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3Gb of page outs in 24 hours.

I

i.love.caffeine

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 18, 2006
20
0
Hi,

I have a Macbook Air 13" Core 2 Duo 1.87.

There's 2Gb of ram, and within 1 day of conservative use (watching videos, editing pages documents, browsing internet) there is already 3Gb of page outs (via Activity Monitor).

I am not too sure what to expect for the page-outs.

I know if it's above 0, it means you need more ram, but is this number a normal amount for this usage?

Thanks!
 
A few page outs are normal. Another way to see if you should upgrade your ram is to look at the amount of swap used. How much of your swap is currently used as per Activity Monitor?
 
A ram upgrade would do that machine good. But because it's an Air, you can upgrade its ram.
 
Intell said:
A ram upgrade would do that machine good. But because it's an Air, you can upgrade its ram.
Click to expand...

If I buy a new air, should i opt for the 4Gb of ram - or max it out at 8Gb.

I don't expect my usage to change too much..

THANKS!
 
i.love.caffeine said:
If I buy a new air, should i opt for the 4Gb of ram - or max it out at 8Gb.

I don't expect my usage to change too much..

THANKS!
Click to expand...

I would suggest go for the 8GB....good for the long run..i do similar usage as urs...and I hav 4GB ram...still end up using ~500MB-1GB Swap daily...

my Page-IN's = 3GB on Average and Page-OUT's = ~1-2GB on average....all i do is email, internet, watch videos(online and locally), edit documents (all this usually simultaneously as these apps r the most running) oh n skype is usually just signed in...

I wish I had the option to by 8GB ram back in Feb when I got the Air:( didn't have option to wait as my MBP got a excellent return on the sale at that time.
 
The question I would ask is if your computer seems slow? If it doesn't, then memory isn't an issue.
 
i.love.caffeine said:
I have a Macbook Air 13" Core 2 Duo 1.87.

There's 2Gb of ram, and within 1 day of conservative use (watching videos, editing pages documents, browsing internet) there is already 3Gb of page outs (via Activity Monitor).
Click to expand...
If that represents normal use for you, you would benefit from more RAM. However, you can't upgrade the RAM in the MBA. If you go with a new one, 4GB may be sufficient, but if you can afford it, go with 8GB, to accommodate any possible changes in your normal use in the future. Also, the fact that you're paging isn't as impactful on performance as it would be if you had a HDD instead of flash memory.
 
There is nothing bad about page outs. That what is called virtual memory. Stuff that is no longer constantly used gets swapped out to the mass storage. With today's ultra fast SSD's not an issue at all. Was even acceptable on harddrives. Modern operating systems do swap unless you have more RAM than the sum of memory consumption of all apps you run until you reboot.
 
Bigmacduck said:
There is nothing bad about page outs.
Click to expand...
That's not true. Page outs mean your system is being slowed down to the speed of your drive, which is much slower than RAM or your CPU.
Bigmacduck said:
That what is called virtual memory.
Click to expand...
That's not true, either. You can take advantage of virtual memory without having page outs.
Bigmacduck said:
Stuff that is no longer constantly used gets swapped out to the mass storage.
Click to expand...
Again, not true. Page outs can include things that are currently being used, but just not as much or as frequently as a needed page in.
Bigmacduck said:
With today's ultra fast SSD's not an issue at all.
Click to expand...
It is still an issue. As fast as they are, SSDs are still much slower than RAM.
Bigmacduck said:
Was even acceptable on harddrives.
Click to expand...
Acceptable to whom? As already stated, page outs result in your system being restrained to drive speed.
Bigmacduck said:
Modern operating systems do swap unless you have more RAM than the sum of memory consumption of all apps you run until you reboot.
Click to expand...
You clearly don't understand paging. This is not how it works. Please educate yourself before posting, so you don't mislead those who might not know better.

Virtual Memory
 
Don't confuse us with facts, this is not a computer science class. Page outs are OK, there is nothing wrong with the system. It might not be optimally equipped with resources, but it works OK. To make a final judgment it would be required to know the timeframe over which these cumulative number of pages occurred and what the application load and response times were.

Such performance analysis is a big business in real IT.
 
Bigmacduck said:
Don't confuse us with facts,...
Click to expand...
Facts are what people expect when they here looking for help and information. It doesn't help anyone for you to make it up as you go along and post misinformation which can mislead people. If you don't care about the facts, that's your right, but don't post nonsense.
 
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