Just how much Bloody Ram does it need.

[adamfilip]

my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs

[QCassidy352]

does the system slow down under the use you describe? 'cause if not, who cares what the resource manager says?

[railthinner]

running Jaguar on my G4 450 w/ 640 megs of RAM. I'll have Image Ready, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Mail, Safari, Explorer, Acrobat Reader, and Fetch all running with no issues. Do I hesitate to open another app? no. no problem. Are you having a real problem?

[baby duck monge]

if you have the memory to spare, why not let the programs use as much as they want? i believe they will happily take less if less is available, but let them run free when they have the chance!

[Colonel Panik]

That's just the way OS X and UNIX is. Anyway, what's the point of having RAM if it ain't being used? During the Mac OS 9 days I'd often have less than half my RAM being used by apps and the system. The other half just sat there and did nothing, until I finally opened up enough apps to use it, and then I'd get memory problems... At least with OS X, the RAM goes into making the system and apps perform better. It might appear odd that apps are using so much memory when you look at the resource monitor, but the true test of a shortage of RAM is looking at the page in/page out writes (if the number in brackets after the big number is more than 0 for a couple of seconds, then your Mac needs more RAM), but unless you're doing some serious data crunching (rendering whilst protein folding), then I doubt you need to upgrade to 2GB. But, more RAM is always nice.

[OutThere]

if you have the memory to spare, why not let the programs use as much as they want? i believe they will happily take less if less is available, but let them run free when they have the chance!

I felt this was entirely necessary... :D

[realityisterror]

i think that the programs are just storing as much as they wish in ram rather than continuously going back to grab things off the hdd. i'd say don't worry about it. i have 512MB RAM and i usually run safari, mail, itunes, ichat, and ical (and finder :p ) and i usually have about 10-30 MB left. do i care? no. does it bother me? no. does it make me want more ram? no. i'm fine with it.

reality

[Makosuke]

This has been discussed extensively in these forums several times very recently; basically, Apps leave stuff in memory even after they stop using it or are quit, just in case that's necessary again (so it won't have to be reloaded). That's what the "inactive" portion of your RAM is, and it's still quite available if you need it. So long as the free + inactive sections of the little pie chart are not both zero, you still have RAM to spare, and have nothing to worry about.

[jxyama]

i've read somewhere in pogue's missing manual for OS X that "free" RAM in this case means "unattributed" rather than "unavailable." i vaguely remember him saying that having a lot of "free" RAM in this case is bad because it's not going to be used by any of the programs and is being wasted, or something to that degree...

as others said, those RAMs will be dynamically attributed to all the running programs as the machine sees fit, so unless you are noticing some system performance decline, i'd say you have nothing to worry about...

[baby duck monge]

I felt this was entirely necessary... :D

tastefully done.

[titaniumducky]

my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs

OS X gives programs more RAM if it's available.

Also, there's something called inactive RAM. OS X checks to see if RAM is needed - if not it doesn't remove items stored by programs not in use/closed so that they will launch/work quicker when you do use them. It is odd that Safari uses so much RAM. Try another browser or something (restart/repair permissions?) - mine only uses about 10-75MB.

[buckuxc]

I might as well ask my question on this appropriate one. I just purchased and installed 256MB more to my 12in PB (1Ghz) so now I have 512MB. Honestly, i am not noticing much of an increase in speed in my programs. So far nothing has hung, unlike what happened a couple of times before this upgrade (I was astonished, being a new Mac-convert). But I thought for my money I was not only fixing the hanging problem, but more than likely avoiding that stupid little beachball (at least it's better than any waiting icon or BSOD in Windows). I still get the beachball though...have I not done any software things to really optimize the computer? The 'About this Mac' window recognizes the 512MB. Any suggestions would be helpful, thanks.

sps

[briankonar]

I might as well ask my question on this appropriate one. I just purchased and installed 256MB more to my 12in PB (1Ghz) so now I have 512MB. Honestly, i am not noticing much of an increase in speed in my programs. So far nothing has hung, unlike what happened a couple of times before this upgrade (I was astonished, being a new Mac-convert). But I thought for my money I was not only fixing the hanging problem, but more than likely avoiding that stupid little beachball (at least it's better than any waiting icon or BSOD in Windows). I still get the beachball though...have I not done any software things to really optimize the computer? The 'About this Mac' window recognizes the 512MB. Any suggestions would be helpful, thanks.

