[Madrag]

hello all,

I have a three months old PM G5 2.0 (the eight slot one) and it has 1.5 GB of RAM, wich works well together

My problem is that when checking activity monitor to see what's happening, I can see that only 30 minutes after a reboot, I have a huge amount of page-outs!

I'm using Entourage, Photoshop CS2, freehand MX, powerpoint and word.

The memory:

active: 894MB
wired: 444MB
free: 62,21MB
VM: 11,25GB

page ins/outs: 70884/103603

I've noticed that freehand gives me lots of page-outs...


Now, Do I need more memory?, because I know that higher page-outs aren't good, is this correct?

(I'm using 10.4.2)

TIA!

[mousehouse]

i'd say get extra memory if you have the feeling that your Mac's swapping is loosing you productivity. otoh, you could get some extra RAM to ease your mind and increase your general pleasure with your Mac. getting 2x512M is only ~$100 now i think.

[James41]

Originally Posted by Madrag

hello all,

I have a three months old PM G5 2.0 (the eight slot one) and it has 1.5 GB of RAM, wich works well together

My problem is that when checking activity monitor to see what's happening, I can see that only 30 minutes after a reboot, I have a huge amount of page-outs!

I'm using Entourage, Photoshop CS2, freehand MX, powerpoint and word.

The memory:

active: 894MB
wired: 444MB
free: 62,21MB
VM: 11,25GB

page ins/outs: 70884/103603

I've noticed that freehand gives me lots of page-outs...


Now, Do I need more memory?, because I know that higher page-outs aren't good, is this correct?

(I'm using 10.4.2)

TIA!

More ram would certainly help with the pageout problem. Check out newegg.com, they have some great prices on 1 gig chips. They have 1 gig Corsair ValueSelect ram for about $85 a chip. Very good ram, very good price. I have 2 gigs of it in my PM G5 and 1 gig of it in my iMac G5 it works just great.

If you add 2 gig to your system giving you a total of 3 1/2 i think you would find your pageouts dropping like a rock, even to 0 unless you are really pushing it hard, but even then you will see a good improvement.

[yusung]

I have the same machine (although a little older, I bought it at the beginning of that models lifetime). I found a dramatic speed improvements going from 1 GB of RAM to 2 GB and another dramatic increase going from 2 GB up to 4 GB. At 4 GB I almost never see any page outs at all, even running with Final Cut Pro (and studio) apps and Adobe stuff. At 2GB I was still seeing some.

Remember that you now have two processors, so you only have 3/4 of a GB per processor. While memory doesn't really quite scale this way, you do need more than you would for a single processor machine to keep it completely happy.

Given your setup, you would probably be happier going directly to 3.5 GB with two 1GB memory modules rather than just to 2.5 with 512 MB modules.

Yusung.

[tooki]

Originally Posted by yusung

Remember that you now have two processors, so you only have 3/4 of a GB per processor. While memory doesn't really quite scale this way, you do need more than you would for a single processor machine to keep it completely happy.

That is absolutely untrue. Multiprocessing simply divides different threads (sub-processes) amongst the available CPUs instead of having them run on one CPU. This does not affect RAM usage, and on Macs (and multi-CPU PCs, for that matter), RAM is not divided amongst CPUs. The only added RAM usage is a bit more RAM in the scheduler (which chooses what threads to run on what CPU), but that is a trivial amount.

tooki

[mousehouse]

i think dual Opterons (as opposed to dual-core Opterons) each address part of the memory using their on-chip memory controller. one could say they divide up the memory, although that is technically incorrect as they each have "their own memory".

but back to the topic, if you see pageouts but are happy with the performance of your machine why buy memory? it usually gets cheaper by the day.

[outsourced]

Originally Posted by mousehouse

... if you see pageouts but are happy with the performance of your machine why buy memory? ...

Exactly.

Why Freehand, though? I would have supposed Office would cause it. Not because it's MS, but because there may be a daemon running rampant. (Like the Microsoft Database Daemon.)

