hard to tell given that m1's address and page memory completely differently from how x86 does it. My 8GB M1 MacBook Air performs extremely well even when memory pressure is high...and it never seems to hit swap space.
Anecdotal example: I could have several Firefox tabs with active workers in the background (WhatsApp, Slack, etc.), a Zoom meeting with video conferencing on, with audio and video being routed via OBS (native), a Screen Sharing session over SSH going, and a Kubernetes cluster in Docker running, and that won't even make the MacBook hot. Nothing slows down. I could get maybe five hours out of the battery this way. Usually six.
Doing that on a maxed out Intel MacBook Pro will make it sound like a jet engine and reduce my battery life to two or three hours. It will also slow to a crawl.
I'm guessing buying a machine with 32GB of RAM is an investment into the future where workloads on m1 machines are high enough to actually give the memory a run for its money.
Anecdotal example: I could have several Firefox tabs with active workers in the background (WhatsApp, Slack, etc.), a Zoom meeting with video conferencing on, with audio and video being routed via OBS (native), a Screen Sharing session over SSH going, and a Kubernetes cluster in Docker running, and that won't even make the MacBook hot. Nothing slows down. I could get maybe five hours out of the battery this way. Usually six.
Doing that on a maxed out Intel MacBook Pro will make it sound like a jet engine and reduce my battery life to two or three hours. It will also slow to a crawl.
I'm guessing buying a machine with 32GB of RAM is an investment into the future where workloads on m1 machines are high enough to actually give the memory a run for its money.