Can you allocate more memory per app in OSX?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I just added 256K to bring my FP iMac to 512K of RAM.
Not really seeing a whole lot of difference yet (although I haven't really done much but surf), but can you still allocate a greater portion of RAM to a program like you could in MacOS 9?
Not really seeing a whole lot of difference yet (although I haven't really done much but surf), but can you still allocate a greater portion of RAM to a program like you could in MacOS 9?
Comments
Originally posted by satchmo
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I just added 256K to bring my FP iMac to 512K of RAM.
Not really seeing a whole lot of difference yet (although I haven't really done much but surf), but can you still allocate a greater portion of RAM to a program like you could in MacOS 9?
No, OS7-9 was a kludge in memory management (single process OS patched to handle multiple processes--originally Multifinder in OS 6).
In OS X, applications can take as much memory as they require. You do not need to do anything.
If you open a few applications and use them, you'd notice a big difference between 256MB and 512MB (not k ). There's a very big difference from 512 to 1GB.
It's a very intelligent system.
If you would like a technical explanation, it's become standard procedure for me (we get this question a lot ) to refer people to ArsTechnica for John Siracusa's article about Mac OS X.
Mac OS X 10.1: Memory Usage
Mac OS X 10.1: Memory Diagnostics
The explanation there still applies to 10.2 and 10.3.
Originally posted by 1337_5L4Xx0R
Although in Photoshop, you can specify what percentage of your ram PS7 is allowed to hog... I've set it to 75%, leaving 25% (aka 256MB) for OSX and the rest.
Is this true? Why have a user defined partition if the OS assigns memory dynamically and perfectly?
Originally posted by Ensign Pulver
Is this true? Why have a user defined partition if the OS assigns memory dynamically and perfectly?
because PS is a RAM hog.
seriously.
most other programs might spike a bit here and there to use a lot of memory, but they'll generally release it pretty quickly, letting everything else get back to normal.
PS will take that memory and hold on to it forever (because, quite frankly, it needs it), grinding everything else to a halt.
Originally posted by Ensign Pulver
Is this true? Why have a user defined partition if the OS assigns memory dynamically and perfectly?
I assume because since Photoshop's usage can grow and shrink so hugely depending on the size of the files you open and close that Adobe thinks it better to just leave it set to a user definable amount for the duration Photoshop is running. I'm not certain that's the reason but it's the only I can imagine. Otherwise it might play yo-yo with the memory?
But if you get more RAM it becomes a non-issue either way.
Originally posted by satchmo
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I just added 256K to bring my FP iMac to 512K of RAM.
Not really seeing a whole lot of difference yet (although I haven't really done much but surf), but can you still allocate a greater portion of RAM to a program like you could in MacOS 9?
In general, thank God, no. An application is always able to restrict itself (PS 7), but there are really very few examples of apps so greedy. So unless an app has a special setting to set the amount of used RAM, it's beyond your control.
Originally posted by Big Mac
I really don't mean to be insulting, but how could one have so many posts and not know about such a major feature of OS X?
Are those two concepts really related? I guess I could see why, but it could be that they just post things like "OK" just to up score, or doesn't use OS X very much. But any way you look at it, everyone should know about OSX.