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Memory: 8, 16, or 32

post #1 of 13
11/16/12 at 6:34am
Thread Starter 

I'm thinking about my next computer and am wondering how much memory to configure it with but don't really understand all of the info from help:

 

Wired

Active

Inactive

Used

VM Size

Page ins

Page outs

Swap used

 

 

The app I am concerned about shows Free=187MB Used=7.81GB (out of 8GB total).

When the app finishes its output, free=765.2MB USed=7.24GB

 

Does this suggest I should get more RAM?  

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

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Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #2 of 13
11/16/12 at 6:42am

Check your page outs, too. Do those add up to more than the page ins?

PhilBoogie
That's Google alright. For a stupid company they sure do dumb things.
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PhilBoogie
That's Google alright. For a stupid company they sure do dumb things.
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post #3 of 13
11/16/12 at 7:46am
Thread Starter 

VM size: 308 GB

 

Page ins: 10.7 GB

 

Page outs: 269.1 MB

 

Swap used: 443 MB

 

- - - - -

 

Without that app running

 

Free 1.23 GB

Wired 1.13

Active 3.45

Inactive 2.18

USed 6.79

 

VM size 336GB

Ins  13 GB

Outs 296 MB

Swap  440MB


Edited by Bergermeister - 11/16/12 at 7:52am

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #4 of 13
11/16/12 at 8:19am
Thread Starter 

Just been reading up on this...  Restarted the machine and will give it a run through the weekend watching the page outs.


Edited by Bergermeister - 11/16/12 at 8:28am

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #5 of 13
11/16/12 at 9:49am
Watching page outs over a given period of time will let you know if you need more RAM. The best setup is to have it so that you have nearly zero page outs.

269MB isn't a high number if that's for a long period but if that's after 1-2 days without a reboot, it could be worth upgrading. Type uptime into a terminal and hit return to see how long your computer has gone without a reboot when testing.

4-8GB is fine for basic apps like Safari, Word, Mail and so on and moderately productive work.
16GB is better if you do anything productive with the Adobe CS Suite, Final Cut, Aperture and so on. Also if you use virtual machines like Parallels or VMWare. Apps that can use 2GB+ real RAM each.
32GB is overkill for most things. If you run apps like Mudbox or ZBrush or image editing apps with high resolution images, the apps can use 4-10GB of RAM each so if you had multiple of these programs open, you can run out of 16GB.

There is a guide here for what the terms mean:

http://www.macyourself.com/2010/02/17/what-is-free-wired-active-and-inactive-system-memory-ram/

Wired is memory used by the system e.g kernel/root processes. You don't get much control over this and I feel it should be lower than it commonly is.
Active is real RAM used by your apps - use the real RAM column in the Activity Monitor to see the heaviest apps.
Inactive is cached memory that helps load apps back up quickly. Apps will take longer to load after a cold boot than if you just quit and relaunch.
Free is obviously whatever is left.

Page In amount is data moved into RAM, When an application loads, it copies the program into RAM and associated resources so that number keeps going up all the time. It's hard to tell from that number how much paged out data has been moved back into RAM so the most important number is Page Out.
Page Out amount is when you run out of RAM and data in RAM has to be pushed onto the hard drive. When it needs it back again, it'll increase Page Ins.

Sometimes a lot of inactive memory allocated can affect performance but it can be flushed by typing purge into the terminal and hitting return. The blue block should almost entirely disappear after that but it should only be needed if the blue block is excessive.
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post #6 of 13
11/16/12 at 2:54pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks, Marvin.  That is very informative.

 

 

I was checking some apps last night to get a feel for how much each was using and Aperture hit 2GB.  The app I was worried about hit 1GB on export of a rather simple file.

 

I think you answered my question; I'll just go with 16GB and not worry about 8 not being enough.  I use Illustrator, FinalCut and other apps like that a lot.

 

Thanks again.


Edited by Bergermeister - 11/16/12 at 7:30pm

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #7 of 13
11/23/12 at 11:05pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post

Thanks, Marvin.  That is very informative.


I was checking some apps last night to get a feel for how much each was using and Aperture hit 2GB.  The app I was worried about hit 1GB on export of a rather simple file.

I think you answered my question; I'll just go with 16GB and not worry about 8 not being enough.  I use Illustrator, FinalCut and other apps like that a lot.

Thanks again.

