RAM Advise

[waynepixel]

ok hear the deal

when I started up my G4 today which has 700mb Ram onboard. and i had no app running it said that I was only using 320mb ram.

Now when I open photoshop and then look at how mush ram I am using it said 567MB ram.

when I close photoshop and now see how much ram I am using it said that I am using 520MB of ram, WTF?

So why has OSX not released the memory any idea would be help-full.

 

[kylos]

The os is using it. OS X is a monstrous os and will use a lot of RAM to make your computer seem faster. At least as far as I understand your situation.

 

[patrick0brien]

Re: RAM Advise

Originally posted by waynepixel
So why has OSX not released the memory any idea would be help-full.

-waynepixel

Good question. OS X has been good to me when it comes to memory management.

Questions that you can research that might help:

Have you tried to launch another app after exiting Photo to see if it's just the memory indicator not being updated? In other words, is your RAM really not being released?

What are you using to monitor your RAM usage? I suggest you use the terminal/top command (that is, of course if you aren't using this already)

 

[King Cobra]

>OS X is a monstrous os and will use a lot of RAM to make your computer seem faster. At least as far as I understand your situation. (Kyle)

Close. The memory still in use after closing some application "A" is useful when you have to restart this application "A". The first time you start it up after a computer restart, it takes a long time to open (a few seconds). Restarting "A" takes a short time (a couple of seconds less) because some memory is alloted to that sole purpose.

The more memory you have, the faster your system and restarting applications will be.


Edit: For example, right now I have 1GB of RAM and have OS X, Appleworks, iTunes 4, Safari and iChat open. That takes up somewhere between 100 and 200MB. I had Photoshop and Preview open already, as well as a few other apps (Mactracker, Meteorologist, Terminal), but they are closed now.

Now I will run the top command (from the Terminal) and check my stats.

"688M used, 336M free"

 

[saabmp3]

Right now I have Adium, Mail, iCal, Safari, iTunes 4 and quicktime open. Total RAM usage --1019 MB. Am I concerned? No, it's all because I was running other stuff before and it's not going to release the RAM until the system needs it. Oh yeah, my PB 667 seems fast as f*** most of the time.

BEN

 

[waynepixel]

I see what you mean now.


The thing is after I open a big app like Photoshop and have it running all day the system does seem to slow down a bit, it not too bad but you do notice it.


Thanks for your help people

 

[Catfish_Man]

Originally posted by waynepixel
I see what you mean now.


The thing is after I open a big app like Photoshop and have it running all day the system does seem to slow down a bit, it not too bad but you do notice it.


Thanks for your help people

It's pretty hard to nab all the leaks in a program, so it will slow down over time. OSX's memory management is pretty nice overall though, if you think about it NOT using all the ram on the machine at any given time is a waste.

 

[GeeYouEye]

IIRC, there's a small memory leak in the Finder. Don't know if it's been fixed. Also, in order to speed up relaunching apps, it gives previously unopened apps previously unused addresses; only after a long time (an hour, I think) or when there's more requirements than memory available do the used memory addresses get made available for reuse, or reused, respectively.