sps

i doubt you'll get much of a speed increase, i think 512 should be the minimum system requirements for OS X (256 is about the min for just the OS, people typically run more than just the Finder ;) ). also the beachball has nothing to do with RAM (I don't think at least), it's more a symbol of when your processor is busy, or the application itself is busy. more Ram will just keep your computer from continually having to pull data off the hard drive, which I've heard can improve the HD's life.

for the person with the G5 and 1gb+ of ram, it doesn't seem like your demanding enough of your computer to warrant extra ram. OS X just uses the available ram as much as possible, as you open more applications it will scale the RAM provided to each to accompany your systems demands. once you open enough apps to fill the RAM with each app's minimum RAM requirements you will begin experiencing page outs.

or at least that's how my mind interprets it all :p

[cnladd]

OS X, like most flavours of UNIX, allocates as much RAM as possible to whichever programs are running. This is common, and isn't something to worry about. As you invoke more applications, you'll see them start to use some of the RAM that was otherwise devoted to other apps. The virtual memory system will dynamically allocate the memory based on need and usage.

The only time you'll need to worry is if your system is doing excessive paging. The best way to determine this is to look at the pagein/pageout stats on `vm_stat 5` (or `vmstat 5 5` on most other UNIX systems). Please note: make sure you give an interval afterwards (`vm_stat 5`, for example) or else you may get some obscenely high totals. The first line is typically a "throw-away" line. What you really want is the average per x seconds (determined by the interval.) The lower the better, and pageins are typically worse than pageouts.

[Counterfit]

i doubt you'll get much of a speed increase, i think 512 should be the minimum system requirements for OS X (256 is about the min for just the OS, people typically run more than just the Finder ;) ). also the beachball has nothing to do with RAM (I don't think at least), it's more a symbol of when your processor is busy, or the application itself is busy. more Ram will just keep your computer from continually having to pull data off the hard drive, which I've heard can improve the HD's life. If you have little or no free RAM available, you'll get the beachball because it has to pull data off the HD which is significantly slower. So in that case, more RAM will help alleviate the "beachball syndrome"

[Calliander]

my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs

Open your applications folder and click once on Safari to highlight it. Get info on the app. In the Safari info window, click the triangle for the Languages area. Chances are that every language is enabled. If you only need English, disable all the others. Otherwise disable the ones you don't need.

[bluetrepidation]

I have 10.3.2 on a 400 MHz G3 iMac with 256 MB of RAM and it is happy. If more memory is there then OS X will use it. 512 MB should keep everything quite happy for norma tasks. aka light gaming, word processing, and all the apps that we use daily in OS X. As for laptop owners I'd say max out your ram. Laptops are always slower than desktops and the less you need to look to the hard drive the better.

A.J.

[Frohickey]

I think there is a clause in the EULA (End User License Agreement) that voids your warranty in perpetuity if you use the G5 to do voodoo magic, satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and demonic conjurations.

That, and the G5s are not designed to be used in such a manner.

However, I have heard that G5s can be used for virgin summonings though. :o

[Counterfit]

I think there is a clause in the EULA (End User License Agreement) that voids your warranty in perpetuity if you use the G5 to do voodoo magic, satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and demonic conjurations. aawww :( However, I have heard that G5s can be used for virgin summonings though. :o WOOHOO!! :D

[TEG]

Limewire is the Problem

As are all JAVA based P2P software.
Be it Limewire or Acquisition, they eat as much RAM as possible. I have used both for work and they start by taking 50MB and can end up taking as much as 400MB, and once as high as 512MB. I wouldn't really worry about it. Once you close Limewire your ram will slowly return to you, after like 30min, you should nearly be back to normal levels.

Use Menu Meters to monitor your Memory Consuption, When I get to less than 200MB Free, I know why new programs are running slow. Or when the Rx gets above 200m/s I know why sites are loading slow.

TEG

[blue&whiteman]

I have read in a few different places that the true sweet spot for panther ram is 4GB. that is the amount needed to not be held back by anything related to memory. feed osx ram till it burps then feed it some more.

I have 512 and its hardly enough.

[Counterfit]

I have 512 and its hardly enough. I know the feeling, especially when I get to reading archives of webcomics that have been going for a few years (like Melonpool (www.melonpool.com) and GPF (www.gpf-comics.com)) and Safari is using 150MB or more of RAM.

