[Obsidian Dragon]

Originally Posted by GoButtonGuy

As stated in other threads on a system on a chip you will never see user upgradable RAM. A big part of SOC is integrated RAM on the silicon. It’s the new way of doing it.

The M1 Macs are entry level. This is that version of the iMac. In the streaming studio I’ve been working in over the pandemic the entry level Mini in both the 8 and 16 GB configs easily outperforms the like Intel configs and even a 32GB i7 config.

More powerful Macs are due to be released 3rd quarter this year (July-Sept). Reputable leakers indicate 12 compute cores, 16 GPU cores and up to 32GB of RAM. Eventually all Macs will be SOC including high performance pro versions. They are going to have enough power to run the most demanding apps.

Points well taken. The argument that others have made is that some VI's load the entire sample into RAM. In this use case, it is not about RAM speed or efficiency moving data to and from the processor. There is a need for data capacity to hold and keep those samples in RAM. I'm not too worried as I'm running fine on 16 GB of RAM now as I don't have any of those types of VI's. For others, this may be an important factor. These entry level machines are usable for people like me, but I like to have some headroom for the future if I can afford it.