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19GB swap with 16GB of RAM?

VitoBotta

VitoBotta

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 2, 2020
912
361
Espoo, Finland
I had memory problems with the 8GB mini so I replaced it with a 16GB. I am not having any problems with memory at all now even with several GBs dedicated to the Docker VM and several other apps running (e.g. Nextcloud also uses quite a bit of RAM). However right now the system is using a whopping 19GB of swap :D

How come? Should I be worried? I don't understand it because the memory pressure is pretty low almost all the time and I don't see any slowdowns etc apart from when the computer wakes from sleep.

Is there a way to see which apps use a lot of swap?

Thanks
 
The M1s are designed to use swap as part of their operation; the SSDs are super fast so there is no performance hit like there would be on older Intel Macs. What Ive gathered from 60 pages of that 8GB vs 16GB thread is that you would have to be a serious power-user (LOL remember that term) for you to take advantage of 32GB RAM.
 
darngooddesign said:
The M1s are designed to use swap as part of their operation; the SSDs are super fast so there is no performance hit like there would be on older Intel Macs. What Ive gathered from 60 pages of that 8GB vs 16GB thread is that you would have to be a serious power-user (LOL remember that term) for you to take advantage of 32GB RAM.
Click to expand...

So nothing to worry about the SSD either? Is it true that these modern SSDs last much longer even when swapping a lot?
 
VitoBotta said:
So nothing to worry about the SSD either? Is it true that these modern SSDs last much longer even when swapping a lot?
Click to expand...

Let me put it like this: if you have a 512GB SSD and completely overwrite it’s entire contents every day (assuming full disk), you can still expect it to last couple of years at least.

Swap usage is of no consequence if your system performs as expected. You say you are using multiple docker containers. Maybe the system aggressively suspends them to disk when they are inactive.
 
leman said:
Let me put it like this: if you have a 512GB SSD and completely overwrite it’s entire contents every day (assuming full disk), you can still expect it to last couple of years at least.

Swap usage is of no consequence if your system performs as expected. You say you are using multiple docker containers. Maybe the system aggressively suspends them to disk when they are inactive.
Click to expand...

I went with the 256GB disk since I use external storage for the data. The system performs great so far.
 
darngooddesign said:
The M1s are designed to use swap as part of their operation; the SSDs are super fast so there is no performance hit like there would be on older Intel Macs.
Click to expand...

You're being a bit too optimistic here.
The SSDs are fast and Macs do swap pretty eagerly and steps have been taken to reduce the impact, but the performance hit of swapping still ranges from "barely noticeable" to "gigantic", depending on the workload.
Computers still need RAM and need enough RAM to contain all their data juggling.
 
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19GB Swap ! :(
You really should check out which App is hogging/leaking all that memory.
Once you've found it , kill it/ restart it or upgrade it. There is nothing normal about non-power users running up a big swap, and it will definitely affect how snappy your desktop is.

> The M1s are designed to use swap as part of their operation

That is true for all computers since ... the last forever. 16GB Ram is more than enough for macOS and a few well behaved apps.
 
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