Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Cadaver · May 22, 2004, 10:42 AM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
But 95% of folks reading this thread are using less than 300MB of RAM.

I'd say your usage would be classified as 'abnormal'.

Really?
I'm sitting on my couch right now with a 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook, browsing these forums in Safari. Its been about 25 minutes since I booted my machine. Mail is also running. I have 768MB of RAM in this machine. As of right now, 313.8MB of RAM is in use according to Activity Monitor.

Freshly booted machine. Two apps + OS. 314MB of RAM.

I just opened iChat and I'm idle (no windows open), waiting for someone to contact me. My RAM usage is now 332MB.

Now, lets say I was doing some research on the internet, and I wanted to encorporate what I find into my Keynote presentation for work/school. Of course, I'd be going back and forth between Safari and Keynote. So, open Keynote and load a 50 slide presentation with around 20 800x600 images and run though the slides once - now up to 448MB used.

Now, I hardly think this can be considered anything other than "normal" usage. Any college student, teacher or business person could expect to find themselves working like this on a nearly daily basis.

Unless you work in one single application only and close all others, you'll never find yourself with that 300MB limit.

This is why I believe 512MB is the bottom limit for any user, with 768MB recommended for an average person.

--

For me on an average day, in addition to all that above, I might also have Photoshop Elements or GraphicConverter open to edit/resize the graphics I'd add in to my slide presentation. Add another couple of Safari windows so I can see more than one research resource at a time, my iCal application so I can check dates and see my work partners calendar (to which I subscribe with auto-update), a Word document open so I can make sure my slide presentation follows my syllabus I've written, EndNote for my reference sources, and you can see I'd be well in to the 1.5+ GB range. Having to swap all that in to virtual memory would kill me. Sure it could be done, but in God's name why would anyone want to endure that kind of torture?

Ratspittle · May 22, 2004, 02:26 PM

Originally posted by freakboy2:
spliff what kind of mac u got.. i have some extra pc 100 and pc 133 128 meg dimms lying around. i'll dig them up and mail them to you.

i just want your pain to stop.

fb

Spliff is NOT a mac user, at least he wasn't when he was "outed" on this forum a few years ago for posting on a PC forum about how he was going to come to macnn and cause a ruckus (sp). Although I have to say, since he is still hanging around here (after changing his user name) he must have good taste.

Spliff, if I am wrong, and you DO actually own a mac that runs OS X, then kudos to you my friend. I'm glad to see you coming to your senses, if not, plz stay in the political/war lounge.

BTW I noticed a huge jump in performance when I went from stock 256 to 768MB

DeathToWindows · May 23, 2004, 07:53 PM

768 is a QS733 and Photoshop, iMovie and iDVD always want more!

freakboy2 · May 24, 2004, 01:48 PM

Originally posted by Ratspittle:
Spliff is NOT a mac user, at least he wasn't when he was "outed" on this forum a few years ago for posting on a PC forum about how he was going to come to macnn and cause a ruckus (sp). Although I have to say, since he is still hanging around here (after changing his user name) he must have good taste.

Spliff, if I am wrong, and you DO actually own a mac that runs OS X, then kudos to you my friend. I'm glad to see you coming to your senses, if not, plz stay in the political/war lounge.

BTW I noticed a huge jump in performance when I went from stock 256 to 768MB

yeah i realized this after i looked into him a little more. it's funny that someone would actually care enough about hating macs to spend so much time posting like thousands of times..

.. he's like the Macnn village idiot.

fb

theatombomb · May 27, 2004, 04:06 AM

Just installed another G of RAM this mornng--that makes 2G. I also installed 10.4.

The OS update might have made some difference, but the increased performance on this dual 2G G5 is mostly due to the RAM and, man it's like a different machine. Even with no "Pro" apps open, I notice a bug difference swithing between itunes, safari, mail, messenger and quark.

axlepin · 06:57 AM

Originally posted by djohnson:
I only have 384MB in my current machine and it works fine.... I dont see how people say 1.5GB is not enough!

Doesn't surpise me that your machine works fine on 384. It depends greatly on what you do how much RAM is enough.

