Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Development

Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by epmaybe on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:17PM (#25420123)

I was worried about this too, but have been pleasantly surprised by this laptop. I'm sure my use case is far different to yours though. I was looking at my RAM consumption on my 16GB MacBook Pro prior to purchasing the M1 MacBook Air, and I was usually hitting 14-15GB with multiple GB of swap used in my regular use case (couple of chrome tabs, some electron apps, Xcode, 1st party apps all open).

I consciously pare down my usage on this MacBook Air, but I am typically at around 7GB/8GB of ram, with 3-4GB of swap space used. It feels noticeably snappier and overall better (minus some odd Big Sur UI bugs every now and then) than my 2017 15in MBP.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by nicoburns on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:25PM (#25420251)

I wouldn't be worried about 16GB now (my current MacBook is 16GB and I don't have any problems). But I want my laptop to least a decent amount of time (at least 5 years), and I do worry about whether 16GB will be sufficient then.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by whalesalad on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:27PM (#25420274)

This is one of the biggest reasons for me, personally. It is such an inexpensive difference in overall cost versus the benefits of having that headroom.

Plus I am sitting at ~26gb used memory right now. I tend to give my VM's a nice big 8-12GB chunk of ram depending on what I am doing too, so it is almost like I have two machines in one.

The disks and data pipelines on these new machines are so fast though that I do wonder if the RAM's responsibility has shifted towards being a giant CPU cache and the disk has likewise shifted into a point where it performs more like RAM.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by epmaybe on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:31PM (#25420330)

Maybe that’s the eventuality. I don’t run VMs much if at all for my work/day to day, but I have a desktop in the event I need to.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by floatboth on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:56PM (#25420744)

It depends on what you do, and always will. 16GB will be enough for web browsing, gaming, and coding websites in python 5 years down the line. 16GB is not enough now for.. say, compiling Firefox with LTO, at least while browsing.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by epmaybe on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:27PM (#25420275)

I figure I will eventually pass this laptop on to a family member by the time I will be in the market for a new laptop, so I am not necessarily worried about that. I suspect my 2017 mbp would have worked fine for a few more years but I wanted to transition to a more portable device.

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Re:Apple M1 vs. Ryzen 3900X vs. Intel I9 in Software Develop... by alexhutcheson on Monday December 14, 2020 @12:45PM (#25420550)

One nice aspect of Big Sur and the M1 is that you can run the iPad version of many apps, rather than the Electron desktop version. The iPad versions often use way less memory.

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