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Ram usage

taru91

taru91

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jun 4, 2008
108
0
Monterrey, Nuevo León. México
Hi, I've been having ram shortage when using a VM or intensive stuff like After Effects. I got 2GB of ram and I wonder how does the inactive part of ram work ?

I always have about 500MB inactive and it's like unusable and when I open a new program, it has to take some ram from the current ones, instead of using of Inactive.

:)
 
A VM and AE are RAM intensive, can't you update your RAM to 3 or even 4GB or maybe even more? What Mac do you have?

Inactive memory

This information in memory is not actively being used, but was recently used.

For example, if you've been using Mail and then quit it, the RAM that Mail was using is marked as Inactive memory. This Inactive memory is available for use by another application, just like Free memory. However, if you open Mail before its Inactive memory is used by a different application, Mail will open quicker because its Inactive memory is converted to Active memory, instead of loading Mail from the slower hard disk.
Click to expand...
from Mac OS X: Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
 
I got an early 2008 macbook white 2.4Ghz Penryn.

And I don't need to upgrade to 4, but i used the VM example and AE because, for some reason, my inactive memory isnt being used sometimes.

Let's say I have different apps open, everything taking up 1.5Gb with 500MB of inactive, If I open another app, instead of taking off inactive, one of the open apps gives RAM to the one being opened and it gets sluggish while opening the new app.
 
How do you know this is happening? Are you watching it in Activity Monitor and seeing the memory footprint of one app going down when launching another?
 
Yeah, I open a new app, and checking activity monitor, inactive ram doesnt change. stays at the same amount.

I didnt check which app loses the RAM, but like said before, the beachball opens in the new app and inactive doesnt change.
 
Here is a screenshot of my Activity Monitor right now, when opening a new tab in Safari, the beachball appears and you can clearly see there is 500 MB inactive ram.

2wrmadf.png
 
There's absolutely no reason to buy iFreeMem! Open the terminal and type
Code: 
purge
and hit return. Wait a bit, and it'll purge all your inactive memory (free it up). This is pretty handy, especially if you are low on RAM.

You still need more RAM, but this command could get you by and solves the problem you have.
 
i didnt pay for ifreemem! its free! although thanks for pointing at the terminal cmd -purge. you learn something new everyday on this great sight. :)
 
Don't upgrade to 4GB. I just bought 8GB of RAM for $70CDN, and I'm having trouble using up past 5GB of RAM.

I might just open up VM Ware and Civ 5 at the same time just to stress test it out.
 
daigohgoh said:
Don't upgrade to 4GB. I just bought 8GB of RAM for $70CDN, and I'm having trouble using up past 5GB of RAM.

I might just open up VM Ware and Civ 5 at the same time just to stress test it out.
Click to expand...

The early 2008 MBPs officially support 4GB of RAM, unofficially 6GB RAM, therefore upgrading to 4GB is possible and would help a lot.
 
I'm assuming in this case that "who" you know isn't the developer or someone who can legally give it to you for free. I'm well aware that you could pirate the app (as with just about any piece of software) but I wouldn't broadcast it or passively advocate it.

Regardless, you said "its [sic] free." It's not actually free, that's my point.
 
ok, if you legally d/l the software you get 14 days free trial, at the end of the trial you re d/l the software and get another 14 days free and so on. i didnt know you could get this software via torrents, but i do now and so does everybody else reading this! geez i was only having some lighthearted fun with you ithinkergoimac in the process of helping taru91. lighten up man! we are all buddies here. :(
 
Hahaha. To me, it seemed like your post strongly implied pirating it (and I'll note, it's you who said "via torrenting", not me ;)). And, FWIW, I don't specifically know if one exists, I am merely making an (almost certainly correct) assumption that one exists.

We're all cool here.
 
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