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what is inactive memory

P

patrickng89

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 19, 2010
34
0
Hi guys,

A mac newbie here. everytime i play game on the os x i get the beachball alot. the game takes up 2gb of ram and theres always this inactive memory which is almost 1gb of ram. can someone explain what is that?

PS: i have the mid 2010 mbp 15'' base model
 
patrickng89 said:
Hi guys,

A mac newbie here. everytime i play game on the os x i get the beachball alot. the game takes up 2gb of ram and theres always this inactive memory which is almost 1gb of ram. can someone explain what is that?

PS: i have the mid 2010 mbp 15'' base model
Click to expand...

hey mate.

inactive RAM is RAM that was previously reserved for an application/process but has now been closed or no longer needs that RAM. its still technically assigned to that program, but if another program needs it then its free to be taken.

amount of free RAM is Free Ram + Inactive RAM. :)
 
the game i was playing takes up 2gb of ram and with that my safari lags quite badly and i get loads of beachballs.

PS: i assigned 1gb ram to vmfusion win 7. will that affect my performance on os x? Does that mean i only get 3gb of ram when running os x natively
 
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Ohhh you have virtual machines. Yes it does mean that you will have 3gb available ram. This would also explain the massive slow down.
 
DoFoT9 said:
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Ohhh you have virtual machines. Yes it does mean that you will have 3gb available ram. This would also explain the massive slow down.
Click to expand...

Remember that OS X currently has a bug that doesn't always free up inactive RAM for other applications meaning that apps will have to use swap file (HD) which is a lot slower than using RAM. That's why so many people are facing beachballing even though they have a lot inactive RAM
 
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Duke: Swap memory comes into play with inactive ram

hell: where is the link? There Are no bug from what I know. The ram is handled differently.

Excuse my replies, moible + alcohol is bad i'll reply properly tomorrow lol
 
DoFoT9 said:
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Duke: Swap memory comes into play with inactive ram
Click to expand...

Swap memory? Unsure what you mean here

All I know is that even with a ton of inactive ram and hardly any "free" ram (as in the case of using ram hungary programs and then not needing them anymore), my system is very slow and the page outs increase dramatically

I wish there was an app or a command that would wipe the inactive ram and reclassify it as free (maybe there is?)
 
DoFoT9 said:
Wirelessly posted (nokia e63: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_1_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile/7E18 Safari/528.16)

Duke: Swap memory comes into play with inactive ram

hell: where is the link? There Are no bug from what I know. The ram is handled differently.

Excuse my replies, moible + alcohol is bad i'll reply properly tomorrow lol
Click to expand...

See this
 
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duke: ifreemem. Download it.... It will do what you are after.

Hell, much mobile can't read that lol... Sorry... Will reply when I awaken.!
 
How much used RAM are you's getting after a restart?

I'm using up 1.2gb, which, i'm not sure is a lot.
 
ok hangover nearly gone.. i can think clearly again :D

dukebound85 said:
I beg to differ

If I have no free ram but alot of inactive, my systems still bog down like none other. Has been my experience across many machines as long as I can remember with osx
Click to expand...
what applications are you running? when does the slow down occur? there are explanations for everything - i do understand how OSX handles RAM (to some extent) so maybe i can help explain why its happening.

Hellhammer said:
Remember that OS X currently has a bug that doesn't always free up inactive RAM for other applications meaning that apps will have to use swap file (HD) which is a lot slower than using RAM. That's why so many people are facing beachballing even though they have a lot inactive RAM
Click to expand...
that specific instance was more coming from top sites and opening to new tabs etc. there isnt a bug related to inactive RAM not being used (i read all the links).

dukebound85 said:
Swap memory? Unsure what you mean here

All I know is that even with a ton of inactive ram and hardly any "free" ram (as in the case of using ram hungary programs and then not needing them anymore), my system is very slow and the page outs increase dramatically
Click to expand...
computers have a "swap file" which is basically your virtual memory container. when virtual memory comes into play, everything reads from the swap files.

inactive RAM doesnt necessarily mean that it will be used up by other applications instantly. it all depends really.. maybe there are still ties to the RAM from somewhere else, maybe its doing some paging to bring back pages, can you describe your scenario?

I wish there was an app or a command that would wipe the inactive ram and reclassify it as free (maybe there is?)
Click to expand...
iFreeMem. :p

Hellhammer said:
See this
Click to expand...

read and replied ;)
 
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