Memory usage

[cy88]

I got a question regarding memory usage in macbook, well OS X 10.4.8.

I recently installed 1gb ram on my macbook, and of course, it runs alot smoother. So i opened up photoshop, i saw the memory usage shoots from 350MB to 600MB out of the avaliable 1024. When i quit Photoshop, the memory usage stays at 600MB, or maybe dropped a little to 580MB. When i open Photoshop again after that, it shoots up to 700MB!

I am just wondering, if i continute to open and reopen photoshop, wouldn't i be using up my memory very shortly? If that's the case, 2gb wouldn't be enough! Consider i have other programs such as firefox and dreamweaver running too.

Is there a way to free the memory? Or is there a trick behind this? Sorry i am new to mac, and i just find this little weird.

Thanks for any help in advance! :clap:

Chris

 

[Zwhaler]

When you say you close the application, are you just closing the window (the little red circle with an x) or are you selecting Photoshop (in the top left corner) and going to Quit Photoshop? Because closing the window doesn't exit the program, it just closes the window, so you are still using computer power (and RAM) when you think the application is closed. Welcome to macs

 

[cy88]

Thanks

Yes i did close it completely.

 

[Zwhaler]

So what you are saying is that the program is still taking up RAM after you closed it? Or you just forgot to quit the application

 

[Eidorian]

Don't worry so much about Free Memory. You'll see that Inactive Memory is available.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918

 

[cy88]

So the memory is inactive, and it's just sitting in another pool of allocated memory. When needed, it'll be taken from there instead of the free memory, is that the idea?

 

[bousozoku]

So the memory is inactive, and it's just sitting in another pool of allocated memory. When needed, it'll be taken from there instead of the free memory, is that the idea?

Yes. It sits there until needed for the original application by which it is marked or until something else requires memory that isn't otherwise available. If another application requests more free memory than what's available, the VM system looks at inactive memory and takes away from the least current and marks it as free.

 

[cy88]

Very clear, thanks guys. BTW, mac is very very great!

 

[Soulstorm]

Memory management questions such as this are very often in this forum. All you must remember is that OS X memory management is very different than Windows'. Programs will take as much memory as possible, even if the current task they perform is not that much demanding. If any other program need more memory than the amount available, memory for all programs is automatically reallocated to suit the needs of all applications.

 

[tonyl]

I also notice that after high inactive memory and low free memory, my mac slows down when I open programs or web pages, giving me spinning ball. It really annoys me, I have to reboot the system.

 

[extraextra]

Remember that Photoshop is running under Rosetta, which uses up quite a bit of RAM.

 

[bousozoku]

I also notice that after high inactive memory and low free memory, my mac slows down when I open programs or web pages, giving me spinning ball. It really annoys me, I have to reboot the system.

You don't have to re-boot the system but it's your choice. It's likely just busy restoring memory from disk, not locked up.

 

[tonyl]

You don't have to re-boot the system but it's your choice. It's likely just busy restoring memory from disk, not locked up.

Any idea how to deal with it?

 

[bousozoku]

Any idea how to deal with it?

Besides learning patience and waiting for system revisions? No, but I'm sure it will become better. VM works pretty efficiently on PowerPC machines now. I only have a little over 52 MB free and yet, the system is very responsive.

I feel for you all. Even my other machine with 1.5 GB and a 7200 rpm drive suffered a lot of beachballs.

 

[tonyl]

Besides learning patience and waiting for system revisions? No, but I'm sure it will become better. VM works pretty efficiently on PowerPC machines now. I only have a little over 52 MB free and yet, the system is very responsive.

I feel for you all. Even my other machine with 1.5 GB and a 7200 rpm drive suffered a lot of beachballs.

I forgot to memtion mine is a PMG5 1.6. I also have a same machine with 512MB memory at work place, it feels very responsive even when the free memory is low.

 

[bousozoku]

I forgot to memtion mine is a PMG5 1.6. I also have a same machine with 512MB memory at work place, it feels very responsive even when the free memory is low.

That's bizarre then. How are you on free disk space, fewer than 10 % available? You need to keep enough space available so that the VM system can do its job. If it's creating multiple small swap files, that could be part of the problem because of a lack of contiguous disk space. Someone in that position could do with some cleanup and de-fragmentation.

 

[tonyl]

That's bizarre then. How are you on free disk space, fewer than 10 % available? You need to keep enough space available so that the VM system can do its job. If it's creating multiple small swap files, that could be part of the problem because of a lack of contiguous disk space. Someone in that position could do with some cleanup and de-fragmentation.

No, I still have 40% free. Maybe because of amule running? I guess I need to do some hard drive cleanup.

 

[bousozoku]

No, I still have 40% free. Maybe because of amule running? I guess I need to do some hard drive cleanup.

You can use WhatSize to see what you have on your drives in order of decreasing size.

Still, you've got something odd happening. If you wouldn't mind, please run the command vm_stat from a Terminal window, so we can see the results. My output looks like this:

Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free:                     4895.
Pages active:                  75698.
Pages inactive:                93303.
Pages wired down:              22712.
"Translation faults":       85887160.
Pages copy-on-write:          589910.
Pages zero filled:          66154066.
Pages reactivated:            647541.
Pageins:                      195947.
Pageouts:                      17249.
Object cache: 95284 hits of 330211 lookups (28% hit rate)

 

[tonyl]

Here is mine after running amule for 1 day.
Mach Virtual Memory Statistics: (page size of 4096 bytes)
Pages free: 19205.
Pages active: 146193.
Pages inactive: 323654.
Pages wired down: 35236.
"Translation faults": 62208163.
Pages copy-on-write: 162316.
Pages zero filled: 38562749.
Pages reactivated: 449492.
Pageins: 34258.
Pageouts: 2137.
Object cache: 14230 hits of 37794 lookups (37% hit rate)