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Can someone explain what this means?

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This is what my mac is using right now, however I would like to know exactly what it all means. I have 1GB total RAM right now and am possibly thinking of upgrading. Thanks for your help.
 
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Basically, it means you aren't utilizing the total RAM you have now, so an upgrade really won't show any improvement or increased performance for you.
:black:
 
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That big chunk of green in the pie is good. You still have about 300Mb of actual memory available. Assuming that this snapshot was taken during "average" usage (i.e how you normally use your Mac) you are good. More RAM would allow you to have more Apps open at once, but do you really have 16 Apps open at once on a regular basis?
 
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Well I'm glad to know that I don't need any more RAM, that answers THAT question for me, can you guys elaberate on what the 'Wired', 'Active', 'Inactive', and 'Used' means. I know that sounds like a silly request as for the most part the titles are self explaaitory, but just in case there is something more that I dont know, i would appreciate it. :)
 
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Wired = RAM that is dedicated to the System (OS) for use (I think, someone will correct me if I am wrong).

Active = RAM being actively used by an App or the System.

Inactive = RAM that is reserved for but not currently being used by an open App or System resource, perhaps an App that is open but idle.

Used = Total RAM that is being currently used.

Free = The amount of available, unused RAM for use.

VM Size = The amount of Hard Drive Space that the system has reserved for use a "Virtual Memory"
 
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Thanks baggss, Finally, now I know what it all means! :)
 
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Kokopelli

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evolve said:
Picture%205.png



This is what my mac is using right now, however I would like to know exactly what it all means. I have 1GB total RAM right now and am possibly thinking of upgrading. Thanks for your help.

Sort of short version:

wired: Memory which must stay in resident memory. Basically the kernel and related code.

Active: Memory in active use right now by some application or process. This is not really true but the easier to grasp. Techinically active memory is memory that has recently been accessed.

Inactive: Memory that has not been recently accessed. This is kept in resident memory to reduce the need for paging. It will also be the first thing paged should memory need to be freed.


Used: Wired+Active+Inacitve

Free: Uh.... free memory.

VM Size: The amount of virtual memory space that has been allocated for all running processes.

Page Ins: Number of reads from disk into memory. Safe to ignore for the most part.

Page outs: How many writes from memory to disk. If this number increases rapidly or continually (i.e. disk thrashing) then you have a problem. You are not close to that though. You have plenty of free memory and a significant amount of inactive.

If you added more memory it would allow more stuff to sit in inactive memory, thus reducing page outs, but I doubt you would see much of a performance boost based on those numbers.

EDIT: Too slow.
 
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The second link is very usefull. Thanks!
 
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I know this post is old, but I wanted to thank all of you that help explain this to me.
 
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I think a mod should sticky some of these links: they're very beneficial in determining if you need more RAM :)
 

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