Pageouts

[JamesM]

I use my MacBook Pro for picture editing which has 2gb of ram, I use Aperture and CS2 but I'm finding I'm getting a lot of pageouts, even after I quit an app its still showing 1.08gb active ram and theres nothing running on it, there also seems to be a fair amount of inactive ram.

Why is it not releasing ram?


EDIT - just realised this would be better in the OS X forum, could a mod move it for me please. Sorry

 

[WildCowboy]

What does Activity Monitor say is using the active RAM?

Inactive RAM has been released and will be used if needed. But until it's needed for something else, it retains the old data in case you want to open the previous app again.

 

[JamesM]

What does Activity Monitor say is using the active RAM?

Inactive RAM has been released and will be used if needed. But until it's needed for something else, it retains the old data in case you want to open the previous app again.

It was showing 1.08gb active ram and nothing was running other than dashboard with the standard widgets, I've rebooted and with firefox and quicktime running its currently showing 110mb active 190mb inactive and 1.6gb free.

What I don't understand is why the system is paging out when there is 600mb inactive and no apps running???

Also why does it show 1.08gb active when there is nothing running, it should be showing something like 100-200mb.

 

[WildCowboy]

Also why does it show 1.08gb active when there is nothing running, it should be showing something like 100-200mb.

Activity Monitor's list of processes shows what's running. (Even when "nothing" is running there are plenty of things running.) It should be pretty easy to look at that list and see where most of the 1.08 GB is going. Make sure you choose "All Processes" from the drop-down menu at the top.

 

[emptyCup]

there also seems to be a fair amount of inactive ram. Why is it not releasing ram?

Inactive RAM is a cache of recently used things that can be reused quickly, or used for something else, if needed. Inactive + Free (never needed) = Free. Inactive memory will only be large after a restart. You want it to work that way. Don't worry about pageouts unless your machine is intolerably sluggish.

 

[MRU]

please post an example of what your page in/outs are. Maybe they arent too bad.

 

[islandmonusvi]

OSX does a lot of house keeping in the background ... like writing to PrefFiles
and checking network ...
what should mainly concern you are the Processor cycles ... use Activity Monitor to show the processor(s) at work !