that is what apple specs the machine at, but as every one knows apple only specs the machine at the available ram sizes when they are released (right now 8GB per slot) and never updates the spec the 2011 models can only have 16Gb (4 GB per slot) but plenty of people have put 32 GB into the 2011 model since the 8GB sticks came out… OWC and Everymac.com have plenty of stories of these facts… when 16GB sticks come out it is possible that all 4 will work just fine...
While 32GB isn't that expensive it really is a waste of money for the majority of users. There's probably some placebo effect in which users feel like it's useful but for most people, in my opinion, you rarely need more than 8GB. I've hit the limit of the 8GB in my MacBook Pro a few times and see some page outs when running multiple VMs but other than that I can't imagine going much further. That said, of course there are people doing things that can utilise the full 32GB but it's just typically not your average user. I have 16GB in my late 2012 27" iMac and I'm happy with that and pretty sure I'll never need any more.
I was looking at getting 32GB RAM for my late 2012 27"iMac i5. Did you notice any speed increase?
Tomorrow I will. Out of boredom TBH.
Will this increase Handbrake?
How do I check active memory in Mavericks/Yosemite?
I was looking at getting 32GB RAM for my late 2012 27"iMac i5. Did you notice any speed increase?
I can't say as this iMac had the 32 GB from the moment the power cord was plugged in. I'm positive that all 32 GB has NEVER been used. But if the need ever came up, I've got it installed.
I would venture that if I were to install the 8 GB that came installed from Apple, I would notice performance degradation, not as snappy.
I'm positive that all 32 GB has NEVER been used. But if the need ever came up, I've got it installed.
I average about 10GB normal usage. If I'm doing Handbrake encodes that will use all 32Gb.
In Activity Monitor on the Memory pane, the active memory is the sum of App Memory and Wired Memory. Compressed represents running applications that are currently not actively being used, so they are compressed in memory because it is faster to uncompress when needed than to load from disk. The remainder of the ram is used for file caching, speeding up effective disk accessing. The total of the four numbers (down the right side) should equal or be close to the value "Memory Used". This in turn should be close to the value "Physical Memory" otherwise you have RAM that is being wasted. The value for Swap Used should be small, otherwise you probably need more memory. As a quick check the "Memory Pressure" should be in the Green.
I've attached the measurements from a Mac mini I'm currently using to type this reply. It shows everything is fine -- using all RAM but with 1GB still available for applications. Essentially no swapping. This mini has 4GB of RAM as shown, a 120GB SSD and is currently running Safari (used for this post), Chrome, Mail, Calendar, Activity Monitor, Circus Ponies Notebook, Skitch, Preview, BBEdit, and a CAD program, LPCExpresso, which is a large application written in Java.
One last question. I too am running an SSD and 4 GB of RAM. My app memory and wired memory combined is a little under 2GBs but my swap used is 2.3 GBs and my memory pressure is yellow? Does this essentially mean I could use more RAM?