How much RAM is "enough" in OS X? Do I need to upgrade?
Hi,
I've read in numerous places that more RAM is always better in OS X, but surely there comes a point where additional RAM will not improve system performance, right? Discounting bottlenecks elsewhere, like system bus, hard drive, etc, having infinite RAM does not mean that all of it will be used up, right?
I have 512MB of RAM on my G4 Powermac running Panther. I'm not a heavy user, although a friend recently lent me his video camera and is encouraging me to start using iMovie and iDVD. I use Activity Monitor to check my RAM usage and often I have about 200MB free if I don't have too many applications running. Will upgrading RAM be of any use to me?
Also, can somebody explain what does "Wired", "Active" and "Inactive" mean in this context?
Thanks a lot in advance.
I've read in numerous places that more RAM is always better in OS X, but surely there comes a point where additional RAM will not improve system performance, right? Discounting bottlenecks elsewhere, like system bus, hard drive, etc, having infinite RAM does not mean that all of it will be used up, right?
I have 512MB of RAM on my G4 Powermac running Panther. I'm not a heavy user, although a friend recently lent me his video camera and is encouraging me to start using iMovie and iDVD. I use Activity Monitor to check my RAM usage and often I have about 200MB free if I don't have too many applications running. Will upgrading RAM be of any use to me?
Also, can somebody explain what does "Wired", "Active" and "Inactive" mean in this context?
Thanks a lot in advance.
Comments
it would cost me ~$400 to get 2 GB in here now(2 1GB DIMIMs) hopefully in 6-10 months it'll be more like $200 for that.(yeah...as if)
really, the more RAM the better, OS X loves it, it's its favorite meal, I'd wager even cats with 8 GB of RAM still leave OS X wanting more, but the plus side is, with ever MB of RAM OS X gets, performance for many things goes up, and the whole thing gets snappier?
I should clarify that I have 200MB free without iMovie and iDVD running. When I fire those programs up (with files open), my free RAM quickly goes down to 80MB remaining (less if I have other programs running too). Since I don't have these programs up all the time, most of the time I have a fair amount of free RAM.
I didn't observe the system not freeing RAM after I quit the application. After I closed iMovie and iDVD, I got my RAM back, though not as much as I had earlier... So you're probably right.
I'm happy to buy another 512MB of RAM if it will make a difference, but if I get more than 512MB of RAM free after the upgrade, I wonder if my money is well spent at all!
I doubt that upgrading to a gig would be that helpful to you at this point. I've been wrong in the past, though.
http://forums.appleinsider.com/showt...&highlight=RAM
Ok, the base allotment that came with the box will run osx fine, its when you start running lots of "Demanding" apps at the same time. Video, Photo, music, ect... Then you need the ram, and at least a gig.
The box will let you know, (YOU NEED MORE RAMMMMMMMM) or take a look at the activity monitor / processor viewer, it will show you hows the Ram is behaving...
You can check it here : http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/49394-1.html
I went ahead an upgraded anyway. Like Michael said, RAM is cheap(ish). Now I have a HUGE amount of RAM inactive. I suppose that's fine because it means that it *could* speed up launching programs that have been quit earlier. "Quit" here means off completely, with no black triangle below the program icon in the dock.
When I had the large amounts of free RAM earlier, I only just started my computer and since I was using all the programs I would normally used, I assumed that it would remain the same throughout my usage, which of course is not true... (I have to shut down my machine because I've got wake from sleep problems ever since I upgraded the CPU with Powerlogix)
Thanks alot all and sorry I posted a duplicate forum initially, but at least there's discussion here about the states of RAM and not just the amount of RAM.
Cheers!
I'm going to get a G5 at some point in the near future, probably when the G5 PB's come out, at which point I'll determine whether I want a desktop or a notebook. But I'll put 2GB in there. Sometimes Photoshop gets ornery with really large files even with 1GB.