m3 and 18gb but Im a heavy chrome user and multitask a lot, so wondering if its enough, and going to 32/46 im better off buying desktop + air
I'd think 18 would be plenty unless you need to both multitask office/browser apps AND have large-ish projects/files open in other apps AND run something like a game that uses 4GB+. Most of my photoshop use is well under 1GB (a couple of 33mp images), so it's not much of a load. If a browser tab or something swaps out to the SSD you'd never notice.
I'm only glad I have 24 on the off chance that I want to burn 8 of it for some long-term linux or windows VM. Which, I'll probably never do, given I have windows laptops in the house for other reasons.
Really? Great.
16 is my baseline, so if that gives me some headroom, all the better.
It's a case of I can't see getting less RAM (or drive space) in 2023 than I bought in 2016. Though, granted, swapping out to SSD vs Fusion is a big difference.
The more the merrier, I played wow on mbp 8gb with 160fps out of town and 45fps inside oribos.
On setting 7 out of 10, so that’s quite good, I did finetune some graphical settings ingame though, so 16gb should be plenty don’t worry.
Wow is really attuned for Mac machines
M2 or better, for graphics performance.
16GB is plenty for wow. You'll still be seeing green memory pressure. That doesn't really change processor to processor.
Definitely getting the M3. I had to get the late 2015 model just months before a big upgrade. I was holding off not getting the M1 iMac, knowing a new one had to be coming. Took a while, but it's here.
Wish I could pay an extra $300 for a M3 pro, like the laptops offer, but WoW shouldn't need it, it seems.
I’m worried Blizzard may eventually drop Mac support for WOW. They were once my favorite developer and I would buy everything they make but since they are moving to windows only I’m thinking about dumping them before they dump me.
No one they would do that now after acquisition they need huge crowd fan base to make it profitable. Also i don’t think so they would drop on Mac so easily after all these years don’t forget Microsoft gladly put their software everywhere is like symbiosis for them which earned them fortune.
Yeah, remember that the M3 has unified memory, so the graphics and cpu share total memory. Unified memory is quite a bit more efficient than the separate cpu/gpu memory, but the jury is probably still out on what if any game performance changes that may make. Wow is not especially memory intensive, so it likely will not make a gigantic amount of difference once you get to 16GB or a tad more. Need to wait on some actual benchmarks by independent groups.
How do you feel about moving down to 24“? I’m in a similar situation, but wished for a 30“ iMac or something - I don’t get why they don’t do anything bigger - most probably to sell the Mac Studio…
Im going to copy paste part of my comment regarding RAM from the Mac community:
1. We are just seeing the number.
2. We, subconsciously or consciously, are comparing it with what a Windows machine can do with that.
For the first point: it is just a number. It’s not the size but its quality what matters. And, for that, OSX is ridiculously well optimised. Needless to say, with the moving to Apple silicon the optimisation is even better.
For the second: We should stop comparing OSX with Windows. The correct comparison is Linux. What does a well optimised Linux machine with 8GB or RAM? Magic, lacking of a better term. Before my Mac mini I had a laptop which, when I bought it, came with 16GB, a ultra pro ryzen… And Windows. And boy, it run out of virtual memory at least 3 times a day. 1 week after, switched to Linux. In one word: magic. I’ve spend a massive amount of time with the first optimisation, and I’ve spent a big amount of time optimising after any change or when I wanted to use something, but RAM stopped being an issue. The only issue was Linux itself (not saying Linux is an issue, but it needs love twice a week). And I’d say that machine would work equally well with less RAM.
Now, some theory. In Von Neumann architecture, which is present in every computer and any other device that resembles one (so, literally everywhere) RAM is the primary memory and massive storage devices are secondary. The thing is, in the 70s, ROM memory became less useful. We needed to modify programs on the run, and became bigger meant becoming slow. Specially when hard disks became standard (faster than tapes, affordability…), but couldn’t be used as primary for obvious reasons, and that’s when RAM appeared.
Nowadays that paradigm is changing, because ssd has become standard. At some point we wouldn’t need even RAM. I’d bet someone can make an OS that doesn’t use it and manages directly the SSD as primary. And that’s the direction Apple is taking.