[blue&whiteman]

I know the feeling, especially when I get to reading archives of webcomics that have been going for a few years (like Melonpool (www.melonpool.com) and GPF (www.gpf-comics.com)) and Safari is using 150MB or more of RAM.

I think for your needs firefox would suit you best. since you look at comics on the web i'm sure you do a lot of scrolling. firefox is a scrolling monster compared to safari. it simply has much faster 2D rendering.

[adamjay]

don't mean to hijack this thread but i have a related Ram question.

is there anyway to clear inactive ram?

the reason i ask is i use, on a VERY regular basis an application called Final Scratch made by Native Instruments, its an Audio application that allows you to control digital music files (mp3, aiff, etc.) with regular analog turntables and special time-code pressed vinyl records.

The thing is, i have 640MB in my 12" (the max, Rev1) and i noticed that every song i cue in Final Scratch will each eat away anywhere from 2 to 4mb of Free ram (depends on what kind of file the song is, 192kbps mp3's are smaller than 1400+ kbps .aiff's or .wav's) Generally i use this application on a timscale of 2 to 4 hours at a time, mixing about 30 tracks per hour. You do the math, with all the tracks i've played and even some that i've cued and not played, i am running out of ram, ram that is occupied by files i simply will not use again (what dj plays the same song twice?)
i run another application in the background, audio hijack which is recording via the line input and i will get glitches toward the end of a 3 hour mixing session and i'm pretty sure that its because i am running out of ram, though i could be wrong.

i've tried quitting and relaunching the final scratch application to clear the ram, even logging out and back in (which defeats my recording purposes, but hey i was troubleshooting), nothing. had to reboot to regain any ram.

anyone?

[Counterfit]

I think for your needs firefox would suit you best. since you look at comics on the web i'm sure you do a lot of scrolling. firefox is a scrolling monster compared to safari. it simply has much faster 2D rendering.Scrolling? Not really. With strip format comics, I can just leave the mouse in one spot, read, then click. And depending on the layout, I can do it with two comics :D

[JamesDPS]

With regard to 4GB in the G5, yeah I've seen that it's the "sweet spot", too -- the consensus seems to be that by filling all 8 ram slots, the I/O to memory is maxed out (as the system simultaneously accesses all 8 modules); since 512 dimms are the best deal, i think, (4GB of top-tier memory for around $700) that's the way to go for max performance without breaking into the VERY expensive 1GB module territory. at least, that's the theory, as far as i understand it.... still waiting for rev. b powermacs to come out -- and still re-iterating my wish that apple could sell a "bare-bones" machine with no vid card, no HD, and no RAM, but that would be just plain silly on Apple's part! :)

[Makosuke]

is there anyway to clear inactive ram?
Yes: Open another application that uses it. Inactive RAM is just that; inactive. If the program that originally put stuff there asks for it again, it immediately becomes active. If some other program nees that RAM, it immediately gets allocated to that program. For all practical purposes, inactive RAM = free RAM. It's just not something to worry about.


i run another application in the background, audio hijack which is recording via the line input and i will get glitches toward the end of a 3 hour mixing session and i'm pretty sure that its because i am running out of ram, though i could be wrong.Sounds like it's having both apps open at the same time that's the issue, not anything to do with inactive RAM. If Final Scratch has actually allocated most of your RAM to itself (not inactive), then there might not be much left for Audio Hijack, and you could get glitches as the OS pages memory to disk. Or, it could just be a processor and/or IO issue--not enough bandwidth for both apps to do what they need to do.

But in any case, once you quit Final Scratch, all of its formerly used RAM should immediately become inactive, at which point it's available for any other app to use, exactly as if it were free.

[adamjay]

Yes: Open another application that uses it. Inactive RAM is just that; inactive. If the program that originally put stuff there asks for it again, it immediately becomes active. If some other program nees that RAM, it immediately gets allocated to that program. For all practical purposes, inactive RAM = free RAM. It's just not something to worry about.

Sounds like it's having both apps open at the same time that's the issue, not anything to do with inactive RAM. If Final Scratch has actually allocated most of your RAM to itself (not inactive), then there might not be much left for Audio Hijack, and you could get glitches as the OS pages memory to disk. Or, it could just be a processor and/or IO issue--not enough bandwidth for both apps to do what they need to do.

