How come it won't use more than 810MB of RAM?

[Garden Knowm]

Question time...

I have 6GBs (ram) in my computer and yet I bever see MENU METER read higher than 810MBs of ram USED. Last night I was running FCP 5.0 and Motion at the same time. Motion was barley running ....

What's the deal..? I think it used to run a lot better?

cheers



Machine Name: Power Mac G5
Machine Model: PowerMac7,3
CPU Type: PowerPC G5 (3.0)
Number Of CPUs: 2
CPU Speed: 2.5 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 6 GB
Bus Speed: 1.25 GHz
Boot ROM Version: 5.1.8f7
Serial Number: YM432C0EQPP


ATI Radeon 9600 XT:

Chipset Model: ATY,RV360
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB
Vendor: ATI (0x1002)
Device ID: 0x4152
Revision ID: 0x0000
ROM Revision: 113-A13602-121
Displays:
Cinema HD Display:
Display Type: LCD
Resolution: 1920 x 1200
Depth: 32-bit Color
Core Image: Supported
Main Display: Yes
Mirror: Off
Online: Yes
Quartz Extreme: Supported
Rotation: Supported
Display:
Status: No display connected

 

[orangezorki]

The most important information to look at is the number of VM page ins/outs. If that isn't high, then it's getting as much RAM as it needs.

David

 

[Garden Knowm]

Thanks Orange.. where do i look a the "VM" statistics?

cheers

 

[NintendoFan]

Activity Monitor in Utilities.

 

[Garden Knowm]

are these numbers HIGH?





374 Activity Monitor sevanmatossian 5.90 2 21.21 MB 233.34 MB PowerPC
370 InDesign sevanmatossian 0.00 2 45.82 MB 295.69 MB PowerPC
303 Preview sevanmatossian 0.00 2 8.15 MB 234.84 MB PowerPC
298 System Profiler sevanmatossian 0.00 4 6.84 MB 232.46 MB PowerPC
290 System Preferences sevanmatossian 0.00 2 22.78 MB 251.68 MB PowerPC
284 Safari sevanmatossian 0.30 7 62.84 MB 320.71 MB PowerPC
282 AppleVNCServer sevanmatossian 0.00 1 1.34 MB 155.36 MB PowerPC
281 ARDAgent sevanmatossian 0.00 6 2.27 MB 213.59 MB PowerPC
275 mdimport sevanmatossian 0.00 4 3.17 MB 82.06 MB PowerPC
131 UniversalAccessApp sevanmatossian 1.90 1 3.30 MB 219.71 MB PowerPC
128 DiskWarriorDaemo sevanmatossian 0.00 1 840.00 KB 27.25 MB PowerPC
127 HP IO Classic Proxy sevanmatossian 0.10 1 1.84 MB 211.90 MB PowerPC
126 HP IO Classic Proxy 2 sevanmatossian 0.10 1 1.79 MB 211.59 MB PowerPC
124 Print Daemon sevanmatossian 0.00 1 992.00 KB 27.11 MB PowerPC
123 HP Event Handler sevanmatossian 0.00 3 2.13 MB 215.08 MB PowerPC
121 iTunes Helper sevanmatossian 0.00 1 1.90 MB 218.71 MB PowerPC
113 Finder sevanmatossian 0.00 9 31.71 MB 286.16 MB PowerPC
112 SystemUIServer sevanmatossian 0.20 3 7.27 MB 237.84 MB PowerPC
110 Dock sevanmatossian 0.00 2 3.91 MB 208.84 MB PowerPC
105 pbs sevanmatossian 0.00 2 1.87 MB 56.36 MB PowerPC
96 loginwindow sevanmatossian 0.00 4 6.56 MB 234.81 MB PowerPC
95 ATSServer sevanmatossian 0.00 2 3.44 MB 80.84 MB PowerPC

 

[Garden Knowm]

381 Motion sevanmatossian 0.00 6 26.25 MB 473.66 MB PowerPC
380 Final Cut Pro sevanmatossian 34.10 9 131.48 MB 718.20 MB PowerPC

381 Motion sevanmatossian 0.00 3 26.21 MB 472.65 MB PowerPC
380 Final Cut Pro sevanmatossian 99.70 9 469.71 MB 1.03 GB PowerPC




I just opened Motion and FCP..

these look HIGH..

yikes..

bad??

How do I give my computer programs access to all the RAM i have?

 

[orangezorki]

I'm pretty much in the dark about this as well, but I think that that's not the best list to look at. If you go to the system memory tab at the bottom, it'll give you a summary of everything. For example, I've got a Mac Pro with 2Gb of RAM, but I've only been using Safari, iTunes and mail. I've got 22290 page ins, but no page outs.

Someone correct me if this is wrong, but I interpret that as OSX saving my RAM contents on the HD just in case, but never having the need to wipe the RAM to make room for anything else, so it hasn't needed to read anything off the HD. This is what would slow things down significantly.

David

 

[tyr2]

Well if it works the same as Solaris then Page Ins occur everytime you read from the hard disk as the memory is paged through the memory subsystem. This is so that if you request the same data from the hard disk it will be cached in RAM. As such page ins with no page outs are normal. Page Outs occur when you're running out of memory as RAM has been written out to the HD to make space for some other app.

I assume it works the same in OSX but quite possibly not..

 

[Garden Knowm]

i see..

I have

Page ins/outs 37780/0


Sooooo... is it fair to say that my computer never uses more than 1GB of RAM..and the other 5GBs I have are a waste?

