On Mon, Apr 27, 2009 at 9:38 PM, Donald Burr <[email protected]> wrote:
> > 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. > _____________________________________ Have you asked for prices on the swap list? --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
