M3 Air RAM Advice

zooth Said:

"M3 Air RAM Advice: I am seriously considering purchasing a 15” M3 MacBook Air and would like some guidance on how much RAM will be needed to support Windows and Linux virtual machines. I’ve read that 16GB may be enough but for future proofing might it be best to opt for more? Also I realise I will probably need at least a 1TB SSD upgrade. Any advice appreciated. Thanks."

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Use of 8GB of RAM for VMs:

8GB would do just fine. RAM is all about multitasking. I've had my Mac for many years, and 8GB has always worked for me.

That is not necessary, 16GB is more than enough for any use as long as it is not for graphic work and some programming languages. But a 1TB SSD upgrade is always a great choice.

Be aware that only ARM64 based Windows 11 and Linux distributions will work on virtual machines on an Apple Silicon Mac. This also impacts any device drivers as well that would be used as device drivers generally need to be native code. Intel VMs cannot be virtualized. So, earlier versions of Windows cannot be virtualized.

With something like QEMU you may be able to run them in emulation but they will be very slow and likely buggy.

Get as much RAM as possible if you will be running virtual machines. Would you buy a computer to run MacOS that has only 4GB RAM? Would anyone buy a Windows computer having only 4GB RAM?? The answer to both questions is no. There is no way that 8GB RAM is sufficient to run two operating systems simultaneously, each of which require more than 4GB RAM.

woodmeister50 wrote:

Be aware that only ARM64 based Windows 11 and Linux distributions will work on virtual machines on an Apple Silicon Mac. This also impacts any device drivers as well that would be used as device drivers generally need to be native code. Intel VMs cannot be virtualized. So, earlier versions of Windows cannot be virtualized.

Windows 11 for ARM has support for running some Windows/Intel binaries – but as with Rosetta 2 and Mac/Intel binaries, there are limitations.

If the OP is trying to run Windows/Intel binaries inside whatever translation or emulation environment Windows 11 for ARM offers, with Windows 11 for ARM itself running inside a virtual machine, I'd think that would require some RAM. I wouldn't want to bet that 8 GB would be enough, especially after experience running virtual machines on an Intel-based Mac that had 8 GB of RAM.

zooth wrote:

I am seriously considering purchasing a 15” M3 MacBook Air and would like some guidance on how much RAM will be needed to support Windows and Linux virtual machines. I’ve read that 16GB may be enough but for future proofing might it be best to opt for more? Also I realise I will probably need at least a 1TB SSD upgrade. Any advice appreciated. Thanks.

It is unlikely that you will regret buying as much RAM as your budget allows. You can always buy external drives if you run out of storage space, but these days, the RAM you buy is the RAM you'll have when you get a new machine. So, I'd recommend spending the money on RAM not a drive upgrade if you can't do both.

Servant of Cats wrote:

woodmeister50 wrote:

Be aware that only ARM64 based Windows 11 and Linux distributions will work on virtual machines on an Apple Silicon Mac. This also impacts any device drivers as well that would be used as device drivers generally need to be native code. Intel VMs cannot be virtualized. So, earlier versions of Windows cannot be virtualized.

Windows 11 for ARM has support for running some Windows/Intel binaries – but as with Rosetta 2 and Mac/Intel binaries, there are limitations.

If the OP is trying to run Windows/Intel binaries inside whatever translation or emulation environment Windows 11 for ARM offers, with Windows 11 for ARM itself running inside a virtual machine, I'd think that would require some RAM. I wouldn't want to bet that 8 GB would be enough, especially after experience running virtual machines on an Intel-based Mac that had 8 GB of RAM.

It can run Intel binaries but device drivers must still be native platform code, i.e. ARM64. The translation layer does not work for drivers.

FWIW, I do run Win11 and Fedora Linux on an 8GB RAM M1 MacBook Air but allocate only 4 GB to the VM and don't do much else if anything on the Mac side when doing it. However, I am not doing anything with apps in either Win11 or Fedora that needs a whole lot of RAM. Also, on Fedora I am using a very lean environment (XFCE).

However, if you are doing anything of any real consequence in the VM, get as much RAM as you can afford.