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iStat RAM question

S

sidharth80

macrumors member
Original poster
Guys!
I have a question. I m importing photos to my iphoto, running word 04, running xp on fusion.
My istats widget in dashboard shows me the following values for RAM -
Wired : 1.76 GB
Active : 1.3 GB
Inactive : 821 MB
Free : 50 MB

What does this free mean? Does this mean that 99% of my 4 GB ram is in use?

I am a mac newbie.. so any help is appreciated!
 
sidharth80 said:
Guys!
I have a question. I m importing photos to my iphoto, running word 04, running xp on fusion.
My istats widget in dashboard shows me the following values for RAM -
Wired : 1.76 GB
Active : 1.3 GB
Inactive : 821 MB
Free : 50 MB

What does this free mean? Does this mean that 99% of my 4 GB ram is in use?

I am a mac newbie.. so any help is appreciated!
Click to expand...


It's a bit confusing isn't it? Basically you have 871mb "free", so roughly 80% of your ram is in use, or at least that's my understanding of it.
 
sidharth80 said:
Guys!
I have a question. I m importing photos to my iphoto, running word 04, running xp on fusion.
My istats widget in dashboard shows me the following values for RAM -
Wired : 1.76 GB
Active : 1.3 GB
Inactive : 821 MB
Free : 50 MB

What does this free mean? Does this mean that 99% of my 4 GB ram is in use?

I am a mac newbie.. so any help is appreciated!
Click to expand...

Wired means that there is memory in RAM that needs to absolute be there. Usually programs are stored here.

Active RAM means that programs are probably be accessed here. If the CPU needs more memory and none are available or free then it would go here.

Inactive RAM is ram that was currently used but is not used anymore. The CPU doesn't free up the ram if it doesn't have too. Usually if a program needs more ram it will take it from here and overwrite the data.

Free RAM is ram that hasn't been used at all yet. There is no data and has been no data. If you restart your computer and check that screen again, then this will probably be very high.

Hope that answers your questioin.

-JoE
 
MacBookJoePro said:
Wired means that there is memory in RAM that needs to absolute be there. Usually programs are stored here.

Active RAM means that programs are probably be accessed here. If the CPU needs more memory and none are available or free then it would go here.

Inactive RAM is ram that was currently used but is not used anymore. The CPU doesn't free up the ram if it doesn't have too. Usually if a program needs more ram it will take it from here and overwrite the data.

Free RAM is ram that hasn't been used at all yet. There is no data and has been no data. If you restart your computer and check that screen again, then this will probably be very high.

Hope that answers your questioin.

-JoE
Click to expand...

Thanks Joe! Appreciate your help 🙂
 
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