A quick question about RAM

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Hi everybody... I was looking at my activity monitor and was sondering if someone could explain to me what does it mean the different colors assign to the RAM memory? I mean Free is obvious, but what about "Wired", Active and Inactive?

Also what is "Virtual Memory Size"? is it the free space of the HD that OS can use as a "RAM"?

and my pagefile says 4,53Gb... isn't that too much? AFAIK in Windows it used to be like 3Gb only.


Thanks in advance!!
 
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that was neat chas.. how dod you do that?
 

Raz0rEdge

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that was neat chas.. how dod you do that?

Let me google that for you..enter your search criteria and you'll get a new link that is the animation that Chas put through..it's a little tongue-in-cheek way of saying search before asking a question cuz it's almost guaranteed that you aren't the first person asking it..
 
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Jajajja, well... thanks for the ironic answer chas_m, but it seems you forgot to google me about VM size an Page ins/outs :p
 

chscag

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Also what is "Virtual Memory Size"? is it the free space of the HD that OS can use as a "RAM"?

and my pagefile says 4,53Gb... isn't that too much? AFAIK in Windows it used to be like 3Gb only.

The virtual memory size is what the system has allocated from the free space on your hard drive. And yes, that page file is rather large. You probably should add real memory to your machine. Your MacBook can take up to 8 GB of memory even though Apple says it's only 4 GB.
 
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Yeah chscag, adding more RAM and a SDD are on the To-Do list!!

Thanks for answering
 

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