At 4:38 PM -0500 11/10/2008, Len Gerstel wrote: >DA with 1GB (1024MB) ram installed running 10.4.11. > >Wired 103.24 MB
OS X's kernel plus i/o buffers. >Active 589.93 MB Memory allocated to processes and used recently. >Inactive 314.41 MB Memory allocated to processes and not used recently. >Free 14.64 MB Unused memory. >VM size 7.90GB >Page ins/ outs 50890/3877 >IIRC, the actual "free memory" is the combined inactive and free. Correct? Sortof but (see below). Free is available. Inactive is allocated. If a process needs memory, the Memory Manager will first grab from the free pool, and if that isn't enough then it will grab clean pages from the inactive list, and if that isn't enough it will grab dirty pages. Clean == the page was read only, so its contents doesn't have to be hard paged to disk. Dirty == the page was written on, so its contents must be written to the paging/swap file before it can be released. >So, in theory, I am not choking my system and work habits with >"only" 1 GB of ram. [and from above] >After running my system all day (I shut down every night) and not >quitting any apps (13 are open), just closing the unused documents At its face, it looks like you've got several hundred MB of available memory. But ... you idled your system and closed files and windows first! The memory manager is mostly passive but still, you're not looking at the environment that really counts. Watch while it's being stressed instead. Watching the size of the pools is good, but it needs to be done in conjunction with the page out rate - the rate at which that number changes. If both those pools get small *and* the page out rate is high, then you need more RAM. - Dan. -- - Psychoceramic Emeritus; South Jersey, USA, Earth --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
