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16 GB of RAM and still huge page-ins

SBlue1

SBlue1

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Oct 17, 2008
2,197
2,821
Hey. A quick question.

I just upgraded my late 2012 MacBook Pro with 16 GB of Ram. I had 8 GB but work with lots of big apps like Photoshop and Indesign at the same time plus have a second account on the same Mac so I constantly had big page-in and page-out numbers as well as a high swap and the cursor was constantly turning into a beachball.

Now since I have the new RAM the Mac is running like new and I never use more than 10 or 11 GB and the page-outs and swaps are down to 0. There are still a high number of page-ins though and the booting time seems not to have improved a lot. When I take a look at the numbers there are 200.000 page-ins just seconds after a fresh reboot, 600.000 page-ins after 30 minutes of simple surfing.

Is this normal? If not how can I get rid of this?
 
page ins -> stuff read from disk and cached in memory.

don't sweat it.

pageouts are evil tough.

cheers
 
SBlue1 said:
Hey. A quick question.

I just upgraded my late 2012 MacBook Pro with 16 GB of Ram. I had 8 GB but work with lots of big apps like Photoshop and Indesign at the same time plus have a second account on the same Mac so I constantly had big page-in and page-out numbers as well as a high swap and the cursor was constantly turning into a beachball.

Now since I have the new RAM the Mac is running like new and I never use more than 10 or 11 GB and the page-outs and swaps are down to 0. There are still a high number of page-ins though and the booting time seems not to have improved a lot. When I take a look at the numbers there are 200.000 page-ins just seconds after a fresh reboot, 600.000 page-ins after 30 minutes of simple surfing.

Is this normal? If not how can I get rid of this?
Click to expand...

It's normal.

Boot times won't improve without an SSD.
 
I'd suggest that you upgrade to a SSD.
Definitely will see improvements in boot up times, and swapping times will also be improved. Less beach balls. :D
 
page outs is the VMM writing stuff that was in memory to the swap file.

it is also normal, but means your system needed more memory than you have available. When you need to use what was in that memory it will need to read it back from disk, and probably swap other stuff out to make room for it.

13 is nothing. i currently have a quarter of a million and that's also negligible.

cheers
 
Please post a screenshot of the activity monitor and describe the symptoms of the problems you are experiencing. Why are you looking at page-ins/outs?
 
SBlue1 said:
Now since I have the new RAM the Mac is running like new and I never use more than 10 or 11 GB and the page-outs and swaps are down to 0. There are still a high number of page-ins though and the booting time seems not to have improved a lot. When I take a look at the numbers there are 200.000 page-ins just seconds after a fresh reboot, 600.000 page-ins after 30 minutes of simple surfing.

Is this normal? If not how can I get rid of this?
Click to expand...
You will always have page-ins, or your Mac wouldn't be running. It is quite normal for you to have a growing number of page-ins as you use your Mac, run applications, load documents, etc., and it's also normal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X. It does not mean that you are running out of memory or that it is maxed out. OS X will manage all available memory, making it available to apps on an as-needed basis. Refer to the following Apple support article for more information on how to understand your Activity Monitor readings.
The combination of Free, Wired, Active, Inactive & Used memory statistics in previous versions of Activity Monitor have been replaced in Mavericks with an easy to read "Memory Pressure" graph.
Memory pressure is indicated by color:
  • Green – RAM memory resources are available.
  • Amber – RAM memory resources are being tasked.
  • Red – RAM memory resources are depleted and OS X is using the drive for memory.
Click to expand...
 
GGJstudios said:
... it's also normal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X. It does not mean that you are running out of memory or that it is maxed out. OS X will manage all available memory, making it available to apps on an as-needed basis.
Click to expand...

I've read this before on this forum, and I am not doubting it (I know nothing about this stuff.) But if this IS true, then how do you know when you ARE at the point where a memory upgrade will make a difference? What readings should you look for?

Thanks,
Zeppo
 
You won't enjoy the potential speed the MBPro is capable of UNTIL you install an SSD.

