This is really more of a general OS X question, but it has some bearing on those of us with older hardware, so I figured this would be the best place to ask it. Apologies if it's not.
I've got a G4 Cube (upgraded to a 1.5GHz CPU) running several services for our home network here (iTunes server, BitTorrent client [for legal content only, of course], etc.) The system seems awfully slow especially when switching between programs. I'm wondering where my bottleneck is. I would guess it's memory bound (since I only have 768 MB in the machine) rather than CPU bound, as Activity Monitor consistently shows at least 60% free CPU (I have never seen it go below that). I'm not sure how to interpret the values shown in the Memory tab in Activity Monitor. "Free" memory is very small (only about 77 MB at this moment). Alot of memory is shown as either "active" or "inactive" (both around 280-290 MB right now), with a somewhat smaller amount showing as "wired" (currently 125 MB). "Used" (I assume this is the total of everything except "free" memory) is about 700 MB. I am also seeing rather high values for the "VM size" (44 GB) and "page ins" (2.92 GB). "page outs" is only about 317 MB or so. It seems to me from these values that memory is indeed a bottleneck here, but maybe I am reading this all wrong? If memory is indeed the problem, then obviously it's time to add some. For a trio of 512 MB PC100/133 DIMMs, Crucial/Micron wants almost $160. Other World has a better price, it's only just over $100 including shipping. Are there any places (besides eBay - I'd rather not go there) that might have better prices on this older type of memory? I love my Cube - besides the obvious coolness factor, it's still an amazingly useful machine to me - and am not averse to spending money to keep it alive and in top shape. But obviously with the economy being the way it is, if I don't have to spend the money, I'd rather not; but if it is worth it to do so, I'd obviously want to spend the least amount I can get away with spending. Thanks in advance for your help/advice. Donald -- Donald Burr of Borg | FreeBSD: The Power to Serve! http://DonaldBurr.com/ | http://www.freebsd.org/ twitter.com/dburr \----------------------------- --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 [email protected] 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
