Can Some One Tell Me About Ram and OS X

Why is that, I notice a difference. photoshop now opens in 30secs. insted of 2:00mins ( :eek: ), and meny other differences.
 
I originally worked with 128 MB Ram and it was actually ok but multitasking was a pain. I added 256 (only because 512 is way too expensive) and frankly, the OS runs beautifully now. I can't imagine why 512 would be necessary unless you're using all programs at the same time (I used iTunes, iPhoto, msn messenger, ichat, limewire, chimera and mail at the same time without problems on 384 megs ram).
 
A sure way to define whether you have got enough memory in your macintosh is to check how many swapfiles Mac OS X generates. At a maximum, 2 or even 3 is acceptable, 4 or higher isn't.

Swapfiles are located at: /private/var/vm check out with the command "ls" how many you've got.

For the simple souls; upgrade your mac with the maximum amount of RAM. It's THE best upgrade for your machine.
 
Yup, thats good. You can use the top command to check for pageouts too. I've had a grand total of zero, but I went way overboard with the RAM. If you're getting any, it's slowing you down!
 
RAM is gooooooooooooood.

Going from 256 in a beige G3 to 768 was a huge difference. Next comes the Radeon 7000 card for graphics, fast ethernet for my network, and the superdrive i picked up for $210 (and even better - its black, so it'll match my modded/painted case).

Who says old Macs can't do anything? ;) i looooooove my Frankenmacs. wouldn't trade 'em.
 
Originally posted by Urbansory
A big difference when i moved from 256 to 512, to what i have now, 960. IF you use Apps like me, PS, and After Effects and Flash, after a while that memory will be inactive not in use but will really slow the computer down. I made numerous post about my memory problems, seems kinda like 9, it just refuses to let go of the memory, some say it is cached. Use Memorystick to see what i mean. Look at your system after a restart, then after working and quiting all apps. It's depressing.
Click to expand...

When an OS won't let go of memory after the app that called it quits, that's a memory leak. What OS X is doing seems superficially like that, but it's not.

You know how deleting a file only deletes it's reference, not the file itself? The unix VM/swap system is similar. When memory is deallocated, it goes to either the 'inactive' or 'used' column as shown in 'top' (but I don't recall which). If that same data is needed again twenty minutes later, it can be called back into service, kinda like undeleting a file. Saves a read from the disk.

What all this means is that the memory you're thinking has been lost, is actually *more* useful than the free memory, since it might be able to step in and save you a couple milliseconds of disk read, and worst case scenario is that fresh data is read into that memory space as if it had been blank/unused/whatever to begin with.

WARNING: I'm sure I've mangled or over-simplified something somewhere in this post, as I'm way over my head when attempting to discuss the inner workings of an OS. However, discovering that error is left as an exercise for the reader.
 
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