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RAM usage, is this high?

chipandegg

chipandegg

macrumors regular
Original poster
Oct 3, 2007
232
8
UK
I have a 2007 Mac Pro,

2GB

2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon

I was checking the activity monitor and looking at the RAM and reading Apple's doc and the Activity Monitor RAM section.

At this moment, all I have is Firefox, Activity Monitor open and that's it, obviously there's system stuff going on as well. I took a pic and attached it.

Though is USED 1.25GB high, as it sounds real high to me. Is it too high, if so how can I lower it?

The Mac works fine.

I've been thinking to increase the RAM recently, and purchasing an extra 4 or 8 GBs

I have Intego's Virus Barrier too, any need for this?
 

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chipandegg said:
I have a 2007 Mac Pro,

2GB

2 x 2.66 GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon

I was checking the activity monitor and looking at the RAM and reading Apple's doc and the Activity Monitor RAM section.

At this moment, all I have is Firefox, Activity Monitor open and that's it, obviously there's system stuff going on as well. I took a pic and attached it.

Though is USED 1.25GB high, as it sounds real high to me. Is it too high, if so how can I lower it?

The Mac works fine.

I've been thinking to increase the RAM recently, and purchasing an extra 4 or 8 GBs
Click to expand...

That RAM usage is fine. I can't believe you only have 2 GB with two CPUs.
 
chrmjenkins said:
That RAM usage is fine. I can't believe you only have 2 GB with two CPUs.
Click to expand...

So it cool then, you suggest I have more RAM (its something I've been meaning to to do well over a year and a half now) as I have 2 CPUs?

thanks
 
Nothing is wrong with that.

Adding RAM would be a good thing though.

Basically, you are currently running Firefox, but you were previously running something else. Now that you closed those items, they still remain in memory in case you want to access them again. If you launch those apps you launched previously, they would launch quicker than before.

You don't need to worry about managing this, it takes care of itself. If an application needs more memory, it gets it thanks to OS X.

Also notice your Page outs and Swap are at 0. This means that all of the memory required by your system is stored in only RAM, and not your disks (reading from disks is very slow). This is good, but you can always benefit from an increase in RAM.
 
iBookG4user said:
Yes, get more RAM. I'd get at least 4GB, 2GB is pretty low nowadays. (Even my MacBook Pro has 6GB of RAM)
Click to expand...

The Mac Pro can take a maximum of 16GBs I'm on the Crucial website and their saying that its "32 768 megabytes which equals 32 gigabytes" , how is this?

Thanks

I also have Logic and want to get some 3rd party softsynths, so upgrading is a must really.
 
How do you know it can take a maximum of 16GB?

Apple did set soft limitations on their hardware based on the max memory they offered in their store. In some cases, more RAM can be put into Apple's hardware than they originally specified. If crucial says it can address 32GB, it can.
 
Matthew Yohe said:
How do you know it can take a maximum of 16GB?

Apple did set soft limitations on their hardware based on the max memory they offered in their store. In some cases, more RAM can be put into Apple's hardware than they originally specified. If crucial says it can address 32GB, it can.
Click to expand...

Well if that's the case (32GB) then it can, I'm sure I read ages it was 16GB ( this could evidently be wrong, was ages ago though)
 
Your RAM utilization is perfectly fine. UNIX (MAC OSX) uses free memory to minimize disk swaps by continuously buffering large amounts of data in RAM. Ironically, it is better to have less free memory displayed, that is memory that is not being used for anything. The amount of RAM you have now is ideal for the applications you are currently running. You only need to upgrade if while running the applications you want to use, you notice it is paging a lot of data (more than 500MB) to the hard disk.
Keep in mind, some amount of virtual paging can occur even when you have a lot of memory and this is normal.

More RAM does not automatically mean more performance!


Shawn Heil
Diversified Electronic Services
Madison, Wisconsin
(608) 807-1206
divelectservices@gmail.com
 
The prices on RAM have come way way down since that machine was released. Treat yourself to some more RAM if you like. I buy mine from Ramjet:

http://www.ramjet.com/macpro.asp#1stGen

I don't have any personal connection to them, but they've provided me years and years of good quality memory. I have 16 GB of RAM from Ramjet in my MacPro, because I'm using it for scientific computing. That might be overkill for you, but you would certainly benefit from having more than 2 GB available, I would guess..... It all depends on your usage, but 2 GB is pretty low for many of today's apps.
 
mward333 said:
The prices on RAM have come way way down since that machine was released. Treat yourself to some more RAM if you like. I buy mine from Ramjet:

http://www.ramjet.com/macpro.asp#1stGen

I don't have any personal connection to them, but they've provided me years and years of good quality memory. I have 16 GB of RAM from Ramjet in my MacPro, because I'm using it for scientific computing. That might be overkill for you, but you would certainly benefit from having more than 2 GB available, I would guess..... It all depends on your usage, but 2 GB is pretty low for many of today's apps.
Click to expand...

May I ask you what you do for work with a computer with the specs listed in your sig? That's gotta be some intense scientific computing.
I'm genuinely curious.
 
millertime021 said:
May I ask you what you do for work with a computer with the specs listed in your sig? That's gotta be some intense scientific computing.
I'm genuinely curious.
Click to expand...

I run mathematical computations on my machine. I routinely use all 16 GB of RAM, doing symbolic computations (e.g., in Maple 14), which sometimes are quite robust. (I'm hoping to get a new machine soon with 64 GB of RAM.) I also do a lot of distributed or parallel computations, some of which take several months to finish. My MacPro is just a testbed for such computations, because we have about 15,000 computers on our Condor network on our campus, which can be utilized for large distributed jobs. It is a very helpful setup for conducting scientific research. I'm a mathematician, by the way.

OK, I don't mean to take-over the thread from the OP. I'm sorry for the distraction.... just trying to answer millertime021's question in a straightforward way.
 
P.S. I'm not suggesting, by the way, that the OP needs 16 GB of RAM! Perhaps 4 GB would be suitable for the OP. It is just a suggestion.
 
To not steal the thread (as that wasn't the intent) I will offer up my two cents.


I believe that most people don't need more than 4 gigs of RAM. However their are a few people who need more. (See above :D)

I have 4 in my MBP and that is plenty for now. I will upgrade to 8 as the price for DDR3 goes down.

EDIT: I realize we will look back on this post in 2 years when we have 16GB RAM standard and some people will have over 100GB :p and think, man ONLY 4 gigs??? How LAME!
 
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