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Just how much Bloody Ram does it need.

adamfilip

adamfilip

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 13, 2003
841
1
burlington, Ontario canada
my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs
 
running Jaguar on my G4 450 w/ 640 megs of RAM. I'll have Image Ready, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Mail, Safari, Explorer, Acrobat Reader, and Fetch all running with no issues. Do I hesitate to open another app? no. no problem. Are you having a real problem?
 
if you have the memory to spare, why not let the programs use as much as they want? i believe they will happily take less if less is available, but let them run free when they have the chance!
 
That's just the way OS X and UNIX is. Anyway, what's the point of having RAM if it ain't being used? During the Mac OS 9 days I'd often have less than half my RAM being used by apps and the system. The other half just sat there and did nothing, until I finally opened up enough apps to use it, and then I'd get memory problems... At least with OS X, the RAM goes into making the system and apps perform better. It might appear odd that apps are using so much memory when you look at the resource monitor, but the true test of a shortage of RAM is looking at the page in/page out writes (if the number in brackets after the big number is more than 0 for a couple of seconds, then your Mac needs more RAM), but unless you're doing some serious data crunching (rendering whilst protein folding), then I doubt you need to upgrade to 2GB. But, more RAM is always nice.
 
baby duck monge said:
if you have the memory to spare, why not let the programs use as much as they want? i believe they will happily take less if less is available, but let them run free when they have the chance!
Click to expand...

I felt this was entirely necessary... :D
 

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i think that the programs are just storing as much as they wish in ram rather than continuously going back to grab things off the hdd. i'd say don't worry about it. i have 512MB RAM and i usually run safari, mail, itunes, ichat, and ical (and finder :p ) and i usually have about 10-30 MB left. do i care? no. does it bother me? no. does it make me want more ram? no. i'm fine with it.

reality
 
This has been discussed extensively in these forums several times very recently; basically, Apps leave stuff in memory even after they stop using it or are quit, just in case that's necessary again (so it won't have to be reloaded). That's what the "inactive" portion of your RAM is, and it's still quite available if you need it. So long as the free + inactive sections of the little pie chart are not both zero, you still have RAM to spare, and have nothing to worry about.
 
i've read somewhere in pogue's missing manual for OS X that "free" RAM in this case means "unattributed" rather than "unavailable." i vaguely remember him saying that having a lot of "free" RAM in this case is bad because it's not going to be used by any of the programs and is being wasted, or something to that degree...

as others said, those RAMs will be dynamically attributed to all the running programs as the machine sees fit, so unless you are noticing some system performance decline, i'd say you have nothing to worry about...
 
adamfilip said:
my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs
Click to expand...

OS X gives programs more RAM if it's available.

Also, there's something called inactive RAM. OS X checks to see if RAM is needed - if not it doesn't remove items stored by programs not in use/closed so that they will launch/work quicker when you do use them. It is odd that Safari uses so much RAM. Try another browser or something (restart/repair permissions?) - mine only uses about 10-75MB.
 
instead of starting another thread

I might as well ask my question on this appropriate one. I just purchased and installed 256MB more to my 12in PB (1Ghz) so now I have 512MB. Honestly, i am not noticing much of an increase in speed in my programs. So far nothing has hung, unlike what happened a couple of times before this upgrade (I was astonished, being a new Mac-convert). But I thought for my money I was not only fixing the hanging problem, but more than likely avoiding that stupid little beachball (at least it's better than any waiting icon or BSOD in Windows). I still get the beachball though...have I not done any software things to really optimize the computer? The 'About this Mac' window recognizes the 512MB. Any suggestions would be helpful, thanks.

sps
 
buckuxc said:
I might as well ask my question on this appropriate one. I just purchased and installed 256MB more to my 12in PB (1Ghz) so now I have 512MB. Honestly, i am not noticing much of an increase in speed in my programs. So far nothing has hung, unlike what happened a couple of times before this upgrade (I was astonished, being a new Mac-convert). But I thought for my money I was not only fixing the hanging problem, but more than likely avoiding that stupid little beachball (at least it's better than any waiting icon or BSOD in Windows). I still get the beachball though...have I not done any software things to really optimize the computer? The 'About this Mac' window recognizes the 512MB. Any suggestions would be helpful, thanks.

sps
Click to expand...

i doubt you'll get much of a speed increase, i think 512 should be the minimum system requirements for OS X (256 is about the min for just the OS, people typically run more than just the Finder ;) ). also the beachball has nothing to do with RAM (I don't think at least), it's more a symbol of when your processor is busy, or the application itself is busy. more Ram will just keep your computer from continually having to pull data off the hard drive, which I've heard can improve the HD's life.

for the person with the G5 and 1gb+ of ram, it doesn't seem like your demanding enough of your computer to warrant extra ram. OS X just uses the available ram as much as possible, as you open more applications it will scale the RAM provided to each to accompany your systems demands. once you open enough apps to fill the RAM with each app's minimum RAM requirements you will begin experiencing page outs.

or at least that's how my mind interprets it all :p
 
OS X, like most flavours of UNIX, allocates as much RAM as possible to whichever programs are running. This is common, and isn't something to worry about. As you invoke more applications, you'll see them start to use some of the RAM that was otherwise devoted to other apps. The virtual memory system will dynamically allocate the memory based on need and usage.

