Upgraded To 16GB RAM - Now What?

[Caleb Hauge]

I have a stupid question. I recently upgraded my G5 (2GHz DC) to 16GB of RAM. With PowerFox, I’ve been able to daily drive my G5 and put my M1 Air away. My M1 had 8GB and I was always maxing it out, so I figured 16GB would be wise. Except I never seem to use more than 3GB, even when doing a decent bit of multitasking. So, what can I do to get the most out of my RAM?

 

[Smithwick’s]

First off, excuse my block formatting I'm using AquaFox on a PBG4 and try as I might the paragraphs just won't work - There are no stupid questions! 🙂 Answers, on the other hand... (lol) First off, I'm surprised you're maxing out the 8GB of unified RAM on the M1 unless you've got something else secretly eating up your processes. That SoC should be much snappier with unified 8GB over 16GB of DDR2 in your G5. - The M1 aside, there are a few quick considerations for the G5. First, are you using a stock install of 10.5.8 Leopard or a PPC64 Linux? The excellent but unofficial "Sorbet Leopard" and "Snow Leopard PPC" projects both lack 64-bit slices (the first by design, the second because it's still alpha release), so you'll be hobbling yourself if you try and do memory intensive stuff with them. - Second, what are you hoping to see exactly? The older hardware and OS releases are delightfully designed to be tight on resources, it's really one of their strengths. If you can stay around 3GB max while multitasking I think you're doing pretty good. If your goal is to compile and build programs, assist with Macports/PPCPorts, do Linux tinkering, or some sort of CAD/Rendering/Design work you will very quickly find that extra RAM useful. - Something you might consider is doing a RAM load test using the Rember program (available on MacintoshGarden.org) as well as a few general benchmarks (Xbench gives some good memory insights, also on Mac Garden). - Shoot back a reply if any of that lends you some insights.

 

[Doq]

Adding on to the above:

If all you're doing is web browsing, you might be able to get more out of your memory by running multiple instances of PowerFox. Not to be confused with multiple windows; running multiple instances will give each instance its own process and memory space.

$ open -n /Applications/PowerFox.app (replacing the path or name with where PowerFox actually is on your disk)

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Logic Pro 7.1.1 to 8
Final Cut Pro 6.0.6
Adobe creative suite 4
Virtual pro 7

Apps like these can all utilize the extra ram on your PowerMac.

 

[Matias_]

You can also use some leftover memory as a RAM disk for super fast temporary storage.

 

[eyoungren]

First off, excuse my block formatting I'm using AquaFox on a PBG4 and try as I might the paragraphs just won't work…

If you are not using the rich text editor when posting, then to have proper paragraphs you want an extra return between paras.

That's the way it has always worked here. If you are doing that, then…IDK.

Incidentally, running the RTE on MacRumors gives a small ram hit because the CPU is processing that stuff. If you're in any way familiar with BB code then you might try that for formatting and turn the RTE off. Any amount of CPU power you can save for PowerPC makes the browser faster.

 

[eyoungren]

Adobe creative suite 4

I've been told in the past by @LightBulbFun that Photoshop (any version) does not leverage the full 16GB. I'm not sure about the other apps in the suite, but when I had my Quad G5 this was the case. And in large part is why I did what I quote below…

You can also use some leftover memory as a RAM disk for super fast temporary storage.

I was doing this with my Quad G5. I made about a 10GB ram disk and then I put my TenFourFox profile and the T4Fx app in the ram disk. That kept the browser, the cache and all the support files (extensions, etc) in ram. That was 5 years ago, but as AquaFox and PowerFox are both forks of Mozilla it is still possible.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

I've been told in the past by @LightBulbFun that Photoshop (any version) does not leverage the full 16GB. I'm not sure about the other apps in the suite, but when I had my Quad G5 this was the case. And in large part is why I did what I quote below…


I was doing this with my Quad G5. I made about a 10GB ram disk and then I put my TenFourFox profile and the T4Fx app in the ram disk. That kept the browser, the cache and all the support files (extensions, etc) in ram. That was 5 years ago, but as AquaFox and PowerFox are both forks of Mozilla it is still possible.understanding is that after effects within cs4 suite specifically can leverage the full 16gb ram by running multiple instances, but you are correct that cs4 itself is 32bit primarily designed for 32bit systems of that era which limits how much ram it can use

LBF certainly knows his stuff. I wonder if he ever got his invacar going lol. Yes this was a 32bit app which limited the amount of ram a single instance could use but it is my understanding that Aftereffects in acs4 specifically through multiprocessing could use multiple renderers utilizing up to the full 16gb of ram.

 

[eyoungren]

LBF certainly knows his stuff. I wonder if he ever got his invacar going lol. Yes this was a 32bit app which limited the amount of ram a single instance could use but it is my understanding that Aftereffects in acs4 specifically through multiprocessing could use multiple renderers utilizing up to the full 16gb of ram.

Cool, that one I was not aware of. Of course, the last time I used AE for anything serious was in school (1999), so there's that LOL.

Thanks!

 

[LightBulbFun]

yeah the problem with G5's is there are very few PPC 64 bit applications for them the only 3 i know off the top of my head is Chess, Geekbench and Cinebench (and I presume the full actual 3D rendering/model program Cinema 4D that Cinebench is based off of IIRC) so the only other way to gobble up all the RAM on a G5 is to run multiple 32 bit apps/threads at once, maybe someone should make a list of known PPC64 apps? like that list someone made of the handful of OS9 apps that are SMP aware/can make use of all 4 CPU's on a Quad CPU Mac clone 🙂 the issue was further exacerbated that 64 bit GUI applications only became a thing with Leopard, by which point of course PPC was seen as a dying architecture so no one was really incentivised to write 64 bit apps for it

LBF certainly knows his stuff. I wonder if he ever got his invacar going

Oh I have been doing many miles in it, managed to pick up an entire PowerMac G4 Digitial Audio and 17 inch CRT Studio display with the ol girl at one point 🙂 (and a Bonus Macintosh LC)