Can you give an app too much memory?

edX

edX

mac shaman
outside of the limitations of the amount of memory a machine has, is there a limit to how much increasing the amount of memory dedicated to a particular app will actually help? or is it like cache size, at a certain point it has more info than it can check in a reasonable time and thus works against the speed of working with the app?

i'm primarily concerned here with my repair programs like diskwarrior/plus optimizer and techtool pro. they were originally developed in the days when macs had little memory and thus come preconfigured with a very small allocation. i've doubled and tripled them. would giving more be better or worse? i certainly have plenty more to spare when they are running.
 
Assuming you have plenty of physical RAM, no, there's not such thing as allocating TOO much RAM. You may allocate so much RAM that it doesn't really speed up the App anymore, but it wont' hurt it in any way.
 
well no, i didn't mean hurt the app. but is there a point where it becomes counter productive and actually slows the app down?
 
Just when you don't have enough ram. Try running Photoshop, some other editors, Appleworks or some other office stuff, iChat, etc etc on the same time with a G3 and 128 MB. With little RAM .. I wish they had added a RAM config thing to the preferences of the programmes. But in that case it's the programs that take too much memory (without your configuration).
 
No, it won't be counter productive, but it hits a point where the application can't possibly use that memory, and it becomes just wasted memory until you quit the app, since no other application in OS 9 can use it.
 
ok, that makes sense Darkshadow and is basically the assumption i've worked under all these years. obviously with 512 mb of ram i'm not likely to be squeezing anything if i were to allocate 200mb just to the repair programs since they are the only thing running while they work.

thanks
 
I was always taught (about 10 years ago now) at graphic design school that allocating too much RAM memory was detrimental because there's a point of "diminishing returns" you reach. You need RAM not only for your programs but for other functions of your computer like your system files (which are automatically allocated, yes, but better not to squeeze right to the edge here).

If you give a program too much RAM, it's possible (guessing) that you would slow down its performance just by shear "searching time" you create by making your computer search through more RAM to do what it needs to do. Photoshop uses hard disk space for scratch but also needs extra RAM to store filter renders, etc.

Personally, anything you DON'T use on your computer helps to speed it up. I turn off any extensions, fonts or programs that I don't need (including turning off menu blinking!) in order to get the most performance out of my computer.

Cheers
 
I just wanted to add that you will see an effect if it starts to swap because you allocated too much RAM, which will definately be detrimental to your performance...

For example, something like :rolleyes: Norton Speed Disk reads and writes relatively small blocks regardless of the amount of RAM you have allocated it, which is where Darkshadow's point comes in.

Also, if you have 512MB installed, allocating 400MB to an app might well cause swapping, depending on what other apps are using RAM at the time.

I'm so glad X does that for me :cool:
 
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