Do I need more RAM? (Activity Monitor Details Attached)

[Ca$hflow]

I find that my mac gets a bit of lag or beachballs from time to time. It just happened again. Would increasing 4 to 8GB of ram solve this based on my activity monitor snapshot?

 

[karohan]

I find that my mac gets a bit of lag or beachballs from time to time. It just happened again. Would increasing 4 to 8GB of ram solve this based on my activity monitor snapshot?

8gb of RAM will definitely help, but it may not be necessary (though it is a relatively cheap and useful upgrade). Inactive RAM is essentially equatable to free RAM, but sometimes the memory management algorithms within OS X prevent it from freeing memory from Inactive RAM (thinking that you may be using some recently quit programs again or something).

Try opening terminal, typing "purge", and pressing enter. This will attempt to release your inactive RAM and make it free. The system will freeze momentarily while it does this and go back to normal after a few secs. Check out activity monitor after to see if you get more free RAM.

 

[Resist]

Try opening terminal, typing "purge", and pressing enter. This will attempt to release your inactive RAM and make it free.

I just tried this and got "command not found".

 

[Ca$hflow]

I typed purge in terminal and got the reply below.

-bash: purge: command not found

 

[dlimes13]

Honestly I would just purchase the RAM upgrade. 8GB for around $50 nowadays is very cheap for a very beneficial upgrade. Good for that little occasion you are running a lot at once.

 

[Ca$hflow]

8gb of RAM will definitely help, but it may not be necessary (though it is a relatively cheap and useful upgrade). Inactive RAM is essentially equatable to free RAM, but sometimes the memory management algorithms within OS X prevent it from freeing memory from Inactive RAM (thinking that you may be using some recently quit programs again or something).

Ram is super cheap it's just that will what your describing above happen with the 8GB of ram. If so, then the ram was a waste of money.

 

[yusukeaoki]

I find that my mac gets a bit of lag or beachballs from time to time. It just happened again. Would increasing 4 to 8GB of ram solve this based on my activity monitor snapshot?

8GB RAM is only 70 bucks online so try buying it
if you have a problem with the RAM, just contact them nd they will replace it for you

 

[karohan]

I typed purge in terminal and got the reply below.

-bash: purge: command not found

Hm, I'm not sure what I'm doing differently, but I just tried it and it works for me. I actually learned that tip here on MacRumors so maybe someone else can shed more light on that.

Anyway, I upgraded to 8gb of RAM, and I can say it really does help a lot. I can now run virtual machines without any sluggishness at all. I'm kind of ridiculously cluttered and keep a lot of windows/apps/tabs open, so I still do end up using swap space. But based off your activity monitors screenshot, you don't seem like you would ever have that problem. Not to mention, even if I do swap a little, I don't notice a slowdown.

 

[Resist]

Typing the "purge" command still says "command not found" for me. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

 

[karohan]

Typing the "purge" command still says "command not found" for me. I'm running Mac OS X 10.6.8.

Ah! Figured out what was wrong. You need to have Apple's Computer Hardware Understanding Developer Tools (CHUD Tools) installed (part of the Developer Tools package). You used to be able to get it for free by creating a free Developer's account, and it still should be free, but I'm not totally sure.