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Eug Wanker · May 16, 2006, 10:48 PM

I did a search but couldn't find all the answers to my questions...

1) How much memory does Rosetta itself use?
2) How much extra memory does each PowerPC app running under Rosetta use?

Specifically... MS Office, Photoshop, etc.

P.S. I wasn't sure if this belonged here, or in the Applications forum. Mods, please feel free to move it if you think it's better in the Applications forum.

Eug Wanker · May 16, 2006, 11:35 PM

Hmmm... SWG says in another thread that Photoshop takes twice the RAM under Rosetta. Has this been your experience with Photoshop and other apps as well?

Simon · May 17, 2006, 02:10 AM

In my experience Rosetta basically doubles the RAM consumption of an app compared to when running it on one of my PPC Macs. I don't use PS however so I couldn't say what the deal is there.

eevyl · May 17, 2006, 04:44 AM

I don't have definitive numbers about apps running with Rosetta, but a safe bet is that they use up to the double of RAM.

For Rosetta itself, from my understandings of it Rosetta runs between the OS and each PPC app, hence the big increase in RAM usage, so it doesn't use memory by itself.

Eug Wanker · May 17, 2006, 08:46 AM

Glad to hear that Rosetta doesn't use up much/any memory if no PowerPC apps are open.

So, for MS Office I can live with that. Even with a big PowerPoint presentation, PowerPoint didn't usually get over about 60ish MB usage on my iBook. 125 MB on the MacBook isn't a big deal. Furthermore, all my new presentations are in Keynote anyway, and Keynote is universal.

Photoshop is another issue, but I'm just a Photoshop dabbler, and only edit up to 8 MP images, no more than two or three at a time. So, even if I'm using 100 MB on a PowerPC Mac, that's only 200 MB on a MacBook.

I'll stick with 1 GB RAM on the MacBook. I was considering 2 GB, but it seems like overkill since it's not my primary machine. Most of my other apps are now universal too.

Simon · May 17, 2006, 02:24 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

Glad to hear that Rosetta doesn't use up much/any memory if no PowerPC apps are open.

Yeah, definitely. If no PPC app is running you won't feel/see/smell it. It's not a process by itself. What you do notice is that Word on an Intel Mac uses more RAM than Word on a PPC Mac (roughly a factor 2).

Bottom line is Rosetta increases RAM consumption, but only when you use PPC apps. If you're running just Intel binaries, Rosetta will be invisible and use no additional RAM.

Severed Hand of Skywalker · May 17, 2006, 04:29 PM

Dude for the 3rd time it uses double the RAM if emulated.

If not exactly double than very close to it. You really want to avoid it if you can.