Swap Memory Usage?

[lbeck]

I have a new 6 core mac pro with 24gb of RAM. Today I was ripping a DVD mobie with ripit and also making a compressed file through finder. No big deal. Activity monitor said I was using about 10GB of RAM, but it also had about 9GB of RAM in the swap usage.

Why is that? And should that be happening? Screenshot attached of activity monitor.

 

[robbieduncan]

It says you have 9Mb. Not 9Gb.

 

[spinnerlys]

It says you have 9Mb. Not 9Gb.

Mb = Megabit, MB = MegaByte, and yes, robbieduncan is an eight right, you only have a swap file of 9MB.

Btw lbeck, you can make smaller screenshots by adjusting the window size, as your screenshot as a lot of wasted space.

 

[robbieduncan]

Mb = Megabit, MB = MegaByte, and yes, robbieduncan is an eight right, you only have a swap file of 9MB.

I always get those the wrong way round

 

[lbeck]

Sorry about the huge screenshot, that was my first time posting. Thanks for the tip!

I feel stupid now, I assumed It was GB and not MB. Either way, swap memory is only supposed to be used when your physical memory is gone, right? I still had plenty of RAM left. Shouldn't my swap usage be 0, right?

All the time I check it and it is 0 but today it wasn't. Why was there usage if I still had physical memory left?

Finder was compressing a 32GB file but I don't think that's a reason for swap usage, even if it was only 9 MB

 

[robbieduncan]

Page outs are more worrisome that swap usage.

 

[lbeck]

So based off my screenshot do you see an issue? Or dies it all look ok?

 

[robbieduncan]

I wouldn't be worried about such a small page out total.

 

[lbeck]

In theory though, shouldn't swap usage be zero if there is still so much free ram?