16 GB unified memory vs 16 GB RAM: How much better is unified memory quantitatively?

I still use a 2017, 27-inch iMac with 16 GB RAM and MacOS 12.7.6 Monterey. MacOS 13 I believe is the limit for this iMac, but I won't upgrade because I'm unsure it will work nicely with latest Adobe InDesign and Photoshop. I often prepare 88+ page InDesign magazine files and 250-page books for press quality PDF printing and use other misc software.

Plus, I have HUNDREDS of open browser windows in Chrome. Chrome is very slow downloading and halts temporarily while apparently buffering. Apple Mail also is very slow opening up and downloading mail; I have a lot of email sitting in the app.

I know I should trash a lot of email and rid myself of the open windows in Chrome, but it takes a lot of time to do that.

I do no audio or video work.

How much better quantitatively is 16 GB of unified memory in a new Mac Mini over my 16 GB RAM on my 2017 iMac. Would 16 GB of unified memory take care of the sluggishness, long buffering, occasional crashing of Apple Mail and Chrome? Or should I go with 18 GB, 24 or 32 GB unified? Don't want to spend more than the cost of 16 GB unless really necessary.

I'll need to buy a 30-inch + monitor, too, but hard to find one at 4K or above with sharpness (especially for text), microphone and camera at a reasonable price ($600?).

Sage advice welcomed.

iMac 27″ 5K, macOS 12.7

Posted on Oct 7, 2024 2:04 PM

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BobHarris

Level 9

55,055 points

Posted on Oct 7, 2024 9:19 PM

Unified Memory is a performance win. Lots more bandwidth, and no need to copy display data between memory and vram, as all that is needed is to pass a pointer to the GPU. And the memory chips being a fraction of an inch from the CPU/GPU reduces memory access latency, also a performance win.

Also the higher end Apple Silicon CPUs have even higher bandwidth.

The NVMe storage is very fast. Faster than your typical SSD, and again being on the motherboard, reduces the distance between the NVMe and the CPU, which reduces latency. So if you end up using page/swap storage, it is faster.

But more RAM is always a performance win over paging & swapping.

Also Chrome is not known for its resource efficiency. It is a known resource hog.

And having hundreds of open Chrome tabs just aggravates the situation.

So more memory would be good, unless you are going to reform your resource wasteful ways 😁

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