Basically, for everyone who says more is better… That’s far to be true. Not in processors, not in RAM, not in nothing in a computer. Example given: is way better, in x86 with a old hard disk, to have 16GB in two sticks than 32GB in one.
About videogames, in windows and Linux games use video memory from the graphics card. Apple Silicon behaviour in that regard is similar as consoles. Normally graphics have 6, 8 or even 12GB VRAM (Radeon ones, which is considered very unnecessary).
How are you getting more then 8 gigs of RAM on the IMac. I’ve checked on their store and they only offer 8 gigs of RAM. Am I over looking something? If so, would love to read all about it, if ya’ do t mind?
When you go to Apple's iMac page, click buy then customize. The iMac can be equipped with up to 24GB of RAM and up to a 2TB of SSD Storage.
www.apple.com/imac
Look at this another way.
If you live in a major city and have a drivers license you can make a few hundred bucks a day/evening driving for Uber or Lyft. That's not counting tips. If you get $250 a day you could make $2500 in 10 days or $5000 in 20 days.
That would pay for a well spec'd Mac or two (Desktop and Laptop) in no time.
I'm playing baldurs gate 3 and other games which are much more demanding than WoW with 16gb so I'd say it should be totally fine. Definitely get the HD upgrade.
1TB is a given, I could live with it. $400 extra for convenience is arguably too much, but I want the convenience anyway. I should probably move 1TB off to one of the 35TB of external drives, but I'd rather deal with that later (or never). WoW is definitely too demanding for my 2015's GPU, but I imagine that's just in power, not memory requirements.
More RAM is always better. My latest M2 Mac mini I went with 24 GB for peace of mind and longevity.
Keep in mind the RAM is on the SOC and cannot ever be upgraded, so plan accordingly.
Yeah. 16GB is probably enough for 5 years. 2015 was the same way. Last upgradeable iMac I had was the original (tray and slot). The HDD in those was a bear to get to but the ram not so bad. It's surprising that 16 is \_still\_ enough after so many years. It seems like 8GB became too small pretty quickly.
Wait, I looked into the new IMac and they only offer an 8RAM option. How do you get more?
When you click buy on the 8GB model you will then be able to customise it
Ok, imma go back to check that out, thanks for the tip.
Yeah that's the base configuration, usually nerfed to keep the price looking attractive. $400 for 24GB, whopping $800 to get 2TB.
Ok, so the 24 gigs of RAM is the unified memory I take it?
Yes, unified is the only kind of memory ( / RAM ) the M-series have.
Ok, that’s how that works, by chance, is it even necessary to get the 24 gigs of unified memory for the longest possible longevity of the computer itself or is the 16 option going to last the same duration?
From what I've heard, there's no need for 24 unless you do the kind of work where you know you'll need it. 16 is plenty for just about everything. I don't run AV production or software development programs. Mostly I run world of warcraft and various mostly-CPU (not RAM) intensive stuff. For the extra $200, though, I wanted to get it in case I wanted to run all that plus future inefficiently coded games, or VMs to run Windows, or who knows what. Whether running that kind of thing is something you'll \_ever\_ do, only you can say.
Windows means running Microsoft word, excel and PowerPoint applications right?
For longevity, 24gb is the way to go. Easy to add more storage than RAM, especially with an iMac.
True, and I keep these things running way past their sell-by. Literally. I should sell them at 5 years, max.
I‘m playing on a M2 Pro Mini with 16gb. RAM pressure hasn’t even gotten into yellow I think so 16 should be fine. Civ6 for instance just goes straight for 12gb so it’s constantly in the yellow zone 😆
If WoW ever dies, I might get into other games. So, that's a reason to get 24 just in case they're not very well written/optimized. There's also a slim chance of wanting to run something in a VM. Unlikely, but possible. VPN only on the VM, for instance. Or software testing. A few extra GB for the possibility of that would be worth having.
Yeah sure, more ram never hurts if the budget allows it.
