Help me understand Activity Monitor

[umdjb]

This is what my Activity Monitor looks like after running simple Apps like MS Office (word,excel,powerpoint) Adium, Safari, and Mail. Is it normal to be running at such low levels of free RAM and have so many Page-Outs. I have a 2.16ghz MBP with 1GB RAM. Do I need more RAM? Should I be worried? What does this mean?

Thanks

 

[Allotriophagy]

I do not have an answer to your question, but remember that Office runs through Rosetta and will use more memory. (Or so I assume.)

 

[Nukemkb]

Conclusion I have drawn after many searches is that page outs apparently should not exceed 10% of page ins, with 5% being preferrable. You still have plenty of inactive RAM.

 

[gauchogolfer]

This is what my Activity Monitor looks like after running simple Apps like MS Office (word,excel,powerpoint) Adium, Safari, and Mail. Is it normal to be running at such low levels of free RAM and have so many Page-Outs. I have a 2.16ghz MBP with 1GB RAM. Do I need more RAM? Should I be worried? What does this mean?

Thanks

The Office apps are almost certainly a big drain. Could you post a screenshot of the application window, so we can see how much memory is allocated to each application?

 

[spicyapple]

Free RAM and Inactive RAM are essentially the same thing. Inactive RAM is RAM that has been used by other apps but is free if the current app you are using needs it. Page ins/outs depend on how long you have the computer on between restarts/log-ins so the number is essentially meaningless.

You should be ok with 1GB with 3-4 open apps, but 1.5GB - 3GB is the sweet spot nowadays.

 

[WildCowboy]

See this article for some details.

Your page outs are getting up there, so you'd probably benefit from more RAM. But more important is how the system feels to you...if it feels sluggish and you're getting a lot of beachballs, it's probably time for more RAM.

 

[DMann]

Activity Monitor

This is what my Activity Monitor looks like after running simple Apps like MS Office (word,excel,powerpoint) Adium, Safari, and Mail. Is it normal to be running at such low levels of free RAM and have so many Page-Outs. I have a 2.16ghz MBP with 1GB RAM. Do I need more RAM? Should I be worried? What does this mean?

Thanks

Actually, your free (inactive RAM) is proportionally quite optimal.
One of the great features of OS X is its ability to allocate RAM
with amazing efficiency, allowing those open apps to run idle with
minimal RAM usage while allocating the majority toward those
applications which need it at the moment. As SpicyApple said,
Inactive RAM is basically Free RAM, made available by a previous app. Dashboard apps, however, are RAM guzzlers, even while running in
the background. If you want to free up more RAM, try closing any
running Dashboard Widgets when not in use. No need to worry about
high numbers of Pageouts - simply reboot to bring the number back down. Of course, adding more RAM would certainly speed up your MBP all around. Hope this helps....