Do I need more memory? Thanks

[kazmac]

Hi guys,

I know there have been other threads about more memory and this sounds like it's flash-hog related but

am very happy with my i3 3.0Ghz, 4GB entry level iMac: last night the dreaded beach ball popped up 2x.

I was running:

Safari,
iTunes
YouTube (flash based clips)
a Youtube converter
and
Carbon Copy Cloner

The youtube converter (one I paid for) and YouTube froze and the beach ball emerged.

So, should I get more memory?

I don't intend to have CCC running at the same time as the rest of these apps.

And has anyone tried 16GB of ram in the new 21.5" iMacs?

I keep seeing these can handle the additional 8GB beyond the official cap of 8GBs but I wanted to hear from the Mac Community before I spend more money I should.

Thanks everyone

 

[Intell]

I think the amount of ram you have is fine. You can check by opening Activity Monitor in the Utilities folder and switching to the System Memory tab. Then tell us what the Free, Wired, Active, Inactive, and Swap used sizes are.

 

[Hellhammer]

Open Activity Monitor and take a look at page outs. 4GB should be just fine for you, I run a lot more apps with 4GB without any issues. Sounds like Youtube and YT converter crashed and that is not related to RAM

 

[kazmac]

Here's what I have...

Hellhammer & Intell thanks for the response.

I opened Activity Montior and looked under System Memory.

With only Safari open:

Free: 2.98 GB
Wired: 656.3 MB
Active: 648.4 MB
Inactive: 132.7 MB
Used: 1.40 GB
VM: 124.02 GB
Page Ins: 172. 8 MB
Page Outs: 0 bytes
Swap Used: 0 bytes

as mentioned in my opening post, here's all the apps open

Free: 2.60 GB
Wired: 656.3 MB
Active: 648.4 MB
Inactive: 132.7 MB
Used: 1.40 GB
VM: 124.02 GB
Page Ins: 172. 8 MB
Page Outs: 0 bytes
Swap Used: 0 bytes

The only difference is the amount of Free memory. Is that what I should look for?

Hellhammer you mentioned Page Outs what is that an indication of?

Thanks guys. I've never looked under the hood of these machines and appreciate the help.

 

[Salacion]

It's Safari. You can thank Flash and Safari. I would recommend trying out Firefox and testing it under a heavy workload (several apps open), to see if it lags. If so, increase RAM. If not, you can pinpoint it to Safari.

 

[kazmac]

Hmmm...

Got the beach ball again with the dvd player and Safari open. Activity Monitor shows about the same readings as it did above.

Any suggestions?

 

[Intell]

You don't need more ram. Because you're at about 50 percent free and no swap is being used. The beach ball could be an unresponsive program or your hard drive may be dying.

 

[Hellhammer]

You got zero page outs meaning that you don't need more RAM. Page out means that you have no free RAM left and the data has to be written to much slower HD

 

[aliensporebomb]

Flash

Flash is a hog on any cpu.

If you watch a lot of youtube videos simply go to google and search for "Youtube HTML5 Opt-In" and opt in to html5 and your videos will play a lot better since you'll be using HTML5 instead of flash.

 

[iMikeT]

Look up and download clicktoflash so you can control what you see. Also you can try iStat as a widget instead of digging into Activity Monitor all the time.

I'm thinking that there's something more going on here considering that you have new machine constantly beach balling when it shouldn't.

 

[kazmac]

appreciate the additional tips

I will definitely look into clicktoflash and the Youtube HTML5 Opt-In search after I run the Apple Hardware Test again tonight.

I'm praying these beach balls do NOT mean what Intell suggested in his response to my AM postings...

Crossing my fingers.

Again thanks for the additional advice.

If I see more
beach balls, I'm calling Apple.

 

[kazmac]

whew! Definitely a software issue

Oy...just when I thought this was sorted yesterday...

Now that I did a complete erase & install and upgraded to 10.6.4, I decided to make a back up using Carbon Copy Cloner last night. I had Safari, Firefox and iTunes open.

Big mistake.

The machine FREAKED out... beach balling like crazy. I did not check Activity Monitor at the time. Especially since I spent several hours on the phone with Apple and did a complete erase & install as per the Support instructions.

Needless to say I deleted CCC...but not before I did a quick check of the report sent to Apple. I saw a lot of code mentioning kernel but I did not save it because I couldn't make heads or tails of the code.

Once I deleted CCC, I looked for an alternative to back ups since third party apps are anathema now.

I found the creating a disk image page at Apple's support site. Tried to make an encrypted disk Image and got a prompt that said I do not have enough memory!!!

So I ask once again, before calling this Senior advisor at Apple Care does this sound like software or hard ware. The Apple Hard Ware test showed nothing wrong but...now I'm concerned about the system even though the HD appears to be okay after running the HW Test and Verifying the Disc from the Apple install disc.

Thanks again guys and gals...as I said in this original post, I hope I can help someone else out too one of these days. I appreciate learning this...