[sheer]

I've got the same machine (dual 2.0, 8 ram slots), same amount of ram (1.5g) and see zero pageouts. Granted I only use the machine for Logic Pro work for 3 or 4 hours a day though...

[Don Pickett]

That's not a lot of pageouts.

[digital_dreamer]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett

That's not a lot of pageouts.

Sure, but that's only 30 minutes of usage after a reboot!

regards,
MAJ

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by digital_dreamer

Sure, but that's only 30 minutes of usage after a reboot!

regards,
MAJ

Depends on what you're doing in those thirty minutes. If I fire up a machine, launch my usual applications and open ginormous Photoshop files, I can make the system page out a lot. There's nothing wrong with pageouts – means the system is working like it should.

[Madrag]

I don't *really* suffer with the page-outs, but sometimes when I return to freehand after sometime idle, it pages out like hell and the spinning ball shows while it pages and so I can't do anything... (I can confirm that some paging out are occuring because I've got the activity monitor; now, if it is freehand or not, I'm not sure).

My concern with the page-outs is that if I've got 1.5GB of RAM, then why get all those page-outs, does it mean that my RAM isn't enough for my activity?

About freehand giving page-outs: I can't confirm it, but as said before, I can see them happen when swiching to freehand...

About the 30 minutes activity: I didn't do much heavy work...
I've been checking my page-outs for some time, and once, after 30 days of uptime, I had about 800.000 page ins and 2.400.000 page outs!, and my concern is that it is definately a big difference from the two.

[mousehouse]

if you have one or two applications open that both allocate a large amount of RAM then it is possible that other applications, or part of these two applications are swapped to disk to free memory. the only way to be sure is to monitor these applications' memory usage and see for yourself.

as said before, memory is not expensive. if you have the feeling it will help you out to have some more go buy it. but if you don't switch between Freehand and the other Big Apps very often or don't mind a small wait there seems to be no problem ...

[Athens]

Originally Posted by mousehouse

i think dual Opterons (as opposed to dual-core Opterons) each address part of the memory using their on-chip memory controller. one could say they divide up the memory, although that is technically incorrect as they each have "their own memory".

but back to the topic, if you see pageouts but are happy with the performance of your machine why buy memory? it usually gets cheaper by the day.

Like to add OS X will always have pageouts, you can have 500GB of memory, the system is designed to always have pageouts.

[Madrag]

yes, I can see OS X will have page outs anyway, because I'v been checking the page-outs & memory, and after quiting some apps to free memory, they just add their memory to the inactive one, (probably to use it back when opened again?).

As suggested, I could buy more RAM, but to be honest, if I don't pay attention to activity monitor, all is well and I don't notice much lags...

What I would like to know is if others get page outs like this. If they do, then I'll just forget this subject; otherwise I need to investigate a "cure".

[OreoCookie]

If you don't notice any lags (which means OS X's memory management does a good job), you don't need to buy any additional memory.

[menglish]

It really depends on when your page-outs are happening. If you are constantly switching between all your open applications and the page-outs are coming in a constant stream, then you need more RAM for your work style. The constant stream of page-outs will cause a very noticeable drag on speed. If they all come in one burst as you switch from one mode of work to another, but leave all the apps open from the previous mode, then you probably don't need more RAM (assuming you're willing to take a slight speed hit when your work style context switches). The speed slowdown from this type of activity will be noticeable, but not constant.

[Pierre B.]

Originally Posted by Madrag

... (I can confirm that some paging out are occuring because I've got the activity monitor; now, if it is freehand or not, I'm not sure).

But it is so easy to find out if it is Freehand or not. Just run your computer for the 30 or so minutes after restart without launching Freehand and see what happens with the page-outs. Regardless, you can always run the Do I Need More Memory? utility. It will perhaps help you.

[Madrag]

I'll try the freehand tip, as for the app suggestion, I've tried it before, but read that it can be a bit inconsistent