Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

BiikeMike

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2005
1,019
1
So, I got my Mac Pro home Monday night. Ordered the new RAM today, should be here tomorrow.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 2.png
    Picture 2.png
    44.5 KB · Views: 224

trainguy77

macrumors 68040
Nov 13, 2003
3,567
1
This is how my system has lived since November. Its only been turned on for an hour or soo too....
 

Attachments

  • Picture 4.png
    Picture 4.png
    24.9 KB · Views: 165

Fearless Leader

macrumors 68020
Mar 21, 2006
2,360
0
Hoosiertown
Um i Have never seen a single page out on the G5 and ever since upgrading to 2gb on the MBP its always a 0 page outs too.

And I use my computers, hard. video editing/rendering/encoding, graphics work, WoW.
 

BiikeMike

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2005
1,019
1
This is how my system has lived since November. Its only been turned on for an hour or soo too....

holy fack!

I took my screenshot after a reboot, and before the reboot I was running at 80,000/160,000, but you, you are just.... we need to start a collection plate "RAM for Trainguy!"

you really have been running it like that since November? What do you do?
 

trainguy77

macrumors 68040
Nov 13, 2003
3,567
1
holy fack!

I took my screenshot after a reboot, and before the reboot I was running at 80,000/160,000, but you, you are just.... we need to start a collection plate "RAM for Trainguy!"

you really have been running it like that since November? What do you do?

I am high school student....or do you meant what do i do with the computer. Just lots of multi-tasking. I am going to see how high it gets after a couple days. As normally i just put it too sleep when i don't use it. So at the end of this week I will look at that number. ;) How about you guys lay bets of what it will be at....loser buys me RAM. :rolleyes: RAM is my top priority right now....but money is in short supply.
 

benlee

macrumors 65816
Mar 4, 2007
1,246
1
How's this.

I only have safari running.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    30 KB · Views: 93

joepunk

macrumors 68030
Aug 5, 2004
2,553
13
a profane existence
Here's mine. I restarted earlier in the day to clear-up the page ins/outs and to free up some ram.

It gets much higher after using graphic applications and going w/o a restart for several days.
 

Attachments

  • Picture 2.png
    Picture 2.png
    25.4 KB · Views: 83

GoCubsGo

macrumors Nehalem
Feb 19, 2005
35,741
153
For the not-so-educated in RAM speak. What's a page out and what's the significance of it?
 

topgunn

macrumors 68000
Nov 5, 2004
1,556
2,060
Houston
In most cases, your computer will page out when you run out of memory. When this happens, your computer will off-load some information in memory to the hard drive. The significance of this is that your computer goes from using one of the fastest components of your computer (memory) to the absolute slowest component (your hard drive). When this happens, you are likely to see the spinning beachball or experiences stutters in your performance.

Page ins are the opposite. It is reading information into memory. This is supposed to happen. For example, when you turn on your computer, the operating system is loaded into memory from the hard drive. These packets show up as page ins. It is impossible to say what number of page outs are bad. You may have 500,000 page outs after 2 weeks or after 2 hours. One may be acceptable and the other is certainly not. A general rule of thumb is to look at the ratio betweeen the page ins and outs. Personally, I don't want any page outs so if I am running on 1GB and I have a 3:1 ratio, I will buy more RAM. But, for most people, if you have less than a 2:1 ratio, you should probably consider getting more RAM.

Also note that your computer "pages out" when you put your computer to sleep. Basically, it writes out the information in memory to the hard drive to save power and then loads it back in when it wakes up. Try this. Check your page outs before putting your computer to sleep and then check them again after waking it up from sleep. So, if you are the type of user who is frequently putting your computer to sleep, your number of page outs is going to be inflated. Don't interpret this to mean that you are short on memory.

A good test to see if you need more RAM would be to do a clean restart of your system thus clearing out the page in/out information and then open up all of the programs that you would typically have open at the same time and do a few tasks with these apps that would constitute normal activity. Now, go and check your page outs. If you have more than a couple thousand, you probably don't have enough RAM.
 

