Something is weird with the ram in my Mac Pro.

M

macgeek2005

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I just got my Mac Pro. I had it shipped with 4x512mb of ram, for a total of 2GB.

The computer runs great, and fast, but when I open activity monitor, I see weird things.

For instance, I had like 2 programs open, and it said I have 198mb of free ram.

However like 1.45GB of the "un-free" ram was "Inactive", the blue stuff. And I heard that you consider Blue and Green to both be free...

However, if I close all the applications it might rise back up to 1.65GB free!!! However the applications that were open did NOT take up that much space. They took like 50mb!!

The last time this happened, I opened and closed Quake 4, and Lo and behold, I have all my free ram back! Somehow Quake 4 grabbed the "inactive" ram, and then gave it back properly?? what??

Not just that, but I have over 200000 page ins/outs. I know that's way too many.. however i'm new to intel macs, so maybe i'm missing something?

The only app I use in Rosetta is VLC media player... and i've also played Knights of the Old Republic, Return of the King, and Call of Duty. Those are in rosetta. They worked just fine!

What is with activity monitor?

edit: For instance, right now, i've got Firefox, iChat, iTunes, Azureus and Activity monitor open, and i've got 1.54GB of free ram! I still have over 200,000 page ins/outs though.....
 
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Nothing is weird. The system is running fine and you are just looking into numbers too much. I have over 250,000 page in/outs, only 172mb free out of 1gb...but it doesn't matter. Unless I notice slowdowns I don't see the point of flipping out over strange numbers
 
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M

macgeek2005

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Well, okay. But also i've noticed that applications sometimes take an unusual amount of time to open. For instance, right after I woke my computer out of sleep this morning, I opened up iPhoto, and it took FOREVER to open. Then I quit it and opened it again, and it opened in micro-seconds.....
 
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Programs always take longer to open the first time you open them and hardly any time after the initial time, because they still have memory allocated for them (thats what the inactive memory is)
 
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macgeek2005

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I thought that over 100,000 Page outs was BAD!! How did my Mac Pro get over 250,000 in just one day?? I've been downloading torrents, could that do it?
 
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Page In/Out's is just the number of times Mac OS X has moved information between RAM and disk space. If you are downloading huge files or uploading files you are going to have massive page usage. When you download a file it is first put in the ram before it is written to the hard disk, and if you are uploading the files they are in the ram as long as they are being accessed
 
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macgeek2005

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Ahhhh. Azureus is constantly uploading and downloading simultaneously! That explains it!

So according to some people, that's bad for the hard drive, to have so many page-outs...
 
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It doesn't matter how many page outs you have. It completely depends on how long your computer is on, how much you are using the computer and accessing the harddrive.
 
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macgeek2005

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Alright thanks. I guess I was taught wrong....

I think I'll leave the downloads to my iBook non-the-less....
 

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