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Floating Beach Ball

prechrchet

prechrchet

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 5, 2002
157
0
I've been getting the floating beach ball a LOT lately, and it has been real frustrating. I am trying to decide if I need a whole new system, or if I can simply upgrade what I have and accomplish the same thing.

Here is what I have: mac Mini, 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, with 1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 RAM, and with 64 MB of Video Memory.

Any thoughts?
 
upgrade the ram and it will be muuuuuch better. what is your page in to page out ratio in activity monitor? if its less than 10:1, i would jump for ram

get two of these as you are likely running a 512 and 512 config and you can support up to 2 or 3 gigs i think (someone correct me)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820146126 is an example. pretty much any pc2-5300 ddr2 667mhz ram will work

here are more selections
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...1052910525 1309221136&name=DDR2 667 (PC2 5300)
 
The solution for the dreaded spinning beach ball of death is universally considered to be more RAM. As you have but 1 GB RAM at present, it seems to me that 2 GB RAM would seem to be a reasonable minimum, in the circumstances.

Cheers and good luck
 
Beach Ball

More RAM sounds good. Question: how much do I need? Is 2 GB going to be enough? What is the maximum I can put in this machine?

Thanks,
prechrchet
 
prechrchet said:
More RAM sounds good. Question: how much do I need? Is 2 GB going to be enough? What is the maximum I can put in this machine?

Thanks,
prechrchet
Click to expand...

as you can see in my links, the ram is pretty cheap so id max it out personally.

with that said, even just 1 extra gig will show you a vast improvement

do you happen to know what the ram limit is?

if its 3.3 like the early santa rosa, id maybe just get a 2 gig stick to have a total of 2.5 or get a 2 gig and 1 gig stick
 
From OWC:
NOTE: A 4.0GB (2GB x 2 Pair) configuration was also tested by 'popular demand' in the Mac mini. Although the Core 2 Duo Mac mini is limited to 3.0GB addressed, the 4GB Set (2GB x 2 Pair) does appear enable 128 Bit addressing. While there does seem to be a small performance benefit gained with the 4.0GB vs. 3.0GB config, we'd recommend sticking with 3.0GBs max (in Core 2 Duos) unless you absolutely are seeking every last trickle of performance boost possible.
Click to expand...

link to RAM benchmarks on Mac Mini

EDIT-I do believe that quote above should actually read "the Core 2 Duo Mac mini is limited to 3.3GB addressed" as dukebound previously stated, also, my iMac is running slow and has the same RAM limitation but because it's pretty cheap and I do want all the performance out of it I can get I'll be getting 4GB (2x2GB) for it.
 
Adding RAM will only help if you actually use that much memory.

You should run Activity Monitor on your different workloads to find out what your working set is.


BTW, it's not a beachball, it's an optical disk.
 
cube said:
BTW, it's not a beachball, it's an optical disk.
Click to expand...

lol, that's like saying it's not a blue screen of death, it's an error message, does it really make a difference? and beachball is the jargon I've seen most users here use for it, that or rainbow wheel [of doom, or of death]
 
MasterNile said:
lol, that's like saying it's not a blue screen of death, it's an error message, does it really make a difference? and beachball is the jargon I've seen most users here use for it, that's or rainbow wheel [of doom, or of death]
Click to expand...

That's because extremely few Mac users have used NeXT, where it was evident.
 
cube said:
Adding RAM will only help if you actually use that much memory.

You should run Activity Monitor on your different workloads to find out what your working set is.


BTW, it's not a beachball, it's an optical disk.
Click to expand...

he's beachballing so he's suffering from a lack of ram

OP: add more ram and it will make it seem like you have a whole new computer

For curiosities sake, what is your page in to page out ratio?

Cube: Buuuut it looks like a beachball and beachballs are fun lol
 
Totals are useless. You have to look at the instantaneous paging information in 'top' for your workloads.
 
prechrchet said:
Page in: anywhere from 623 -598

Page out: 578
Click to expand...

ram is your issue

cube said:
Totals are useless. You have to look at the instantaneous paging information in 'top' for your workloads.
Click to expand...

its a pretty decent measure to see if you need more ram

for sake of the op: page outs refer to when osx has to utilize the hd when it cant utilize the ram. ideally you want 0 page outs. thus having a high page outs number relative to your page in total means that osx is, more often than not, frequently running into a scenario where it must use your hd due to lack of ram. this is much slower than ram and hence why you beachball constantly

alot of people have a "rough" guideline of a 10:1 ratio of page in to page out before more ram is considered. as you can see, you are about 1:1 so ram will definitly help you out
 
dukebound85 said:
ram is your issue


...

alot of people have a "rough" guideline of a 10:1 ratio of page in to page out before more ram is considered. as you can see, you are about 1:1 so ram will definitly help you out
Click to expand...

Thank you and everyone for your help. :) I'll be upgrading tomorrow, hopefully.
 
I dont know about that.... My machine is pretty good with ram, but I *sometimes* do see the beach ball floating around when i do some Photoshop or video editing stuff.

e9b85e3828a8a71fd50a206d6fcb8d98.png
 
Ever since I switched to my splendid MBP last April and first met said beachball, I have felt that the spinning "beachball" of death/doom has a more ominous air to it than Microsoft's dozy old hour-glass ever had.

Cheers and good luck
 
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