But in any case, once you quit Final Scratch, all of its formerly used RAM should immediately become inactive, at which point it's available for any other app to use, exactly as if it were free.

actually, it was turning the free ram into inactive ram, so i guess its not that detrimental.

as for the glitches in audio hijack, i found out that it is simply an issue with processor power. i was getting glitches when recording to compressed .mp3 files. , however when recording to uncompressed stereo .aiff - no glitches at all. so it seems that between recording to disk, running finalscratch, and encoding to mp3 - it was just all overkill. no big deal, i can make .aiff's up to 2GB's and thats 3 hours of audio!, if i need to go over 2GB i can set audio hijack to start a new file every 2GB and just fix it later in Bias Peak.

but thanks for clearing up the definition of inactive ram, it all makes much more sense now. while i'm at it, can i pick your brain for the deferences between (in activity monitor) Nice vs. Idle vs. System CPU usage???

i just started Folding and i see it requires alot of "Nice"

[Makosuke]

while i'm at it, can i pick your brain for the deferences between (in activity monitor) Nice vs. Idle vs. System CPU usage???

i just started Folding and i see it requires alot of "Nice"Easy one; "nice" is just that--a process that is using processor cycles, but will immediately allow any other application to use the processor if necessary. It's basically used by processor intensive but non-important things, where it doesn't matter if something else preempts it.

Hence, it's perfect for Folding; it'll use all of your available processor time when nothing else wants it, but as soon as you launch another app that asks to use the processor, Folding backs off and lets it do its thing. Nothing goes to waste, save maybe a bit of overhead to keep Folding running and handle the processor scheduling. It'll really jack up the power use of a G5 or a laptop, but it won't otherwise affect your other applications much.

[musicpyrite]

I have 256 MB of RAM and I'm always runnig Safari, iTunes, iChat, and usually Appleworks, in addition to LimeWire, Adobe Photoshop CS, iMovie, and Micromedia Dreamweaver MX. I only notice lag when switching between apps. Do you think I need more? :confused: :confused: :confused:

[Counterfit]

I have 256 MB of RAM and I'm always runnig Safari, iTunes, iChat, and usually Appleworks, in addition to LimeWire, Adobe Photoshop CS, iMovie, and Micromedia Dreamweaver MX. I only notice lag when switching between apps. Do you think I need more? :confused: :confused: :confused: you should have at least 1GB in that! yow! :eek:

[MacRAND]

I have 256 MB of RAM and I'm always runnig Safari, iTunes, iChat, and usually Appleworks, in addition to LimeWire, Adobe Photoshop CS, iMovie, and Micromedia Dreamweaver MX. I only notice lag when switching between apps. Do you think I need more? :confused: :confused: :confused:Until I maxed out RAM in my iBook (originally 128 MB added upon purchase free) with a new 512 MB, it was hurting - now it runs smoothly. But, that's a G3...maxed.

G5s are notorious for eating RAM.

The graphs I've seen, seemed to show efficiency begins at 1500 MB, increasing significantly through 2500 MB, then tailing off rapidly.
Obviously, 4 GB cannot hurt.
If you have a dual, you have 8 slots, @ 512 each that's 4 GB max.
However, now that 1 GB chips are commonly available, if you do high end stuff, 8 GB may be more appropriate.

Although Apple states 8 GB max, with the advent of 2 GB RAM chips your G5 can handle 16 GB total.
But unless you are a high end video editor or someone who regularly deals with multi GB files, that much is insane - including the COST!

I feel the sweet spot for a dual G5 is most probably between 2.5 and 4 GB depending upon the demands you put upon your PowerMac.
Just don't waste your slots on less than 512 MB boards, 2 matching boards at a time.
If you already own a smaller pair and have the slots, you might as well use them until you they get displaced by larger pairs.

[iwantanewmac]

Open your applications folder and click once on Safari to highlight it. Get info on the app. In the Safari info window, click the triangle for the Languages area. Chances are that every language is enabled. If you only need English, disable all the others. Otherwise disable the ones you don't need.


Or get delocalizer and remove all language packets except the ones you need.

[frenetic]

my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs


There is also an issue with Safari having a memory leak - http://www.dasgenie.com/scrap/archives/000007.html .... Once every few days I just quit and restart safari, which brings it back to normal levels (70 mb).

[Zorkon]

Every 2 months or so, somebody wonders aloud why OS X seems to require huge amounts of RAM to do nothing. :) This is a perfectly reasonable question, especially if you used previous versions of the Mac OS. After all, in OS 9 and earlier, you had to manage your memory carefully. There was only so much to go around, and you could actually instruct a program as to how much to use.

