[JazzCatDRP]

Hey all,
I recently installed MenuMeters, and am really enjoying it, with one exception. I'm clueless as to what exactly the "memory" section of it is telling me exactly. What is the difference between active, wired, and inactive exactly. I do vaguely grasp what a pagein and pageout are. Also, on the memory pie chart, why is it that when the chart is completely filled up, it still shows me as having a couple hundred meg of RAM unused still? Thanks for anything you can tell me!

[CatOne]

Originally posted by JazzCatDRP:
Hey all,
I recently installed MenuMeters, and am really enjoying it, with one exception. I'm clueless as to what exactly the "memory" section of it is telling me exactly. What is the difference between active, wired, and inactive exactly. I do vaguely grasp what a pagein and pageout are. Also, on the memory pie chart, why is it that when the chart is completely filled up, it still shows me as having a couple hundred meg of RAM unused still? Thanks for anything you can tell me!

These are terms the OS uses. I suggest you read up on OS X memory management, or just don't worry about what MM tells you.

[Big Mac]

Wired memory is memory that has been locked down (essential system software) and cannot be swapped out. Active memory is the normal memory currently used by resident (open/active) applications. And inactive memory is the portion of physical memory that has been retained but is not currently being used. As the user works, OS X dynamically caches memory used, and as it becomes inactive it is saved in memory rather than just purged. As inactive memory becomes active again, it takes much less time for the data to come back from RAM than it takes for it to be loaded from virtual memory. OS X's memory management is very sophisticated, and you really do not have to worry about it much at all. If you are a seeing a lot of pageouts, though, you should consider getting more RAM.