I have a question about Snow Leopard and memory
I'm a little hazy on this, hence my question:
Will Snow Leopard's applications use less memory than they do now in Leopard? For example, right now as I type this in Safari, it is using 255MB of memory, 21 threads, 13% of my CPU, and 1.24GB of Virtual Memory. The MacBook Pro I am using has 4GB of RAM. I'm just curious if the improvements Apple is making in Snow Leopard means that applications will be more memory efficient.
Thanks to anyone who knows the answer!
Will Snow Leopard's applications use less memory than they do now in Leopard? For example, right now as I type this in Safari, it is using 255MB of memory, 21 threads, 13% of my CPU, and 1.24GB of Virtual Memory. The MacBook Pro I am using has 4GB of RAM. I'm just curious if the improvements Apple is making in Snow Leopard means that applications will be more memory efficient.
Thanks to anyone who knows the answer!
Comments
I'm a little hazy on this, hence my question:
Will Snow Leopard's applications use less memory than they do now in Leopard? For example, right now as I type this in Safari, it is using 255MB of memory, 21 threads, 13% of my CPU, and 1.24GB of Virtual Memory. The MacBook Pro I am using has 4GB of RAM. I'm just curious if the improvements Apple is making in Snow Leopard means that applications will be more memory efficient.
Thanks to anyone who knows the answer!
How many tabs do you have open?
How many tabs do you have open?
I don't remember...I think it was just one.
I don't remember...I think it was just one.
Then there i something seriously wrong because I am running 10A394 on my iMac and it is around 45MB on one tab with a single website loaded (Appleinsider). With the memory usage, was that snapshot taken after using it for a while, closing off the tabs, and having one tab left open or did you open it up, load a website and it expanded out to 255MB?
That is not to say that Safari is lean on memory because it's not and could probably be streamlined but it's best that it works well and then afterwards works in a streamlined way. Snow Leopard should help but you never know.
Until Apple see it causing problems, they won't fix it. Just like they don't try shrinking down the XCode SDK, which is now at 2GB and they make you download the whole thing for every point update.
IMy iMac can only max out to 4GB. Is there any reason why I can't take it to 3 GB and leave the original RAM in place?
You can do that but if you have integrated graphics, you won't benefit from the performance boost you get from using matched DIMMs. As mentioned above, Ram is dirt cheap these days. Unless you absolutely know you won't use near the full amount, max it out. It helps resale value quite a bit.
Even if you think you won't use it, it still helps prevent the beachball. Even with 1GB, you can experience it quite frequently especially if you use apps like VMWare or image editing software and don't reboot your machine often.
I wouldn't say there's any noticeable difference between 2GB and 4GB for everyday tasks though. There is between 1GB and 2GB so everyone should aim to have 2GB minimum to run any version of OS X smoothly.
I'm a little hazy on this, hence my question:
Will Snow Leopard's applications use less memory than they do now in Leopard? For example, right now as I type this in Safari, it is using 255MB of memory, 21 threads, 13% of my CPU, and 1.24GB of Virtual Memory. The MacBook Pro I am using has 4GB of RAM. I'm just curious if the improvements Apple is making in Snow Leopard means that applications will be more memory efficient.
Thanks to anyone who knows the answer!
Snow Leopard will make everything more efficient and that means less memory used.
Snow Leopard will make everything more efficient and that means less memory used.
I am really unsure if this is a joke or not (if so, then it is a really ineffective one). It is a completely unrealistic expectation that 10.6 will use less memory. I am not saying that it will use a lot more, but at this point using more memory (for cacheing) is a decent engineering trade-off for using less processor. And since things are moving in the direction of 64bits, that inherently uses more memory (since all memory addresses are twice as big), this is even more of a daydream.
The engineers at Apple are really good at their jobs, but they are not magicians. They have to work within the confines of reality. And being able to reach into other people's programs and "make everything more efficient" is not within reality.