Lycanthrope

macrumors 6502a
Nov 1, 2005
566
92
Brussels, Belgium, Europe
Thanks for making me a little less ignorant chaps! I'll check mine when I go home. I suspect it will be a pretty decent ratio for me as I just upgraded to 2.5GB of memory from 1GB that I had before and since this change I have yet to receive a visit from Mr Beachball :)
 

vincebio

macrumors 6502a
Jun 27, 2005
792
48
Glasgow
regularly checking my activity monitor has never revealed any page outs at all.

iMac G5 with 2gb Ram.

We run Illustrator, Photoshop, Bryce, Quark etc...

That many Page outs will kill your hard drive in no time...
 

SilentPanda

Moderator emeritus
Oct 8, 2002
9,992
31
The Bamboo Forest
Well I think I'm okay then. This is after 15 days of uptime running Folding @ Home 24/7. Of course I do other things on the computer but... yeah.

2ghz quad Mac Pro, 2gb ram. Wheee.
 

diamond3

macrumors 6502a
Oct 6, 2005
881
373
Well here is mine. I know I clearly qualify for more ram. I mean after all, i'll run iTunes, iMovie, iDVD, Photoshop, Firefox and MSN sometimes at the same time. I just don't want to put anymore money into this iMac g4 because if I get a new one, this 512mb of ram will be plenty for what i would do on it. It hadn't been shutdown for at least a week.

edit: Heres another question, why is it you can have page outs when you still have over 100mb of inactive memory? Why doesn't it want to use it sometimes?
 

Attachments

  • Picture 2.jpg
    Picture 2.jpg
    60.2 KB · Views: 106

vohdoun

macrumors 65816
Jan 23, 2006
1,035
0
Far away from Earth.
Um i Have never seen a single page out on the G5 and ever since upgrading to 2gb on the MBP its always a 0 page outs too.

And I use my computers, hard. video editing/rendering/encoding, graphics work, WoW.

Strange. You think it would, I was getting 5xxxxx to 8xxxxxx pages outs with heavy texture work with 2GB, several hundreds of layers/effects 1920x1920 ranging from 150 to 300 meg psds. Ever since getting ram well over 4gig has been great for my stuff. 0 page outs now, even time saving and opening files, it was murder for me waiting several minutes. Now those files open from 30 to 60 seconds.
 

BiikeMike

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Sep 17, 2005
1,019
1
It came in, and it's all good :)
 

Attachments

  • Picture 1.png
    Picture 1.png
    26.7 KB · Views: 93

trainguy77

macrumors 68040
Nov 13, 2003
3,567
1
Surely you can scrape together $130 for an extra gig? Are your parents that cruel? To heck with them -- just get a pt job for a couple weeks and you'll be all set.

The price is $299 in canada from the local guys. Anyone else found a cheaper price after shipping in cdn dollars? Some places charge $80 for shipping and by the time you stick that in plus custom charges its more expensive.
 

CanadaRAM

macrumors G5
The price is $299 in canada from the local guys. Anyone else found a cheaper price after shipping in cdn dollars? Some places charge $80 for shipping and by the time you stick that in plus custom charges its more expensive.

Ahem.... you might be be well to check again -- you can figure out where...

Biike: the thing isn't the absolute numbers of pageouts, but the ratio of ins to outs. You want outs to be about 10% of ins or lower, 5% or lower is great.


Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com
 

daneoni

macrumors G4
Mar 24, 2006
11,598
1,146
I tend to push my system, torrenting, safari, audio/video re-encoding, parallels etc. So i seldom have zero pageouts BUT i rarely "choke" either as RAM is usually freed up after each task without needing a restart.

picture1ia6.png
 

trainguy77

macrumors 68040
Nov 13, 2003
3,567
1
Ahem.... you might be be well to check again -- you can figure out where...

Biike: the thing isn't the absolute numbers of pageouts, but the ratio of ins to outs. You want outs to be about 10% of ins or lower, 5% or lower is great.


Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

haha so my ratio is REALLY bad in my last screen shot......now its up too 212782/419096
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.