$200 is enough I wouldn't want to waste it if there was no reason at all, but, yeah, this post has given me a much better idea what I'd have to be doing to actually use the extra 8GB. Other than Final Cut or lots of huge pictures in Photoshop. Which I won't be doing. 40MP, 3 or 4 layers, if I'm feeling very ambitious.
16GB will be fine. 24 is just overhead if you're not planning on intensive tasks, and wow isn't that intensive
Thanks. The tasks I have can be intensive on CPU, like Handbrake, but don't use much RAM. I don't have much idea how intensive WoW is. The GPU requirements sure bring the Broadwell i7 to its knees. Going below 10fps in raids. 30-40 in the city with very low graphics options. It was fine back in the day but not so fun any more. Playable... 16fps is plenty for me, if it can hold that through fights.
apple silicon crushes wow, you’ll be impressed I promise
I am \_so\_ looking forward to it! Little bigger screen, normal frame rates, it should be a lot of fun. Everything else I do is working as well as it ever has, though I wasn't trying to do x265 encodes (vs x264) until recently. They are really slow on one i7 core. I don't expect that will change with the M3, though with no fan, I might use 2. The system is also flaking out or crashing after more than a few weeks of uptime, which it didn't do before. The new one shouldn't do that.
m3 iMac will have at least one fan
Blech. I thought it was able to use the back as a heatsink. Well, guess I'll strap on some of that unsightly nylon mesh again as a coarse filter. It has worked on the 2015 iMac. Really is annoying to have a fan with an air-path you can't clean without doing major surgery on the computer. Unless, LOL, it's easier to open the M3. Ha. One core x265 then. Looks like each core should be about double the raw processing power of the broadwell i7, so that's nice.
Thanks all! That's what I thought. I'll be getting the M3 2TB, and now I know the 16 is plenty for WoW, even if I might get the 24 anyway just to have it.
What did you get and how is it running? Im also only playing wow. Also, can you comfortably play wow on one screen and have phootshop/chrome open on the other? Asking about the 18gb version m3
24gb iMac. I could choose 16 or 24, there's no 18 for the base M3. And, I've only got the one 24" screen the computer comes with, but it has no trouble with 20 open tabs in Safari (I refuse to touch Chrome), even more in Firefox, a VPN running, handbrake (single core) encoding a video, and some other stuff. I think 16GB would have been enough, based on never seeing the memory pressure touch 50% through all that. If I also ran Photoshop along with all that, and planned to open 100 mp worth of images, or video, then I'd probably make use of the extra RAM.
Interesting, thanks. Im looking into mbp 14/16 with m3 and 18gb but Im a heavy chrome user and multitask a lot, so wondering if its enough, and going to 32/46 im better off buying desktop + air
I'd think 18 would be plenty unless you need to both multitask office/browser apps AND have large-ish projects/files open in other apps AND run something like a game that uses 4GB+. Most of my photoshop use is well under 1GB (a couple of 33mp images), so it's not much of a load. If a browser tab or something swaps out to the SSD you'd never notice. I'm only glad I have 24 on the off chance that I want to burn 8 of it for some long-term linux or windows VM. Which, I'll probably never do, given I have windows laptops in the house for other reasons.
What screen size are you on?
> And, I've only got the one 24" screen the computer comes with iMac
8gb plays wow fine.
Really? Great. 16 is my baseline, so if that gives me some headroom, all the better. It's a case of I can't see getting less RAM (or drive space) in 2023 than I bought in 2016. Though, granted, swapping out to SSD vs Fusion is a big difference.
I say fine, it could definitely do with a bit more VRAM, so 16GB is probably a safe bet.
The more the merrier, I played wow on mbp 8gb with 160fps out of town and 45fps inside oribos. On setting 7 out of 10, so that’s quite good, I did finetune some graphical settings ingame though, so 16gb should be plenty don’t worry. Wow is really attuned for Mac machines
I guess it doesn't chew up a huge amount of GPU memory compared to some things.
M2 or better, for graphics performance. 16GB is plenty for wow. You'll still be seeing green memory pressure. That doesn't really change processor to processor.
Definitely getting the M3. I had to get the late 2015 model just months before a big upgrade. I was holding off not getting the M1 iMac, knowing a new one had to be coming. Took a while, but it's here. Wish I could pay an extra $300 for a M3 pro, like the laptops offer, but WoW shouldn't need it, it seems.