I am really unsure if this is a joke or not (if so, then it is a really ineffective one). It is a completely unrealistic expectation that 10.6 will use less memory. I am not saying that it will use a lot more, but at this point using more memory (for cacheing) is a decent engineering trade-off for using less processor. And since things are moving in the direction of 64bits, that inherently uses more memory (since all memory addresses are twice as big), this is even more of a daydream.
The engineers at Apple are really good at their jobs, but they are not magicians. They have to work within the confines of reality. And being able to reach into other people's programs and "make everything more efficient" is not within reality.
Actually, it isn't unrealistic. Not that I know whether more or less RAM will be consumed, but it isn't that either way is an impossibility.
SL has changed a lot under the hood. Many of the APIs that programs rely on have changed drastically. When this is done, it is perfectly possible for programs to become more efficient in a variety of ways include: binary size, RAM footprint, total processor cycles consumed, multi-processing capabilities, reentrant code, etc.
While it maybe unlikely or less probable, a smaller RAM footprint isn't unprecedented. It certainly isn't impossible or unrealistic.
I am really unsure if this is a joke or not (if so, then it is a really ineffective one). It is a completely unrealistic expectation that 10.6 will use less memory. I am not saying that it will use a lot more, but at this point using more memory (for cacheing) is a decent engineering trade-off for using less processor. And since things are moving in the direction of 64bits, that inherently uses more memory (since all memory addresses are twice as big), this is even more of a daydream.
The engineers at Apple are really good at their jobs, but they are not magicians. They have to work within the confines of reality. And being able to reach into other people's programs and "make everything more efficient" is not within reality.
Oh yeah? Check for yourself:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refineme...finements.html
Tauron ... How can Snow Leopard use less memory, if Apple suggests 1 GB RAM and Leopard is okay with 512 MB RAM? If I don't upgrade my iMac memory, as Karl and Marvin suggest, it will have no choice but to run slower. Windows 7 RC runs in BootCamp, but it is slow. It is really slow at 512 MB when I run it in Virtual Box.
That doesn't mean it uses more memory.
Oh yeah? Check for yourself:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/refineme...finements.html
If you have a look, the only statement made is relating storage:
Snow Leopard takes up less than half the disk space of the previous version, freeing about 6GB for you ? enough for about 1,500 more songs or a few thousand more photos.
There is nothing mentioned about memory being used. Things can be made more efficient such as having services load on demand using triggering as the case of Windows but the over all memory requirements won't suddenly drop out of no where.
All I have seen by Apple is efficiency improvements - you should very well know that efficiency can mean a whole host of things, not just this fixation you have on 'memory usage'.
"Unused" memory is wasted memory. An optimal system will have very little unused RAM. As caching algorithms improve, we see less and less "free" memory.
And to totally confuse things:
"Unused" memory is wasted memory. An optimal system will have very little unused RAM. As caching algorithms improve, we see less and less "free" memory.
Correct! And that brings me to my point: we are talking about overall efficiency here, which really is the only metric that matters. Everything else is just a regurgitation of meaningless specs and features, which is what Microsh1t and PC manufacturers do. Macs are based on the overall efficiency and experience. Snow Leopard will take it to the next level. Windows 7 will take it to the previous level (undo Vista so you get back XP).
Correct! And that brings me to my point: we are talking about overall efficiency here, which really is the only metric that matters. Everything else is just a regurgitation of meaningless specs and features, which is what Microsh1t and PC manufacturers do. Macs are based on the overall efficiency and experience. Snow Leopard will take it to the next level. Windows 7 will take it to the previous level (undo Vista so you get back XP).
100% agree - When you look at what they've done to reduce bloat - its nothing that actually improves the system; so what that a couple of services don't load and are only loaded on demand, doesn't change the fact that those services are still bloated and inefficient.
What Microsoft need to do is go back to the drawing board, keep the good parts - the kernel, DirectX, their new display technology, and then throw out win32 and all the other crap. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater but the baby needs removing from the bath water as it is looking rather merky and dirty.