Our family iMac has 8GB RAM. I’m considering setting up 3 user profiles for fast user switching. Is 8GB RAM enough to handle 3 users? When I switch away from a user (but not logging them out), is that user’s open apps using a significant amount of resources? If we all have the same app open, does it use 3x the RAM that app would use for just one user?
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Does fast user switching use significantly more resources?
- Thread starter acousticbiker
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Not 3x, because some RAM belonging to inactive users with be compressed and swapped out, and because some read only RAM all be shared. I would size the Mac on needing twice the RAM. Depends on what the 3 users are doing (8GB might not be enough for one user!), but I would expect some slow downs for the active user due to the two inactive ones. If the three of you are cooperative, you will close applications before fast switching to leave as little memory footprint as possible.
And don't forget that there will be some extra CPU consumption.
The benefit of fast switching may well out way the issues. But test it with typical usage by the three of you.
Activity Monitor can show processes of all users, so you can see what is going on.
And don't forget that there will be some extra CPU consumption.
The benefit of fast switching may well out way the issues. But test it with typical usage by the three of you.
Activity Monitor can show processes of all users, so you can see what is going on.
Should work fine. I do this occasionally. There is a little lag after you do a switch user as new items loaded while items from inactive user are paged out to disk. After that is done, the machine runs along nicely.