How much RAM is "enough" in OS X? Do I need to upgrade?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
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.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 12
    I got 512 in my Alubook and while this is fine for most things, I would love to get at least 1 GB in there sometime.



    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?
  • Reply 2 of 12
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    i think 512 is enough. i have like 370ish and i get by. in particular, you say that you consistently have 200MB free, so you are clear. osx (and many unix-like systems) tend to use the ram as needed, and rarely free it back up (so its kind of surprising that you have so much free). you might try running imovie and/or idvd (with some files open) and see how that gobbles your ram. the number to look for is "page outs". that is the amount of times (or possibly a quantity of the space) pushed out to "virtual memory" (a very bad thing). well virtual memory isn't terrible, but compared to RAM it is. (virtual memory is when the OS uses hd space to act in place of ram, when ram is all used up. the os temporarily makes little files in invisible places on the hd for unused program's ram. hds are a lot slower than ram, so the process is expensive.)
  • Reply 3 of 12
    Wow, that was quick replying! I've just gone out quickly to get breakfast and already two replies... Thanks guys.



    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!
  • Reply 4 of 12
    I'm pretty happy with 640 MB right now. I'll probably take it to 1.1 gigs sometime in the future.



    I doubt that upgrading to a gig would be that helpful to you at this point. I've been wrong in the past, though.
  • Reply 5 of 12
    kennethkenneth Posts: 832member
  • Reply 6 of 12
    I guess it did. My fault.
  • Reply 7 of 12
    One terabyte, Oh I mean One Million terabytes, as I hold my pinky up to the corner of my lips.....



    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...
  • Reply 8 of 12
    Drumstick - With regards to System Memory that is Wired, Active, Inactive, etc... I found a link explaining all this.



    You can check it here : http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/topic/49394-1.html
  • Reply 9 of 12
    steve666steve666 Posts: 2,600member
    Last i checked I only had 4 Mb free, 120 Mb unused. Virtual memory was almost 2GB! Whatever the hell this all means I have 320Mb RAM and i was only running AOL and Safari and I know they werent using up 300Mb RAM. Very strange.
  • Reply 10 of 12
    I'll have to disagree with the others. I think 1 Gig does wonders on OS X regardless of what you're doing. Personally, there's no way in hell I'd edit video with less than 1 Gig of memory. RAM is cheap for your G4...load it up!
  • Reply 11 of 12
    Thanks for the info about the "active", "inactive", etc states of RAM. Always wondered what that meant...



    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!
  • Reply 12 of 12
    I have a gig in a powerbook g4 Ti 1Ghz, and it works pretty well, even during the 3d modeling and heavy DTP/Photoshop work I do.



    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.
Sign In or Register to comment.