Why do I have 66,000 page outs?

[dogbone]

I have been watching my page outs since reading learning about it from a couple of memory threads.

I've got 1.5gig of ram on an eMac 1.42GHz

I started at zero pageouts this morning when I started up. There were about 500 after a while even though there was heaps of free memory. I'm just about to shut down and I notice a whopping 66,000 pageouts to only 120,000 page ins. This seems like a worrying proportion of page outs considering that I have plenty of ram and memory didn't seem to be being taxed all that much today.

Should I be worried about this?

 

[gekko513]

Only if you experience slowdowns because of it.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Are you running iTunes (with crossfading on)? That, especially when playing over AirTunes, always generate lots of page outs on my iBook even if there's free RAM (I have much less RAM, though ).

 

[lexfuzo]

Should I be worried about this?

I don't think so. Especially if the computer doesn't feel slow.

 

[Sun Baked]

If the machine sleeps at any time during the day the pageouts are going to go way up.

One of the reasons to restart and then run a usual workflow check while you are at the machine to see if you are getting pageouts.

 

[BlizzardBomb]

Perhaps you could post a screenie?

 

[Sogo]

Perhaps you could post a screenie?

More like, how do i check the amount of pageouts im getting.

 

[devilot]

Applications>Utilities>Activity Monitor

:edit: You also need to click on the 'System Memory' Tab

 

[cube]

top is better for this

 

[dogbone]

If the machine sleeps at any time during the day the pageouts are going to go way up.

I work from home so the machine often has short naps while I do something else. But why would the computer write to disk just because it sleeps. I thought the point of sleep was that it stayed right where it was ready to resume.

 

[iDM]

I have a feeling some people might get a kick out of this but my Page Ins/Outs are currently at 693440/638789. Is that like horrendous? When I open and close iPhoto (17,000 photos) my computer grinds to a halt. I have 512mb, 1.25 G4 Pb.

 

[Makosuke]

iPhoto (17,000 photos)

Probably your issue right there--iPhoto (particularly older versions) chew up RAM with large numbers of photos, and the slowdown is almost certainly a result of 512MB just not being enough, so a bunch of swapping happens (bet you can hear the HD grinding away).

And yes, pageouts in the hundreds of thousands is generally a sign of major swapping, and hence RAM shortage. Do you perhaps leave a whole lot of apps open all the time, particularly when firing up iPhoto? That certainly won't help when piled on top of the already major needs of iPhoto on 17K pictures.