My Dual 2Ghz is loaded up with 2.5GB, and I hope to add more. During a typical day, I am doing 3D rendering all day long, often while doing video editing, surfing the web, doing photoshop, and other demanding tasks, like file transfers on the order of 4GB and Stuffing large archives.

I use MenuMeters and can watch my CPU load (always heavy/full) and memory usage. Yesterday, while doing the above-mentioned chores, I watched my Used Memory rise from about 354 to over 1800MB. Imagine what would happen if I tried all that stuff with 512MB!

Either the 3D or the video chores are demanding of resources. With 2.5GB of RAM, the G5 is an unstoppable beast. If I had only the Stock 512MB, I'd be looking at the beachball a lot and catching up on my daytime TV shows!

If you're doing web surfing, word processing and maybe some light photoshop or quark, etc., 384 could be all you need, but to do the things that modern Mac hardware is capable of, RAM is what you need in goo-gobs...More is better. Even more is more better!

axle

booboo · May 30, 2004, 05:59 AM

I probably consider myself a 'power user'. But using my G4/533 for 'consumer' tasks - web-browsing, email, writing letters, playing MP3's and a bit of basic FMP work I found 512MB adequate.

Sticking in another 256MB brought a definite improvement when running a lot of app's, audio-editing, and having a 2nd user active . . . I found a diminishing but still worthwhile improvement going up to 1GB.

I can imagine that 1.5GB would be nice for really intensive Cubase SX work, running a multitude of RAM based samplers and synthesizers, or for database development when handling large files, but for 'consumer' oriented tasks, I really would have thought 512MB would be adequate . . .

Cadaver · May 30, 2004, 01:17 PM

I am definitely not a "typical" or "average" user. I use my G5 often for reviewing and processing medical DICOM images. Some of these studies are often 2000+ images at 512x512 pixels, 10-bit grayscale (slightly over .5MB per image). Rendering 3D images from these or exporting as QuickTime videos can take both a lot of CPU power and RAM. I have 2.5GB in my DP2.0, and I can easily run out of free RAM. If I could afford it I'd have a full 8GB in this machine.

danbrew · May 31, 2004, 12:19 PM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
In normal use, above 300MB of RAM any performance increase is all in your head.

This is, by far, the craziest thing I've ever heard. Try opening Photoshop with a couple of hundred meg files with 300 megs. And then with a gig or two.

"Normal use" - browsing the web? yeah, that's about it.

Spliffdaddy · Jun 1, 2004, 12:01 AM

lol. We all have a "couple hundred meg" image files laying around

normal use, my ass.

what a difference a couple of years can make.

I like the spin.

Suddenly, needing a lot of RAM is a good thing.

I think it's because OSX needs all the speed improvements it can get.

Don Pickett · 05:43 PM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
lol. We all have a "couple hundred meg" image files laying around

normal use, my ass.

Those of us whose computer use extends beyond surfing porn in our parent's basement have more than a couple � I have a 3.2 terabyte server full of them. Most Macs are bought for this kind of intensive work, and most need all the RAM they need. I'm in a room of 20-odd Macs � one room in a building full of them � and all the machines here have a minimum of 1.5 gigs of RAM. Any machine used for this kind of work, be it OS X, Windows or SGI, has all the RAM its user can afford.

Welcome to the adult world.

danbrew · Jun 1, 2004, 07:04 PM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
lol. We all have a "couple hundred meg" image files laying around

normal use, my ass.

My initial reply to your post was provided without looking at all the other posts - you know, the ones where people said you were a troll and all that. My first thought when I saw your post was that you were simple a casual user and didn't use your computer for anything other than playing games and surfing the net. Perhaps that's the case - I don't know.

But... and this is a big but... considering the fact that Apple markets their machines to graphics professionals, it's pretty silly for you to consider that hundred meg files are somehow uncommon. It's not at all uncommon to work with huge files. I created a 6 foot by 3 foot banner at 1200 dpi with a bunch of photos just the other day - the filesize is 200 megs. And this was with me scaling 1" to 1' -- in other words, the image was 6" by 3" @ 1200. If I had really done it to scale, the image size would have been well over two gigs!

