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Wired, active, inactive, free memory? Page ins and outs? What do they all mean?

Z

ZenErik

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 22, 2007
340
2
Massachusetts
Hi, I'm just looking for more clarity on these terms. I upgraded my MacBook to 4 gigs, very useful for recording, but I just want to know more about what all these things mean. I provided some screens of my my iStat and Activity Monitor as well.

You'll probably notice that my 4 gigs of RAM isn't adding up to 4 gigs. That's because my MacBook is the model before Santa Rosa.
 

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Thanks, but I'm looking for more info on the page ins and page outs. I'm imagining that I have zero page outs because my RAM never has to send information to my hard drive?
 
ZenErik said:
Thanks, but I'm looking for more info on the page ins and page outs. I'm imagining that I have zero page outs because my RAM never has to send information to my hard drive?
Click to expand...

Page outs as you suggest is when requests for memory get sent to the harddrive. This is slower than RAM and will lead to a decrease in performance. If you have zero page outs or very little in comparison to page ins then you have enough/more than enough RAM. If you have a high number of page outs/page ins then you need more RAM.

From the linked KB article

"Page ins/outs" refers to the number of times Mac OS X has moved information between RAM and disk space.
Click to expand...
 
I have 2 GB of RAM in my Macbook.

My page ins are: 534,284. My page outs are: 547,246

Are you telling me I need more ram for whatever I'm doing with my mac because it keeps accessing the HD? I'm not even using it for anything heavy, or anything that I think is heavy.
 
CrackedButter said:
I have 2 GB of RAM in my Macbook.

My page ins are: 534,284. My page outs are: 547,246

Are you telling me I need more ram for whatever I'm doing with my mac because it keeps accessing the HD? I'm not even using it for anything heavy, or anything that I think is heavy.
Click to expand...

Basically yes, it looks like you need more ram for what you are using your computer for.

What apps do you typically run.

It could've been a freak cause by an app crash so keep an eye on it after normal usage.

Kelly™ said:
I like this iStat thing.
Where did you get it?
Click to expand...

iStat pro
 
Thanks for the link ^.^

I got it after I posted, yay for google minus lazyness :p
 
This makes me even more glad that I upgraded. Even better that it was 100 dollars. 54,285 page ins so far. 0 page outs. But I have yet to do any heavy duty recording yet; I can't wait. :)

Glad you like iStat, Kelly. I check it all the time because I feel the need to constantly monitor my MacBook's performance, haha.
 
My uptime has been a week and for this week I've mostly been streaming movies on different browsers, itunes, bbc radio widget and neo-office. Also the DVD player

I do use Photoshop and iphoto though, but not this week.
 
Perhaps reboot and then do normal things and check again. Then throw in the Photoshop work, while keeping an eye on things.

You really shouldn't be that low on RAM with 2GB especially with what you are doing. :confused:
 
If you are running Rosetta app, you need more RAM. 2gb running apps under rosetta and universal photoshop is stretching it, but works fine with 4gb of ram.
 
Consultant said:
If you are running Rosetta app, you need more RAM. 2gb running apps under rosetta and universal photoshop is stretching it, but works fine with 4gb of ram.
Click to expand...

That depends. 6 months or so ago the usual advice was your excact wording with '2' swapped with '1' and '4' swapped with '2'. I doubt things have changed much.
 
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