Ive only got 2Gb ram in my core2duo powerbook and a slighly faster CPU at 2.4Ghz, and I have noticed the huge amount of memory safari uses while its open compared to most other apps, as long as im not doing too much other stuff at the same time performance stays ok for me. If i have firefox and safari open together, or fire up a vmware machine then things do get slower but not impossible to work with. I typically have outlook and mail open most of the time, and use other apps like photoshop and vmware "one at a time" and quit them when im done. Its not because its overwhelmingly slow if i don't do that, I am just used to working that way.
One thing that might be a factor in your slowness is wether your imac actually is 64 bit, as with the early intel machines, some were 64bit and some weren't. (core duo vs core 2 duo) as snow leopard and just about all modern apps are 64bit capable now the apps will be taking advantage of the better instruction set, whereas in the early days most apps would have still been 32bit and the performance differences between the two chips wouldn't have been that big a deal. On 25 May 2011 08:52, Tony Crooks <[email protected]> wrote: > Of late I've been noticing some periodic slowdowns on my white 2.16Ghz > Intel Core 2 Duo iMac with the max 3GB memory. > > Typically I have a number of 'background' apps (those running all the time) > including Safari with 9 tabs, iTunes, iChat, Mail. > > I was stunned about two things when I checked Activity Monitor; first that > Safari with 9 tabs open uses up masses of memory - over 1GB - and seems to > have a memory leak of sewer proportions; second with so little running I'm > almost out of free memory although typically about 800MB of inactive memory. > VM size is 190GB. > > As an experiment I'm using Chrome instead of Safari and although this > doesn't seem to have a memory leak it does swallow large amounts of memory > with separate Google Chrome Renderer processes for each tab, although at > around 600MB less than Safari. > > On top of the 'background' apps I'm also regularly using Pages, > Rapidweaver, iPhoto, The Print Shop, ImageWell, Preview, TextEdit and Bento > 4, but not all of these at the same time just various combos. > > My query, in the current Snow Leopard environment, is whether 3GB is > inadequate these days - seemed fine pre-Snow Leopard - and if it is what do > you think is the minimum memory for everyday usage, 4GB, 8GB? Any comments > on this may help me make up my mind about the iMac. What do you think? > > Thanks > -- > Tony Crooks > ---------------------------------- > 53 Mendip Avenue • Eastbourne • BN23 8HP > Mob: 07590508079 > Tel: 01323-460789 > <mailto: [email protected]> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Sussex Mac User Group" group. > To post to this group, send an 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/smug?hl=en-GB. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sussex Mac User Group" group. To post to this group, send an 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/smug?hl=en-GB.