So... for you to say that it's uncommon to have such large files - well, I suppose that would mean that you're pontificating about things for which you have no clue. Seriously. Kind of like you saying that 300 megs is all somebody would ever need.

And... what's up with this ****? You've been a member for about 960 days and have posted 4539 posts. That's 4.7 posts a day. What's up with that? Don't you have a job? Or school?

Spliffdaddy · Jun 1, 2004, 11:55 PM

Been here longer than that. I'm using my new username.

In normal use, 300MB is plenty.

If it isn't, something is bad wrong with OSX.

I mean, no wonder it's slow...it's moving gigabytes of data through the memory bus and CPU - for no reason. Windows doesn't do that and it's damned snappy.

Cadaver · Jun 2, 2004, 12:24 AM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Been here longer than that. I'm using my new username.

In normal use, 300MB is plenty.

If it isn't, something is bad wrong with OSX.

I mean, no wonder it's slow...it's moving gigabytes of data through the memory bus and CPU - for no reason. Windows doesn't do that and it's damned snappy.

Dude, you're not getting it.

If "normal" use for you is surfing the web, and that's it, then yeah... 300MB is adequate.
But, once you get beyond the teenage years, some of us make a living on our machines.

Didn't Bill Gates once supposedly say that 640KB is enough for anyone? Now we have Spliffdaddy drawing a new line in the sand.

angelmb · Jun 2, 2004, 05:39 AM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Dude, you're not getting it.

If "normal" use for you is surfing the web, and that's it, then yeah... 300MB is adequate.
But, once you get beyond the teenage years, some of us make a living on our machines.

Didn't Bill Gates once supposedly say that 640KB is enough for anyone? Now we have Spliffdaddy drawing a new line in the sand.

Cadaver is right, Mac OS X as a work platform starts at 1 GB RAM, for the mythical 'normal' use, 512 is OK.

Don Pickett · Jun 2, 2004, 11:26 AM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Been here longer than that. I'm using my new username.

In normal use, 300MB is plenty.

If it isn't, something is bad wrong with OSX.

I mean, no wonder it's slow...it's moving gigabytes of data through the memory bus and CPU - for no reason. Windows doesn't do that and it's damned snappy.

And you fail to have even a basic understanding of professional computer use.

File sizes are not platform-dependent: a 17.25 x 11.25 (full spread with bleed) image at 300 dpi is the same size no matter what platform it is on. It will be a large file on a Windows machine, a Mac or a TRS-80. Files this large (and much larger) require lots of RAM, no matter what.

DarylF2 · Jun 2, 2004, 12:23 PM

WHy are you guys even arguing with this nitwit? He is obviously just trying to get on your nerves. Sheesh. Just ignore him...

Don Pickett · Jun 2, 2004, 12:59 PM

Originally posted by DarylF2:
WHy are you guys even arguing with this nitwit? He is obviously just trying to get on your nerves. Sheesh. Just ignore him...

I don't mind trolls. I do mind ignorant ones.

ARK · Jun 2, 2004, 02:02 PM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
I think it's because OSX needs all the speed improvements it can get.

Yeah he just entered troll status with this comment.

bojangles · Jun 5, 2004, 01:16 PM

Originally posted by Spliffdaddy:
Look for yourself. How much RAM are you using right now?

I'm betting you use less than 300MB of RAM. So tell me how 1GB of RAM would improve your computing experience? What's the OS gonna put there...on that unused 700MB? Stuff you might use? Stuff you already used? Those jpeg images from the USB card reader you plugged-in last week?

My wife's using Safari right now. Mail, iCal, Photoshop, and Dreamweaver are sitting quietly in the background, and have been there for hours. She's currently using 960MB of Active RAM and 1.28GB of Inactive RAM, leaving 39.25MB out of 2.5GB free.

I've been happy with my 2.5GB since day one of my G5 experience, but now that you've had me check out the RAM usage, I'm wondering if more might be preferable!