4 ms·

Lately, my main machine has been a mid-2014 mbp with 16GB of RAM and I recently purchased the new mbp with 8GB of RAM. Comparing them side by side is a very st

Lately, my main machine has been a mid-2014 mbp with 16GB of RAM and I recently purchased the new mbp with 8GB of RAM. Comparing them side by side is a very strange experience. _Technically_ it should be slower but it doesn't "feel" slower. However, at times, there is a bit of shutter that I can't put my finger on - am I just looking for an excuse to say its slow or was the loading time on opening this project always so slow? In the end, I believe the 8GB variant is suitable for most folks while I myself will upgrade the the 16GB version. However, I've opened up plenty of large projects on the new laptop and have tested speed comparison of every day tasks: transcoding videos, opening million (maybe an over exaggeration) row excel docs and web dev work with 2 VMs running. Overall, performance is fairly up to par with my old machine. All of that being said, I do believe the machine is a touch expensive. I ordered mine from Amazon when they had some ridiculous pricing and won out so I don't feel bad offloading on craigslist to get the 16GB version.

brazzledazzle 10y ago
Thanks, that's a helpful review. It has me wondering if it might benefit from the hardware improvements enough that swapping would be noticeably faster.
- bardworx 10y ago
  I'm thinking along the same lines. If you're interested in other tests/simulations and I can run them side by side and report back. Today I've ran 2 VMs, about 20 tabs, a large project loaded into an IDE and two shell sessions without any noticeable slowdown.
  - brazzledazzle 10y ago
    I appreciate the offer, thanks. If you have a desktop VM (Windows or OS X) laying around I'd be interested in how responsive they are with enough of them running to make things interesting. They tend to be the most demanding/least tolerant VMs I have to deal with. But don't bother unless you're really into it.
    - bardworx 10y ago
      Should be fun. I have a MS Win 7 VM for I.E. testing. It's downloaded from MS so there wouldn't be any variance. I'll run a few of them today and get back to you.
    - bardworx 10y ago
      My hypothesis was that the computer "runs" better because of faster RAM and processor but because the system has 8GB, it can't be pushed __too__ much. Testing: 1x headless Linux w/ 1 CPU core and 512MB RAM 2x MS Windows 7 with display, 2/ 1CPU core and 512MB RAM each. IDE consuming ~987MB RAM 6x Chrome Tabs open 3x Safari Tabs open Apple Mail.app Other misc software running in the background. Physical Memory 8GB Memory Used: 5.96GB Cached Files: 2.03GB Each VM being added increased SWAP. With one headless, SWAP was at ~50MB. Adding WIN7 VM with display brought it up to 251MB, adding a third VM with display brought it to 550MB. CPU Usage peaked at ~70% when adding VMs with some delays in response when browsing simultaneously. All VMs running, mocking around a VM and running minor tasks in background (comprising and decompressing junk data) brought usage to about 30%, CPU usage never peaked past 50% without additional load. Conclusion: I'm actually really happy with the laptop. The whole dongle hell really doesn't exist, in fact I was able to remove cables from my desk. Before, I had to plug in 1 power cable, one thunderbolt/DP, one USB...now all three are going into a single dongle and one cable to computer. For external HD, I've been using the Samsung SSD USB3 to USB-C for about a year so that made life easier. Prior, I had to carry an ethernet adapter for remote work, which was replaced by an ethernet adapter of a different kind. General USBs, thumb drives, etc are plugged into my monitor (which has a hub) just as before, no difference. If this laptop started at $200 less, I'd say this is a very adequate laptop for work purposes, including running VMs.

brazzledazzle 10y ago

Thanks, that's a helpful review. It has me wondering if it might benefit from the hardware improvements enough that swapping would be noticeably faster.

bardworx 10y ago
I'm thinking along the same lines. If you're interested in other tests/simulations and I can run them side by side and report back. Today I've ran 2 VMs, about 20 tabs, a large project loaded into an IDE and two shell sessions without any noticeable slowdown.
- brazzledazzle 10y ago
  I appreciate the offer, thanks. If you have a desktop VM (Windows or OS X) laying around I'd be interested in how responsive they are with enough of them running to make things interesting. They tend to be the most demanding/least tolerant VMs I have to deal with. But don't bother unless you're really into it.
  - bardworx 10y ago
    Should be fun. I have a MS Win 7 VM for I.E. testing. It's downloaded from MS so there wouldn't be any variance. I'll run a few of them today and get back to you.
  - bardworx 10y ago
    My hypothesis was that the computer "runs" better because of faster RAM and processor but because the system has 8GB, it can't be pushed __too__ much. Testing: 1x headless Linux w/ 1 CPU core and 512MB RAM 2x MS Windows 7 with display, 2/ 1CPU core and 512MB RAM each. IDE consuming ~987MB RAM 6x Chrome Tabs open 3x Safari Tabs open Apple Mail.app Other misc software running in the background. Physical Memory 8GB Memory Used: 5.96GB Cached Files: 2.03GB Each VM being added increased SWAP. With one headless, SWAP was at ~50MB. Adding WIN7 VM with display brought it up to 251MB, adding a third VM with display brought it to 550MB. CPU Usage peaked at ~70% when adding VMs with some delays in response when browsing simultaneously. All VMs running, mocking around a VM and running minor tasks in background (comprising and decompressing junk data) brought usage to about 30%, CPU usage never peaked past 50% without additional load. Conclusion: I'm actually really happy with the laptop. The whole dongle hell really doesn't exist, in fact I was able to remove cables from my desk. Before, I had to plug in 1 power cable, one thunderbolt/DP, one USB...now all three are going into a single dongle and one cable to computer. For external HD, I've been using the Samsung SSD USB3 to USB-C for about a year so that made life easier. Prior, I had to carry an ethernet adapter for remote work, which was replaced by an ethernet adapter of a different kind. General USBs, thumb drives, etc are plugged into my monitor (which has a hub) just as before, no difference. If this laptop started at $200 less, I'd say this is a very adequate laptop for work purposes, including running VMs.