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Just bought 16GB RAM. Now I realized that I have too much RAM.

S

seasurfer

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 12, 2007
756
184
After installed 16 GB RAM. I realized that I am not utilizing most of them. I can open all my applications and still have lots of free RAM. But I do realized that my start up speed is faster.

Anyone has any better way to utilize it?
 
I doubt that your startup speed is faster due to more ram.

Return the ram?

98% of all users dont need more than 4 gigs of ram.
 
Well were expecting us recommend you to keep more programs running? :confused:
Haha.
You have extra RAM, great. You can't really "utilize" it any better.
When you need, at least you'll have it, right? :p

Speaking of RAM ... I need to upgrade :eek: 4GB just isn't enough! I'll wait and see if Lion uses more RAM (which can further help me justify a nice upgrade to 8GB).
 
Trying to find a use for stronger the necessary hardware you procured does not make sense to me.

My brain sees this no different than me turning on all the lights and equipment in my house, just because my circuit breakers can handle the load. The capacity is there - but if the need isn't, let it sit idle.

I'd say to sell some of it if you can, or start running large VMs, multiple OS's, and editing videos to suck that stuff up. ;)
 
Badger^2 said:
98% of all users dont need more than 4 gigs of ram.
Click to expand...

And the other 1.9% could probably make do with 8GB. It's pretty rare that you need 16GB—only big rendering jobs, virtualisation and heavy duty Photoshop work make use of 16GB.
 
Badger^2 said:
I doubt that your startup speed is faster due to more ram.

Return the ram?

98% of all users dont need more than 4 gigs of ram.
Click to expand...

For some odd reason, my start up speed is faster by a few more seconds. It is real. On general usage, I do feel a little faster too. I can't explain it, but it seems to be that way.
 
Good to have more memory

It is good to be abundant in memory.
More memory can make the machine run faster and more smoothly. You can also run more applications simultaneously.
Just relax and enjoy using your machine with sufficient memory!
 
My normal usage eats up 7 to 10gigs on a regular basis. I use iMovie a far bit, useHandbrake, stream video online, or music. Usually have several other programs open I use and the browser. Not to mention parallels and some VMstuff.

Bottom line if you can afford the ram, it never a bad thing to have. I added 8 to the 4 gigs of base ram for 150 bucks and have yet to regret it. Daily use is faster because I don't have to shut down things to run others. Startup is faster than base model with 4gigs, but it's not like it compounds as you keep adding more ram. Just enjoy your smoother running mac :).
 
seasurfer said:
After installed 16 GB RAM. I realized that I am not utilizing most of them. I can open all my applications and still have lots of free RAM. But I do realized that my start up speed is faster.

Anyone has any better way to utilize it?
Click to expand...
How much is "lots" of free ram?

Also, as you run stuff, OS X uses free memory as a cache to cut down on disk access. This in turn speeds up the system a bit.

At the price of the memory for the iMac, it wasn't a bad purchase.
 
IMHO, the best RAM metric available in Activity Monitor is Page Outs. RAM demand fluctuates too rapidly to be reflected meaningfully in either Free or Inactive RAM.

But Page Outs happen because of a RAM shortage, however transient. Until the Page Out occurs, the task that needed the memory is stalled, and this probably results in delay for you. It also will result in Page Ins at some future time, meaning more delay.

High rates of Page Outs result in sluggishness, although SSDs can tolerate maybe ten times the paging rate that HDDs can sustain.

You'll have to decide just how much paging affects your working and how sensitive you are to slowdowns.
 
Just keep it and be happy.

Having more RAM than you need is better than having less.

Plus, on the rare occasions you manage to use up almost all that RAM will leave you happy you did buy it.

Plus, RAM for iMacs (i.e. laptop RAM) is cheap nowadays so it's not like you spent a lot - compared to RAM for other machines *coughcoughmysigcough*
 
'If' you're only using your iMac for web browsing, playing music or watching videos then 4GB is more than enough.

I would say then that you should have bought an iPad as you're never going to tax your machine and it's a waste of money.

If you do anything remotely creative i.e. Photoshop or 'serious'* iMovie/FCE then the more RAM you add to the mix the better. ;)



* yea I know.
 
seasurfer said:
For some odd reason, my start up speed is faster by a few more seconds. It is real. On general usage, I do feel a little faster too. I can't explain it, but it seems to be that way.
Click to expand...

It is more likely to be slower, if anything, as all that additional RAM has to be initialised on startup.

It is a bit old hat, but if you want to make use of surplus RAM you could try playing with ram disks, I suppose.
 
seasurfer said:
After installed 16 GB RAM. I realized that I am not utilizing most of them. I can open all my applications and still have lots of free RAM. But I do realized that my start up speed is faster.

Anyone has any better way to utilize it?
Click to expand...

Run Photoshop? ;)

Seriously, image processing in general needs lots of memory. Not that many other things do. So unless you are someone like me who can't read the news without Google Earth and 100 browser tabs open, you probably bought too much. 4 GB is the sweet spot for most users, and has been since ~2007.
 
U have the ram

you bought and installed it yourself, that means its cheaper so you havent lost anything (if u upgraded with apple ram then u lost alot of money) and as programs get more ram intensive you know you will have tons of it, you can always be reassured that your programs are running at maximum speed becuase you have all that ram.i would have gone with buying 8gb more of ram on top of 4gb stock, then u would have had 12 gigs of ram, plenty of it.
 
RAM allows you to run more programs concurrently. It doesn't increase performance in the respect you are looking at it.

If you have 4GBs of RAM and you're doing basic tasks, upgrading is not going to change a thing. It's also not going to effect bootup time. No desktop operating system needs >4GBs to load the system, I get the feeling that's psychological.

RAM allows you to do more at once. A system from 20 years ago with a mere few megs of RAM will perform extremely basic tasks just fast as a modern system. It wont do nearly as much, it wont offer hardly any of the featureset, but the tasks it can do, it will perform just as fast. More RAM and the jump from 32bit to 64bit allows us to do more with our systems, the only way RAM can increase speed is if your system doesn't have enough RAM to accomplish what you want it to do. Then a RAM upgrade will make a difference.
 
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Only power users (video/photo/3d work) will get you to your 16gb of usage. You should have been realistic with yourself on your daily use cases before forking over the money.

I guess you can always open 300 windows of safari...
 
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