As a random comment 8GB would be okay but yeah your paging would be quite intense. With 16GB you'd be in the clear. With an SSD though, I have tons of stuff open (mainly web development related) so not huge video files but I also have iMovie and other stuff running. Never really noticed a slowdown on MBA 13" 2012 entry level with only 4GB RAM.

Do you have an SSD? Because a good Apple-branded SSD with 8GB of RAM on an Intel Core i5 or i7 should handle quite a lot thrown at it.

You page outs are actually very minimal, in my experience.

Of course, 16GB would give you plenty of headroom of everything you would like to do.

Edit: Of course, f running Parallels or VMWare then yes 8GB is minimum.
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post #8 of 13
11/24/12 at 2:32am
Thread Starter 

I ordered a Mac mini decked out with 2.6 i7, 16GB and 1TB Fusion Drive.  This will serve primarily as a worker bee to let my main machine continue to work stress-free (except for having me sitting in front of it all day!).  The mini will be used as a rendering machine accessed through screen sharing.  It will also help burn BluRay disks and some other small tasks.  If it works well, I will add a second to double the rendering output.  (...four would allow me to have a mini cluster and finish a project in about two hours.... writing Santa now...)

 

For my main machine, I will upgrade to the new iMac 27 whenever it comes available.  As I doubt the full SSD will be affordable, I will go with a Fusion Drive in it as well.  Added to the 3.4GHz i7 will be 16GB RAM so that I don't worry about anything.

 

Thanks guys.

 

 

PS No Parallels nor anything related to Windows on my machines; I like to keep them clean!

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #9 of 13
11/24/12 at 4:58am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post

I ordered a Mac mini decked out with 2.6 i7, 16GB and 1TB Fusion Drive.  This will serve primarily as a worker bee to let my main machine continue to work stress-free (except for having me sitting in front of it all day!).  The mini will be used as a rendering machine accessed through screen sharing.  It will also help burn BluRay disks and some other small tasks.  If it works well, I will add a second to double the rendering output.  (...four would allow me to have a mini cluster and finish a project in about two hours.... writing Santa now...)

For my main machine, I will upgrade to the new iMac 27 whenever it comes available.  As I doubt the full SSD will be affordable, I will go with a Fusion Drive in it as well.  Added to the 3.4GHz i7 will be 16GB RAM so that I don't worry about anything.

Thanks guys.


PS No Parallels nor anything related to Windows on my machines; I like to keep them clean!

Sounds sweet. Enjoy...!
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post #10 of 13
11/24/12 at 3:24pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by sr2012 View Post


Sounds sweet. Enjoy...!

 

That's the plan!

 

Now if my Mac mini would just arrive... 


Edited by Bergermeister - 11/25/12 at 4:49am

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #11 of 13
11/25/12 at 11:14am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post

Thanks, Marvin.  That is very informative.

 

 

I was checking some apps last night to get a feel for how much each was using and Aperture hit 2GB.  The app I was worried about hit 1GB on export of a rather simple file.

 

I think you answered my question; I'll just go with 16GB and not worry about 8 not being enough.  I use Illustrator, FinalCut and other apps like that a lot.

 

Thanks again.

 

If you are using Pro level apps and expect to have your computer for a good 3-4 years then it can't hurt to go up a level in RAM and even processor if you can afford it. Better to have more RAM than you need then be pushing things. Especially if you are using more than one app at a time (like passing stuff before Illustrator and Photoshop). 

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post #12 of 13
11/28/12 at 10:31pm
Thread Starter 

Thanks everyone.  Went with the 2.6GHz machine, 16GB RAM and 1TB Fusion.

 

 

Same file to render:

 

Mac mini (2012) [2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion]  = 3 minutes 45 seconds

 

iMac (2011) [3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD+2TB HD]  = 4 minutes 26 seconds

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply

 

Your = the possessive of you, as in, "Your name is Tom, right?" or "What is your name?"

 

You're = a contraction of YOU + ARE as in, "You are right" --> "You're right."

 

 

Reply
post #13 of 13
11/29/12 at 6:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bergermeister View Post

Thanks everyone.  Went with the 2.6GHz machine, 16GB RAM and 1TB Fusion.


Same file to render:

Mac mini (2012) [2.6GHz, 16GB RAM, 1TB Fusion]  = 3 minutes 45 seconds

iMac (2011) [3.2GHz, 8GB RAM, 256 SSD+2TB HD]  = 4 minutes 26 seconds

The latest Intel chips are... very impressive. I'm shocked at what I'm able to do now on my MBA 13" 2012 entry-level. Apple-branded SSD is butter, butter smooth.
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