Virtual Memory Question

ghost_user_nameghost_user_name
Posted:
in macOS edited January 2014
I'm new to OSX and have a question about my computers use of real and virtual memory. I have 2GB of RAM installed and it appears that my virtual memory grows as needed -- it's currently over 11GB. I'm looking at Activity Monitor and see that right now Safari is using 283MB of real and 764MB of virtual memory. Other programs that run all the time (iTunes, Vienna, Adium, Mail) post similar numbers, especially in the Virtual Memory department. Is this a typical situation? Will it hinder use at all (it currently does not)? Does it need to be dumped from time to time? If so how? My XP Virtual Memory was set at 5GB (1GB of real memory) and never went higher then that so these high memory numbers is all new to me. Thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 2
    carniphagecarniphage Posts: 1,984member
    Short answer - Don't Worry.

    In Windows - 5GB of Virtual Memory means 5GB of disk-space available to swap pages in and out of Ram.

    In OS X - Virtual Memory is not the same as swap files.

    http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...10613140025184



    C.
  • Reply 2 of 2
    hirohiro Posts: 2,663member
    Yes. In OS X the VM size listed in top or Activity Monitor is just the projected size of the address spaces which are available in the currently instantiated memory map pages.



    That's a lot of mumbo jumbo to say if you needed it, that many memory addresses are available without anything else needing to be done by the OS. It doen't mean anything has been used at all. Matter of fact consider the number meaningless to the mortal user. You have to get pretty esoteric and push the machine REALLY hard at MASSIVELY memory intensive tasks for those stats be be relevant.
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