The only time you'll need to worry is if your system is doing excessive paging. The best way to determine this is to look at the pagein/pageout stats on `vm_stat 5` (or `vmstat 5 5` on most other UNIX systems). Please note: make sure you give an interval afterwards (`vm_stat 5`, for example) or else you may get some obscenely high totals. The first line is typically a "throw-away" line. What you really want is the average per x seconds (determined by the interval.) The lower the better, and pageins are typically worse than pageouts.
 
briankonar said:
i doubt you'll get much of a speed increase, i think 512 should be the minimum system requirements for OS X (256 is about the min for just the OS, people typically run more than just the Finder ;) ). also the beachball has nothing to do with RAM (I don't think at least), it's more a symbol of when your processor is busy, or the application itself is busy. more Ram will just keep your computer from continually having to pull data off the hard drive, which I've heard can improve the HD's life.
Click to expand...
If you have little or no free RAM available, you'll get the beachball because it has to pull data off the HD which is significantly slower. So in that case, more RAM will help alleviate the "beachball syndrome"
 
adamfilip said:
my g5 has 1250mb of DDR. in it..

when im just crusing the web with a few apps open.. , and i check the resource monitor my system says i only have like 200mb free or so sometimes.. all im running is like safari, icq. limewire. maybe illustrator
itunes..


sometimes.. safari eats like 150mb of memory.. i dont get why or how it uses that much memory to show webpages that are fraction or a meg in size.

running panther..

maybe i should upgrade to 2 gigs
Click to expand...

Open your applications folder and click once on Safari to highlight it. Get info on the app. In the Safari info window, click the triangle for the Languages area. Chances are that every language is enabled. If you only need English, disable all the others. Otherwise disable the ones you don't need.
 
I have 10.3.2 on a 400 MHz G3 iMac with 256 MB of RAM and it is happy. If more memory is there then OS X will use it. 512 MB should keep everything quite happy for norma tasks. aka light gaming, word processing, and all the apps that we use daily in OS X. As for laptop owners I'd say max out your ram. Laptops are always slower than desktops and the less you need to look to the hard drive the better.

A.J.
 
I think there is a clause in the EULA (End User License Agreement) that voids your warranty in perpetuity if you use the G5 to do voodoo magic, satanic rituals, animal sacrifice and demonic conjurations.

That, and the G5s are not designed to be used in such a manner.

However, I have heard that G5s can be used for virgin summonings though. :eek:
 
Limewire is the Problem

As are all JAVA based P2P software.
Be it Limewire or Acquisition, they eat as much RAM as possible. I have used both for work and they start by taking 50MB and can end up taking as much as 400MB, and once as high as 512MB. I wouldn't really worry about it. Once you close Limewire your ram will slowly return to you, after like 30min, you should nearly be back to normal levels.

Use Menu Meters to monitor your Memory Consuption, When I get to less than 200MB Free, I know why new programs are running slow. Or when the Rx gets above 200m/s I know why sites are loading slow.

TEG
 
I have read in a few different places that the true sweet spot for panther ram is 4GB. that is the amount needed to not be held back by anything related to memory. feed osx ram till it burps then feed it some more.

I have 512 and its hardly enough.
 
Counterfit said:
I know the feeling, especially when I get to reading archives of webcomics that have been going for a few years (like Melonpool and GPF) and Safari is using 150MB or more of RAM.
Click to expand...

I think for your needs firefox would suit you best. since you look at comics on the web i'm sure you do a lot of scrolling. firefox is a scrolling monster compared to safari. it simply has much faster 2D rendering.
 
don't mean to hijack this thread but i have a related Ram question.

is there anyway to clear inactive ram?

the reason i ask is i use, on a VERY regular basis an application called Final Scratch made by Native Instruments, its an Audio application that allows you to control digital music files (mp3, aiff, etc.) with regular analog turntables and special time-code pressed vinyl records.

The thing is, i have 640MB in my 12" (the max, Rev1) and i noticed that every song i cue in Final Scratch will each eat away anywhere from 2 to 4mb of Free ram (depends on what kind of file the song is, 192kbps mp3's are smaller than 1400+ kbps .aiff's or .wav's) Generally i use this application on a timscale of 2 to 4 hours at a time, mixing about 30 tracks per hour. You do the math, with all the tracks i've played and even some that i've cued and not played, i am running out of ram, ram that is occupied by files i simply will not use again (what dj plays the same song twice?)
i run another application in the background, audio hijack which is recording via the line input and i will get glitches toward the end of a 3 hour mixing session and i'm pretty sure that its because i am running out of ram, though i could be wrong.

i've tried quitting and relaunching the final scratch application to clear the ram, even logging out and back in (which defeats my recording purposes, but hey i was troubleshooting), nothing. had to reboot to regain any ram.

anyone?
 
blue&whiteman said:
I think for your needs firefox would suit you best. since you look at comics on the web i'm sure you do a lot of scrolling. firefox is a scrolling monster compared to safari. it simply has much faster 2D rendering.
Click to expand...
Scrolling? Not really. With strip format comics, I can just leave the mouse in one spot, read, then click. And depending on the layout, I can do it with two comics :D
 
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