More Ram?

[freddelar]

Hi! I have a macbook unibody ( 2.4 ghz 2 gb ram). I have felt that it is getting kinda slow when I have many programs running. A friend of mine told me the solution for my problem would be to upgrade the ram from 2 to 4 gb of ram. i checked my activity monitor for ram and it said

free: 17 mb
wired: 182 mb
active 1 gb
inactive: 567

I don't really understand what the numbers mean so I wonder if you guys to tell me if a 4 gb upgrade would make a big difference and what the ram activity monitor would look on a "snappy" computer?

Thanks!

 

[celticpride678]

Hi! I have a macbook unibody ( 2.4 ghz 2 gb ram). I have felt that it is getting kinda slow when I have many programs running. A friend of mine told me the solution for my problem would be to upgrade the ram from 2 to 4 gb of ram. i checked my activity monitor for ram and it said

free: 17 mb
wired: 182 mb
active 1 gb
inactive: 567

I don't really understand what the numbers mean so I wonder if you guys to tell me if a 4 gb upgrade would make a big difference and what the ram activity monitor would look on a "snappy" computer?

Thanks!

17 MB is a very low amount of free memory. What are you running?

 

[freddelar]

Safari, itunes, mail, some finder windows and Vuze.

 

[Stachelsk]

Hi! I have a macbook unibody ( 2.4 ghz 2 gb ram). I have felt that it is getting kinda slow when I have many programs running. A friend of mine told me the solution for my problem would be to upgrade the ram from 2 to 4 gb of ram. i checked my activity monitor for ram and it said

free: 17 mb
wired: 182 mb
active 1 gb
inactive: 567

I don't really understand what the numbers mean so I wonder if you guys to tell me if a 4 gb upgrade would make a big difference and what the ram activity monitor would look on a "snappy" computer?

Thanks!

Completely normal. OS X has an intelligent memory manager... it caches programs after you open them up, so that if you open them again, it's already in memory, and doesn't have to go to the hard drive to load it again. Thus, you have only a little bit of "free, completely unused" memory, but you have a lot of "inactive, but previously used, or cached" memory.

Wired means its in use by the kernel or programs or something. Not sure what active means... probably userspace memory, but all that you need to know is that you don't have anything to worry about.

 

[freddelar]

But would it make a difference if I upgraded the ram?

 

[Stachelsk]

But would it make a difference if I upgraded the ram?

Nope. Very little, if at all. 2GB is all you need for everyday things, by today's standard. Unless you use Parallels, VMware Fusion, or Photoshop, there is no reason to get more memory. I'd invest in a new hard drive ... or SSD if you have the cash .. you will see a noticeable difference from that.

 

[SpeedFleX]

Nope. Very little, if at all. 2GB is all you need for everyday things, by today's standard. Unless you use Parallels, VMware Fusion, or Photoshop, there is no reason to get more memory. I'd invest in a new hard drive ... or SSD if you have the cash .. you will see a noticeable difference from that.

I have VMWare Fusion and my macbook starts lagging, its completly useless, so if I were to upgrade to 4gb would it run smooth again or would it still be bottlenecked by other hardware components?

 

[Stachelsk]

I have VMWare Fusion and my macbook starts lagging, its completly useless, so if I were to upgrade to 4gb would it run smooth again or would it still be bottlenecked by other hardware components?

Smooth as butter.

Also, make sure you installed the latest update for VMware. It decreases processor usage for idle VMs.

 

[RDM3]

Hi! I have a macbook unibody ( 2.4 ghz 2 gb ram). I have felt that it is getting kinda slow when I have many programs running. A friend of mine told me the solution for my problem would be to upgrade the ram from 2 to 4 gb of ram. i checked my activity monitor for ram and it said

free: 17 mb
wired: 182 mb
active 1 gb
inactive: 567

I don't really understand what the numbers mean so I wonder if you guys to tell me if a 4 gb upgrade would make a big difference and what the ram activity monitor would look on a "snappy" computer?

Thanks!

I would bump it to 4GB either way, it is a cheap upgrade, check out newegg.com

 

[will0407]

Check how much RAM you have assigned to VMWare when it stars

 

[J&JPolangin]

....it seems like its a good idea to have 2 GB going to VM/win(xx) and 2 GB RAM to OS X...

 

[Stiss]

I have the 2.4ghz and i bumped it upto 4GB Ram.

It does make a noticable difference, especially when multitasking, and playing WoW