The Ram . . . Where is it going!?!?

[Shelton]

Hello,

I own a 2008 Mac Pro (2.8 8 core). I am a heavy multi-tasker and power user, but I don't use professional software (graphics, video-editing) very often. More often than not, I use my computer for personal entertainment (movies, IM, browsing, music, etc).

I got my Mac Pro with 2 gigs of ram, but with my usage, it ran very poorly, so I upgraded to 4 gigs. That helped, but I constantly found myself out of ram with a lot of "page outs."

I finally just upgraded to 8 gigs of ram, and within an hour, all my free ram is gone and the "page outs" start piling up again. Do I really need more than 8 gigs of ram? Where is my ram going? I mean, I consider my usage rather light. I just don't understand this.

 

[Willis]

You nuts?!

You don't need more than 4GB of Ram. looking there you dont even have 1Gb of Ram actively used.

OS X will always make pageouts so it doesn't clog the Ram up.

 

[TrapOx]

See that huge blue part of the pie chart? Thats unused ram.
The os and software claim as much ram as they can get, even if they don't use it. Opening a new program will make others give up some of their claim.

 

[dhan]

for what you do, you don't even need a mac pro to begin with, but I do agree, 8gb is overkill...for what you do. i would hardly call ims, music, multimedia heavy multitasking

 

[hatehereyes]

haha i do almost the same things on my mac pro as you and i only have 4gb and i think it's way overkill even though i do some occasional graphics work with after effects and PS

 

[Fonzijr1964]

I do the exact same things on my iMac with 2GB come on

 

[Willis]

What makes me really chuckle is that before the world of dual cores... you could do that on a 800Mhz G4! (iMac G4 to be more exact)

But, if someone wants to buy a pro machine, go ahead. Just don't think you're a power user to listen to music

 

[emt377]

Eh, it has only paged out 14MB since booted, and this is likely related to some memory mapped file. 6.71GB of your 8GB is inactive, meaning while it holds some data (like a file you saved earlier but don't currently have open) it's not actively used and is immediately available to anything that needs memory. Only 1.3GB is in active use on your system.

 

[Tallest Skil]

Sell it before it's outdated by Nehalem and buy the LOWEST CONFIGURATION iMac or Mac Mini when they come out on January 6th.

With the extra money you have left, buy accessories or a second computer.

 

[Fonzijr1964]

Sell it before it's outdated by Nehalem and buy the LOWEST CONFIGURATION iMac or Mac Mini when they come out on January 6th.

With the extra money you have left, buy accessories or a second computer.

if he could sell it for what apple sells ram for he could buy 2 MB's

 

[Shelton]

Haha, I appreciate the replies. I guess I had just read that page outs are what determine memory requirements. OS X's memory usage is a little confusing.

I would be fine with an iMac, most of the time, but I do need the processing power of the Mac Pro once in a while. Probably once a month or so I take on a project that requires a tremendous amount of processing power. It is rare, but this computer is a lifesaver when I do. I'd also like to be as future proof as possible.

I also love this computer; it's my baby.

 

[TrapOx]

I also love this computer; it's my baby.

Thats a big baby.