The installation is "screwdriver easy", so long as you have the RIGHT TOOLS (I think you'll need a Philips #00 and a TORX T-6, check to be sure).

SSD prices are so reasonable now that there's really no excuse not to put one in.

Do it, and you won't regret it.
 
zeppo2 said:
I've read this before on this forum, and I am not doubting it (I know nothing about this stuff.) But if this IS true, then how do you know when you ARE at the point where a memory upgrade will make a difference? What readings should you look for?

Thanks,
Zeppo
Click to expand...
GGJstudios has already answered your question in great detail and with sources.
What do you not understand?

Also look here:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1756865/

----------
Natzoo said:
Me?
Click to expand...
My reply was directed at the OP, but it seems to apply to you, too.
 
zeppo2 said:
I've read this before on this forum, and I am not doubting it (I know nothing about this stuff.) But if this IS true, then how do you know when you ARE at the point where a memory upgrade will make a difference? What readings should you look for?

Thanks,
Zeppo
Click to expand...

If Activity Monitor shows a Red graph, it's time to upgrade. If it shows a Green graph, you're fine. It's really not that difficult.
 
zeppo2 said:
I've read this before on this forum, and I am not doubting it (I know nothing about this stuff.) But if this IS true, then how do you know when you ARE at the point where a memory upgrade will make a difference? What readings should you look for?
Click to expand...
As stated in my earlier post, if the memory pressure graph shows red, it means RAM memory resources are depleted and OS X is using the drive for memory. That would indicate you don't have sufficient RAM. If that happens infrequently, it may not justify buying more RAM. If it happens regularly under your normal workload, more RAM would improve performance.
 
Cloudsurfer said:
If Activity Monitor shows a Red graph, it's time to upgrade. If it shows a Green graph, you're fine. It's really not that difficult.
Click to expand...

I guess it's not worth trying to explain what I mean:

"... it's also normal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X. It does not mean that you are running out of memory or that it is maxed out. OS X will manage all available memory, making it available to apps on an as-needed basis."

I suppose I was just reading the above the wrong way. To me, it seemed to be saying that the monitor won't show green because the normal use by the OS X always ramps it up to the Orange range in some "maximizing" of resources, in which case, orange, the color of "caution", really isn't serving as any warning. So they might as well just make it Green and Red and skip the orange. That would make sense, reading it the way I was. I suppose I should have read with the sense of: "it is not abnormal for all of your memory to be in use by OS X."

I really worded my question wrong and instead of writing" at the point where a memory upgrade will make a difference" should have said "at the point where memory is getting low?" Because by the way I understand it, OS X makes it look like all the memory is maxed because it sets it all aside for management processes, though in reality you might really not be nearing the brink of low memory resources because those "management processes" haven't actually had to use all the memory it has claimed or set aside to manage. As I said, I don't know about this, only what I have been able to piece together, but from what I've read, just because OS X is "managing" all the memory resources, doesn't mean all resources are being used. I guess that is wrong. But if you can't figure out what I mean by that, or conceive of a system of memory management like that, then I'm not explaining myself well enough and it will be take too difficult to do so in this thread, I'm afraid. But no biggy.
 
Last edited:
Hey everybody, thank you for your posts. Everything is fine. :)

My main problem was the low speed and frequent beach balling due to working with both Photoshop and Indesign at the same time. Switching between the two or just loading or editing a big file was a constant pain and killing the workflow. By checking the system status it turned out I was running out of ram since there were enormous values for swaps, page-ins and page-outs. Page-outs slow the system down since this means the Mac is temporarily copying a portion of the ram onto the hard drive every time it runs out of space.

Now by upgrading the ram there are almost no slow downs. The page-ins and swaps are down to zero, just leaving some page-outs which made me worry that something was not right. Now since everybody said this is normal I won't worry. :)

Now to improve the loading times of the apps I installed a new SSD a few days ago. Everything is so fast now. So thanks for your help guys.
 
SBlue1 said:
The page-ins and swaps are down to zero, just leaving some page-outs which made me worry that something was not right.
Click to expand...
I think you meant page-outs and swaps are down to zero. You will always have page-ins if your computer is running.
 
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