Since Retina MacBook Pro's don't have upgradable Ram, and I'm stuck with 4 GB, can Mavericks use free storage space as Virtual RAM? I know Windows 8 can, but you have to set it in Control Panel and I haven't found anything like that in System Preferences.
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Can Mavericks use Virtual RAM
- Thread starter vb7200
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OS X does use "virtual ram" in that ram pages are swapped out as needed. This has been built into OS X since 10.0.
People get too hung up with the memory at times, thinking the computer will stop working if they start maximizing the ram utilization. OS X will just swap out what's not needed to disk. SSDs of course will greatly help this over slow hard drives.
People get too hung up with the memory at times, thinking the computer will stop working if they start maximizing the ram utilization. OS X will just swap out what's not needed to disk. SSDs of course will greatly help this over slow hard drives.
I've got the 256GB Flash in mine not an SSD (or does that count as an SSD? I don't really know). I was just a bit worried since 4GB is pretty skimpy for RAM. I should have gotten an 8 GB but I didn't think I would need to spend the extra couple hundred dollars for double to RAM at the time.
Yep... flash and SSD and interchangeable terms. Unless you are doing some heavy lifting there, you are very unlikely to need more than 4GB.
Restart your Mac then use it all day with whatever apps you normally use, then start Activity Monitor app from /Applications/Utilities and look in the memory tab at the bottom. There is a section there called memory pressure. If that is in the green, you do not need more memory.
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