Apple M3 max 48gb sufficient?

[Jimmy]

Hey all, 

Just wondering if anyone is using the base 48gb ram model and if its sufficient ?

Or is it worth spending the dollars on 64gb?

Projects are normally residential larger homes, some high rise work also.

[Karel Landa]

Hi,

I have M1 Max with 32gb RAM and currently working on apartment complex with 6 houses. Can't say I don't have enough power.

But if you can spend money, I believe it is worth investing since you will have more power in the future and for case that you would work on bigger projects 😉

[GAG]

Well, the general answer is that there is never enough system memory.

If you look at how Archicad consumes memory, you'll notice that there are peaks when the application is doing some heavy calculations, but the rest of the time memory consumption is 'average'. So you need more resources (CPU and GPU power, memory) for these rare peaks.

If you have many Archicad instances running in parallel; if you have BIMcloud on the same machine; if you're working in other applications (such as Photoshop or Twinmotion/Enscape) at the same time, you'll notice more peaks in resource consumption and buying more raw power/memory will be worth the money spent.

[Laszlo Nagy]

One thing to consider with Apple silicon is that it uses Unified Memory, which means that the CPU and the GPU share 48 GB of memory. So, you do not have a separate GPU with its own 8 GB or 12 GB of VRAM, it uses the same memory as the CPU. After a powerful CPU, the second most important thing is to have plenty of RAM. So, if you plan on using this laptop for 4-5-6 years, you should also plan ahead for those times. In summary, the 64 GB may be worth the additional investment, IMO.

[archislave]

By then the processor will be outdated. Just look at how they adde native Ray Tracing with the M3. If you payed triple to get an M2 with 64 GB ram then you overpaid and will be worse off than an M3 Mac with 16 GB ram - I am betting. Macs keep their value so easy to sell and upgrade every two or three years.