Free memory vs. Inactive?

[G5Unit]

My PowerMac G5 hasn;t been running as fast as it used to. When I go under activity monitor I see that I have a lot of inactive memory? What does that mean? Sometimes I only have about 20 mb of free memory though.

Here is a picture when safari, adium, itunes and mail is running:

 

[WildCowboy]

For all intents and purposes, inactive memory is free. It is memory that was used by a program that has since been released. It retains the old data in case you come back to use that same app again. If the RAM is needed for something else, the OS will use it.

 

[fivetoadsloth]

Yes, as wildcowboy said inactive memory is "free", I would recommend upping your RAM to 2 gig, thatll make quite a difference.

 

[mklos]

I would definitely recommend getting more RAM. You have a ton of page-outs which indicates you've ran out RAM. Once that happens, you'll see a serious performance decrease. I would put at least another gigabyte (2x512).

 

[G5Unit]

I would definitely recommend getting more RAM. You have a ton of page-outs which indicates you've ran out RAM. Once that happens, you'll see a serious performance decrease. I would put at least another gigabyte (2x512).

What are page in and page outs?

 

[WildCowboy]

Page ins are when data is sent from your hard disk to RAM. Page outs are when data goes in the other direction...this is undesirable because it's much slower than if the RAM was able to handle all of the information on its own. If page outs are significant compared to your page ins and your system feels sluggish, it's a good bet that more RAM will help you tremendously.

 

[eyedoc_00]

I have had my iMac G5 for about 2 years, why would I now start to get more page outs vs. page ins. For instance, my page outs are 431969 and my page ins are 414970. I have 1 gb of memory. The programs I run constantly are mail, dashboard and safari. All the rest of the programs are open only when in use. I seem to be getting the spinning beach ball a lot in safari.
Thaks for the help.