Keep in mind though, that OS 9 can trace its lineage directly back to the OS that shipped with the original Mac. We're talking early 1980's memory management technology here: The user. Back then, no home users had a gig of RAM and 20 apps running on their boxes simultaneously. There weren't 16 users logged in and doing all sorts of things at once.

Welcome to Unix, my friends.

Unix-like operating systems had to manage their memory, and do it well. Unix has been a multi-user OS from its humble beginnings in academia. 20 physics researchers logged in and running simulations? You better have a good memory manager, lest researcher A's data accidently mingle with researcher B's ... who wants to sort that out ? Not the Unix sysadmin guy - he had better things to do, like play Nethack and Netrek. :)


Why is OS X Using All My RAM?

Good question. We'll get to that in a second. But an equally valid question that no one ever asks is: Why isn't my operating system using all my RAM? You paid good money for it, didn't you? Wouldn't you want to get your money's worth? What good is RAM if it sits there doing nothing? The point of memory is to store information. If it's not storing anything, then there really isn't much point to having that RAM.

Here's where OS X (and other Unix / Unix-like OSes) differ from what many Mac users are used to:

The philosophy behind memory management in OS X is that unused memory is wasted memory. Accessing the disk is slow. On a multi-user system, if things get slow, users complain and we sysadmins get very, very unhappy. So, OS X is designed to keep information "handy" in RAM. People are creatures of habit - we tend to do the same tasks over and over.

So, if you've been browsing the net and then close Safari, there's still a pretty good chance that you'll open it up again. Why free up all the RAM that Safari was using the instant you close it, if you're going to turn around and re-open it five minutes later?

Instead, OS X keeps some of that data laying around in RAM for when you next open Safari. But, it marks the memory as inactive. When you next try to open Safari, there's less to load in from disk because OS X can access data from the Inactive memory pool. Therefore, Safari loads faster and people are happy.

But wait! What if I never open Safari again? Or what if I open a really huge honkin' Photoshop file and need that memory back? Is there any way to get it back?

You're in luck. OS X does this for you automatically too! Notice earlier I said that RAM that stored information that was no longer in use was marked inactive. RAM that contains nothing at all is called "free" memory. OS X always tries to keep a certain amount of free memory. If you suddenly open a huge document that eats up a bunch of your free memory, OS X will automatically empty some of your inactive RAM and turn it into free memory, making it available for new programs to use.

OK, so I get it. Inactive RAM is like a buffer - OS X keeps data around in inactive RAM in case I use it again. But if I don't, OS X will free up the inactive RAM and allocate it to new programs automatically.

So, that about covers it. The next time you notice that you've only got 7 megs of free memory left in Activity Monitor (or top from the Terminal), check to see just how much memory is Inactive. You've probably got more than enough for your needs. OS X is just doing its best to make your user experience a fast and pleasant one.

Like I said: You paid for the RAM? Why wouldn't you want to use it all?

Hope that helps.

(note: the above is a simplistic view of what's going on, but accurate enough for most purposes. Any BSD or mach kernel hackers that might be reading this, sorry if I've glossed over any of the details. :)

[scott1]

OSX is based on UNIX and since it's supposed to use true multi-tasking and not multi-switching like Windows9.x/XP you should have nothing to worry about. Gotta love that UNIX.

[Nny]

Why is OS X Using All My RAM?

Good question. We'll get to that in a second. But an equally valid question that no one ever asks is: Why isn't my operating system using all my RAM? You paid good money for it, didn't you? Wouldn't you want to get your money's worth? What good is RAM if it sits there doing nothing? The point of memory is to store information. If it's not storing anything, then there really isn't much point to having that RAM.


Amen! Same goes for processor power. I realized that some apps can use quite a hefty punch of MHz if you let them. Why shouldn't they? My computer is no less responsive because of it. If I launch more apps then the greedy program relaxes a bit. I started doing Folding@Home so I make sure I get my "money's worth" for my processor. I am now at 0% Idle and I love it. No noticeable hit to performance at all and I am doing it for a good cause! Wonderful!

[mooshoo]

I think Limewire is the main culprit. I notice my PBG4 slows way down when I'm downloading/uploading. But as soon as I turn off Limewire, everything picks right up again, especially web services.