Ram Question

Hi ,
excuse my noobishness but
can someone explain me how to read the Istat Pro stats on my ram ?
i dont understand
i only had photoshop and bridge opened a this time ...
but i always seem that there is the same amount on ram used {even when playing Cod4 ect}
thanks

If you're interested in how your Mac's ram is being used/allocated...you could also use "Activity Monitor" in your Applications > Utilities folder.

It represents/displays your ram usage as a "pie chart"...and that may be easier to visualize or understand (as compared to the info output from iStat).

HTH,

- Nick

While I agree with Nick's suggestion for using Activity Monitor, to see the pie chart, I find that for me, personally MenuMeters gives me all of the info I need, at a glance and IMO its layout is far superior to iStat.

Rottie said:

While I agree with Nick's suggestion for using Activity Monitor, to see the pie chart, I find that for me, personally MenuMeters gives me all of the info I need, at a glance and IMO its layout is far superior to iStat.

Click to expand...

Hey...different strokes for different folks!

- Nick

+1 to rottie, menumeters is by far the best thing on my menu bar now!

I think why bother to have your menu bar cluttered up when you have iStat pro available one key tap away? Or, even better, when Apple already provides you the tools for that? But hey, to each his own.

@chris H I have I stat on the dash and it's all displayed with geektools, but when different apps are cluttering the desktop I think it's great to have it on the menu bar. I don't have to hit a button or minimize apps to see stats, I love it.

Chris H. said:

I think why bother to have your menu bar cluttered up when you have iStat pro available one key tap away? Or, even better, when Apple already provides you the tools for that? But hey, to each his own.

Click to expand...

Hehe. I'm in the opposite camp to you. In my view, if you have Menu Bar space, that's currently unused and you can utilize it, with useful applets, then, to me, it's a better option than having to look elsewhere in the GUI for bandwidth/memory consumption, CPU usage, etc.

But as Nick said earlier, to each his/her own.

willmeahl4 said:

+1 to rottie, menumeters is by far the best thing on my menu bar now!

Click to expand...

Glad you like it.

Agreed.

Though for me, using a MacBook with a 13" screen- applications that had a lot of menus ended up hiding my tools up there. So, after a few posts later here, I removed most of the tools, except hard drive activity.

I hate to criticise my fellow posters, especially when you're all very nice people, but "way to talk AROUND the question, guys!"

It's not that your suggestions weren't good, but the OP was asking for help understanding the different categories of RAM use. Going to a pie chart doesn't actually help if you still don't understand what "wired" versus "active" means.

in00b, here's a page that explains the terminology pretty clearly, using Activity Monitor to illustrate.

Bottom line, it looks to me that you could use more real RAM.

chas_m said:

I hate to criticise my fellow posters, especially when you're all very nice people, but "way to talk AROUND the question, guys!"

It's not that your suggestions weren't good, but the OP was asking for help understanding the different categories of RAM use. Going to a pie chart doesn't actually help if you still don't understand what "wired" versus "active" means.

Click to expand...

I considered that possibility. If we were "off the mark"...I was waiting for the OP to reply letting us know.

Sometimes what "OP's" write is not always what they mean.

- Nick

p.s. You're probably right regarding what the OP is/was looking for...I was taking the simple route first with the "pie chart" in Activity Monitor.

[ i ment more something like "what is the therminology and how hou read it ?"
]

Basically: Wired RAM, is used by the system i.e o/s, Active Ram is what is being used by your open apps, inactive is what was used by an app, but no longer, i.e the apps been closed, free ram is exactly as it says it is