I use FCP and Motion several hours everyday.. and I thought that the extra GBs of RAM would help me.. But recently I have installed Menu Meter and I don't see the "used ram" ever go beyond 810MBs...

cheers

 

[Garden Knowm]

ATI Radeon 9600 XT:

Chipset Model: ATY,RV360
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB


How about this? Is this my Video CARD? Should this be upgraded? And will it help with FCP and Motion?

cheers

 

[CanadaRAM]

The answer is:

Stop worrying and forget about memory usage.

OSX allocates memory dynamically in the background. There is nothing that you should or could be doing about it. So forget that 'memory usage' exists and just use your machine.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

 

[Garden Knowm]

The answer is:

Stop worrying and forget about memory usage.

OSX allocates memory dynamically in the background. There is nothing that you should or could be doing about it. So forget that 'memory usage' exists and just use your machine.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

cool.. let me ask you this... is the "Menu meter" not accurate?
What if I took out 5GBs of ram (leavingmy computer with only 1GB of ram).. would my computer run with the same results?

cheers

 

[suneohair]

Is all your memory being recognized? Maybe some of it is dead?

If everything is running fine I wouldnt sweat it.

 

[MRU]

ATI Radeon 9600 XT:

Chipset Model: ATY,RV360
Type: Display
Bus: AGP
Slot: SLOT-1
VRAM (Total): 128 MB


How about this? Is this my Video CARD? Should this be upgraded? And will it help with FCP and Motion?

cheers

For Motion you will see a MAMMOTH increase in peformance with a better GPU. Motion more than any other apple pro application is dependant on GPU. An X800XT in there would make it fly

 

[CanadaRAM]

cool.. let me ask you this... is the "Menu meter" not accurate?
What if I took out 5GBs of ram (leavingmy computer with only 1GB of ram).. would my computer run with the same results?

cheers

The Menu Meter may be accurate, but it is not relevant.
You would certainly lose performance if you removed all but 1 Gb of RAM.
Like I said; Ignore it and get on with your work. Let OSX manage the memory. You simply do not have enough information to make any kind of conclusion -- and you have no way to change it anyway, so fuggedaboudit.

 

[Garden Knowm]

Is all your memory being recognized? Maybe some of it is dead?

If everything is running fine I wouldnt sweat it.

How will I know if it is dead?

Cheers

 

[Garden Knowm]

n GPU. An X800XT in there would make it fly

Thank you

How much?
Can I install it myself?
Will it work with my computer?
Will it also help with fcp?

Thank you

 

[tyr2]

is the "Menu meter" not accurate?
What if I took out 5GBs of ram (leavingmy computer with only 1GB of ram).. would my computer run with the same results?

The menu meter is probably acurate. You also need to look at the 'Memory Pages' section in conjunction with the used/free.

Active memory is memory in use by your apps
Wired memory is memory is use that cannot be paged out to disk (kernel stuff)
Inactive memory is used for caching and the like amongst other things.
Free memory is the ammount actually free. This should hover around 20Mb so that memory is always free on demand. Memory is moved from Inactive to Free when required.

If you're interested there's a good document about it here

Basically any memory not used directly by your apps is generally used for caching and making the system faster.

As others have said don't worry about it, it's fine.

 

[Shadow]

The answer is:

Stop worrying and forget about memory usage.

OSX allocates memory dynamically in the background. There is nothing that you should or could be doing about it. So forget that 'memory usage' exists and just use your machine.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com

I cannot recommend this enough-when I got my Mac I set Activity Moniter to start on bootup so I could moniter the RAM usage. Now, I've forgotten about that and let OS X do what it needs to do. I only check when using Parallels-that eats a lot of RAM.
You should do the same-just stop worrying about RAM and enjoy your Mac-its a wonderful machine.

 

[I'mAMac]

I use the iStat pro widget. It tells me everyting about everything. Active ram inactive, idle. It also tells you the temperature and hard drive space, # of processes, etc. Just go to apple page, widgets, istat pro (or istat nano, the less detailed and advanced version). Right now, active memory is less than 200mb I have 1.5gb. On a similar note, does anyone know if there is a way to monitor your RAM on the windows side?

 

[apfhex]

Page ins/outs 37780/0

Sooooo... is it fair to say that my computer never uses more than 1GB of RAM..and the other 5GBs I have are a waste?

I use FCP and Motion several hours everyday.. and I thought that the extra GBs of RAM would help me.. But recently I have installed Menu Meter and I don't see the "used ram" ever go beyond 810MBs.

Since you have zero page outs, that's what it seems like. Hard to believe since I would think those apps would just eat up RAM. Also, did you take those numbers AFTER a full days work on your computer? Otherwise that's not an accurate indication of your RAM usage.

Why don't you go into System Profiler (Applications/Utilities/) and click on Memory and select each one of your RAM cards and see if it looks like all of them are operating OK (this isn't a sure-fire way to test RAM, but if some of them weren't working then you might find out).

 

[Garden Knowm]

Since you have zero

Why don't you go into System Profiler (Applications/Utilities/) and click on Memory and select each one of your RAM cards and see if it looks like all of them are operating OK (this isn't a sure-fire way to test RAM, but if some of them weren't working then you might find out).

thanks

They all are "ok"

 

[MRU]

Thank you

How much?
Can I install it myself?
Will it work with my computer?
Will it also help with fcp?

Thank you

http://cgi.ebay.ie/Radeon-X800-XT-2...ryZ25449QQssPageNameZWD2VQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

About $250 - 300 on ebay

Yes very easily

Yes otherwise I wouldnt have said so

Helps with real time previews a little, but not a huge increase compared to what you will see with motion

 

[Garden Knowm]

thanks... I apologize for the double post..

 

[MRU]

thanks... I apologize for the double post..

No worries I just answered you over at the other too