8 or 16 gigs of unified memory Which option would be better for your new M2 MacBook Air?!
And it maaay seem obvious, but it’s not all that simple. There is one extremely important factor,
ignoring which you might end up wasting your money and reducing the lifetime of your brand new
M2 MacBook... So, which model should you go with? Let's get into it and figure it out.
But how wrong is that! It turned out that due to issues with the NAND chips, we came up with
recommendations for choosing the M2 Air configuration that suits YOU. And I promise,
there will be performance test results in this video! Just Be patient!
Unfortunately, not many creators mentioned a point that can end up being a huge problem
for you. I'm talking about the swap memory, sometimes referred to as - virtual memory.
To provide you with better context: when your Macbook needs more RAM, it puts what
isn't currently in use into the swap file for temporary storage. When access to those files
is required again, it will read the data from the swap file and put it back into RAM. Now,
let me tell you how this works. RAM on a MacBook has access to the main drive where it can take
up space. Given the speed of the new SSDs, this happens fast, and usually we don’t even notice
it. RAM works even faster, but it doesn’t store files, since it’s needed for work in
active mode or work happening in real time. That is, you are not able to save your files to RAM.
Now, imagine that RAM is a white board and you’re writing on it with a marker. Your notes stay on
the board as long as you need them to. But as soon as you’re no longer using the board or aren’t in
immediate need of your notes, you erase them - so does the RAM. When you close an app, its working
files are erased and the RAM is prepared to make new "notes". In essence, after we erase the board,
we get a clean slate. Now think of the SSD as writing on a piece of paper with a pencil. A
pencil, of course, can be erased with an eraser, but if you use the eraser over and over again,
sooner or later it will ruin the paper. And consequently, writing on that piece of paper
will get much more difficult. This is exactly how modern SSD drives work. Their
resources are limited and after you deplete them, the drive will start to work slower.
But, how are RAM and SSD connected? It may not seem so obvious to you, but the connection is
pretty intense and the choice of RAM size will directly affect how long your MacBook will work
at its maximum speed. The constant writing and erasing of data files harms the SSD over time.
(Although it usually takes years) When you open too many apps or perform a resource-intensive task
your RAM gets swamped, but your Mac will still run efficiently. However it will still fill up
the swap file stored on your SSD as a temporary storage space for data that didn't fit onto RAM.
This means that data and files are constantly being recorded and erased from your SSD when
the RAM can no longer host new data. So what is so special about it that it turns into a big
problem? Well, for 95% of all MacBook users, this is not scary, because in regular use,
you will most likely never use up a significant amount of memory with the swap file.
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