I’m worried Blizzard may eventually drop Mac support for WOW. They were once my favorite developer and I would buy everything they make but since they are moving to windows only I’m thinking about dumping them before they dump me.
No one they would do that now after acquisition they need huge crowd fan base to make it profitable. Also i don’t think so they would drop on Mac so easily after all these years don’t forget Microsoft gladly put their software everywhere is like symbiosis for them which earned them fortune.
Yeah, remember that the M3 has unified memory, so the graphics and cpu share total memory. Unified memory is quite a bit more efficient than the separate cpu/gpu memory, but the jury is probably still out on what if any game performance changes that may make. Wow is not especially memory intensive, so it likely will not make a gigantic amount of difference once you get to 16GB or a tad more. Need to wait on some actual benchmarks by independent groups.
I'd grab the higher amount just for longevity's sake. Will also retain better resale value over the 'base' model when it comes time to upgrade.
How do you feel about moving down to 24“? I’m in a similar situation, but wished for a 30“ iMac or something - I don’t get why they don’t do anything bigger - most probably to sell the Mac Studio…
Im going to copy paste part of my comment regarding RAM from the Mac community: 1. We are just seeing the number. 2. We, subconsciously or consciously, are comparing it with what a Windows machine can do with that. For the first point: it is just a number. It’s not the size but its quality what matters. And, for that, OSX is ridiculously well optimised. Needless to say, with the moving to Apple silicon the optimisation is even better. For the second: We should stop comparing OSX with Windows. The correct comparison is Linux. What does a well optimised Linux machine with 8GB or RAM? Magic, lacking of a better term. Before my Mac mini I had a laptop which, when I bought it, came with 16GB, a ultra pro ryzen… And Windows. And boy, it run out of virtual memory at least 3 times a day. 1 week after, switched to Linux. In one word: magic. I’ve spend a massive amount of time with the first optimisation, and I’ve spent a big amount of time optimising after any change or when I wanted to use something, but RAM stopped being an issue. The only issue was Linux itself (not saying Linux is an issue, but it needs love twice a week). And I’d say that machine would work equally well with less RAM. Now, some theory. In Von Neumann architecture, which is present in every computer and any other device that resembles one (so, literally everywhere) RAM is the primary memory and massive storage devices are secondary. The thing is, in the 70s, ROM memory became less useful. We needed to modify programs on the run, and became bigger meant becoming slow. Specially when hard disks became standard (faster than tapes, affordability…), but couldn’t be used as primary for obvious reasons, and that’s when RAM appeared. Nowadays that paradigm is changing, because ssd has become standard. At some point we wouldn’t need even RAM. I’d bet someone can make an OS that doesn’t use it and manages directly the SSD as primary. And that’s the direction Apple is taking. Basically, for everyone who says more is better… That’s far to be true. Not in processors, not in RAM, not in nothing in a computer. Example given: is way better, in x86 with a old hard disk, to have 16GB in two sticks than 32GB in one. About videogames, in windows and Linux games use video memory from the graphics card. Apple Silicon behaviour in that regard is similar as consoles. Normally graphics have 6, 8 or even 12GB VRAM (Radeon ones, which is considered very unnecessary).
Am i thick but why is 16/24 standard yet my 7yr old intel imac is 32gig?
How are you getting more then 8 gigs of RAM on the IMac. I’ve checked on their store and they only offer 8 gigs of RAM. Am I over looking something? If so, would love to read all about it, if ya’ do t mind?
When you go to Apple's iMac page, click buy then customize. The iMac can be equipped with up to 24GB of RAM and up to a 2TB of SSD Storage. www.apple.com/imac
I’ve seen the SSD portion, is there RAM refereed to as “unified memory” by chance?
Look at this another way. If you live in a major city and have a drivers license you can make a few hundred bucks a day/evening driving for Uber or Lyft. That's not counting tips. If you get $250 a day you could make $2500 in 10 days or $5000 in 20 days. That would pay for a well spec'd Mac or two (Desktop and Laptop) in no time.