Memory problem with MBP

[R.Youden]

Hi, I have had my MBP for about 3 months now and apart from being VERY hot I have had no issues. A couple of days ago I loaded up MS Word and even though it runs under Rossetta I thought it took ages to load, as did Excel. I thought this may have had something to do with the 10.4.8 update and didnt think anything of it. That was until I saw the title thread which says that 10.4.8 has made Rosetta quicker! I run menumeter (I think thats its name) to monitor network traffic, CPU usage and memory usage. Now normally I could have a few basic apps, Safari, Mail, Adium, iTunes etc open and it would say that I have about 270-350MB unused (I have the standard 512 installed) but now, with only iTunes and Safari open I have 337MB used and 175MB free.

Could I have a problem with my memory (well not mine but the MBP) and is there an app out there that I can use to test my RAM.

Thanks

 

[JAT]

You need 1GB minimum if you expect good performance out of Rosetta. It's a shame that Apple even offers any of their computers with less than 1GB.

You might try resetting the PMU if it is too hot.

 

[R.Youden]

Now this is strange. I just had a look in Activity Monitor and it said that iTunes and Safari where using 90+MB each! I then quit and restarted and got the following results which make much more sense:

 

[WildCowboy]

Now this is strange. I just had a look in Activity Monitor and it said that iTunes and Safari where using 90+MB each! I then quit and restarted and got the following results which make much more sense:

FWIW, Safari's RAM usage is like a gas...it'll expand to fill the available volume. After a few hours of use, Safari uses close to 600 MB of RAM on my PowerBook with 1.5 GB total RAM.

 

[bearbo]

Now this is strange. I just had a look in Activity Monitor and it said that iTunes and Safari where using 90+MB each! I then quit and restarted and got the following results which make much more sense:

safari (i'm not sure about itunes) use over 100 MB memory is abs. normal, it is abnormal for you to only have 270-350MB unused... unless you know, you just started up the computer and just opened safari, with one tab open... then MAYBE

but yeah, you need minimum 100MB if you want to run rosetta

 

[Westside guy]

Hi, I have had my MBP for about 3 months now and apart from being VERY hot I have had no issues. A couple of days ago I loaded up MS Word and even though it runs under Rossetta I thought it took ages to load, as did Excel. I thought this may have had something to do with the 10.4.8 update and didnt think anything of it. That was until I saw the title thread which says that 10.4.8 has made Rosetta quicker! I run menumeter (I think thats its name) to monitor network traffic, CPU usage and memory usage. Now normally I could have a few basic apps, Safari, Mail, Adium, iTunes etc open and it would say that I have about 270-350MB unused (I have the standard 512 installed) but now, with only iTunes and Safari open I have 337MB used and 175MB free.

Could I have a problem with my memory (well not mine but the MBP) and is there an app out there that I can use to test my RAM.

Are you noting that "Inactive" memory is not reported as being free; but will be made available if needed?

Actually sometimes I have suspected that OS X isn't particularly good at freeing up inactive memory; but my background is in Linux so it's possible that BSD and/or OS X just does things differently than I'm used to.

 

[bearbo]

Are you noting that "Inactive" memory is not reported as being free; but will be made available if needed?

Actually sometimes I have suspected that OS X isn't particularly good at freeing up inactive memory; but my background is in Linux so it's possible that BSD and/or OS X just does things differently than I'm used to.

they do that so application that was closed are still loaded in the memory, in case you want to use them again... thats why if you close (i mean quit, not minimize) an app and open it again, it's much faster

 

[Westside guy]

they do that so application that was closed are still loaded in the memory, in case you want to use them again... thats why if you close (i mean quit, not minimize) an app and open it again, it's much faster

Right - it's just that in my experience Linux seems to do a better job releasing inactive memory to a currently-running app when it's necessary. But that's just how it "seems" and I haven't done the homework necessary to determine if my impression is really accurate.