Macs have always needed and used much more RAM than an equivalent Windows system. It's usually around double for me. I run the same things on my mac and on my Windows systems and a 16GB Windows system can handle it all without swapping to the pagefile. In fact, I turn off my Windows pagefiles (from years of testing). A Mac can't stay in that 16GB RAM limit and must go into swap. Macs are greedy swappers. I currently have a 32GB Mac and it still goes to swap occasionally. But on a 16GB Windows, running basically the same programs, I don't even need a swap file. I have a 32GB Windows system and it barely reaches 16GB 99% of the time. I probably could have saved some money on the RAM, but I do occasionally use over 16GB. It's just not often. I do actually have more program windows open on Windows because I have the RAM. I can't open as many windows on my Mac before it's already swapping.
Back when I had a 15" Macbook Pro, Mavericks caused my RAM usage to hit 24GB, which meant I was swapping 8GB. Back then 16GB RAM was the max you could get for any Macbook. Mavericks was extremely bloated and broken. It caused that Mac to crash almost daily. When Yosemite came out, it stopped crashing and my RAM usage, for the exact same programs dropped to 20GB. Then El Capitan Came out and my RAM usage dropped to 16GB-18GB for the same programs. During this period, my Windows 7 systems only needed 8GB RAM to be functional and not even swap to pagefiles. Now, my 32GB RAM Intel Macbook pro barely swaps, but only because I'm constantly monitoring it with Activity Monitor. I can do the same thing with only 16GB RM on a Windows system. With a 32 GB Windows system, I don't really even have to monitor it at all, but I do still keep my task manager open all the time. |