[Cubeoid]

Being a mac users for the first time (feels great I just got a new 500mhz Cube with 128mb of RAM. Stepping up from an old Windows machine which could barely move with 48mb. However I noticed that OS9 chews up 30megs, with virmem on, and another few applications slowly chew up the remainder. I was advised by a guy to turn virmem off, and that proved to be a mistake because I was at a stage where about 7 apps were open and I was left with 2 megs. Thus virmemem is back on and Its very smooth. The speed is super, but I am planning to buy Office and Photoshop and am thinking I need more RAM. I think I see the reason why you can expand these babies to over 1500 mb

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

In most cases your mac will be faster with VM on. VM speeds up the opening of applications, it reduces system RAM requirements, and it generally adds smoothness to your system. An exception to this is that many audio/video applications run better with VM off. There is much dogma surrounding VM on the Mac...I believe it is the result of Apple's earlier implementations of VM, which did slow down the system. As of OS 9, VM is advanced to the point where it enhances system performance. As of OS X, VM is so advanced that it is always on (ok, I know about the performance, but it isn't slow because of VM).

You can prove to yourself that apps run faster with VM on by testing the framerates on a 3D first person shooter. Both Quake 3 and UT are faster with VM on.

128 MB RAM is probably the minimum for running OS 9. With the price of RAM nowadays, it wouldn't hurt to drop in another 128 MBs. Crucial.com has good prices and they are the OEM supplier of RAM for Apple, so you know it's up to spec.



[This message has been edited by OverclockedHomoSapien (edited 04-17-2001).]

[dtriska]

Good 'ole HomoSapien's got you covered regarding VM info. I do suggest adding more memory, though. I believe prices are on the way up, so buy now. I recently upgraded my G4 to 768.

[zac4mac]

RAM is VERY cheap now.
I went to Mem2Go and loaded up.(256MB PC 100 2-2-2: 69 bucks US)
If you load up with 1GB+, and try to turn on VM, you get a message that "there is TOO MUCH RAM to enable VM"
Bwa-ha-ha!
BTW, no probs with firmware update here.

G4 DP550/1GB/70GB/Radeon/Orion

Zack

[mac freak]

Since when did Apple ever sell a DP 550???

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Be Happy.

[Trixalia]

I did take advantage of the great prices on RAM and added 256MB to my iMac. Before I upgraded I couldn't even open one application without having VM turned on. How embarrassing is that?

[iSilver]

you are lucky, my G4/533 with 384MB RAM uses on average 60MB!! apparently the amount of RAM used by the system increases when the amount RAM installed increases. make sure you get qood quality RAM or you may not be able to use it when you instll OS X. Ideally for Photoshop you should get another 256MB RAM and assign Photoshop depending on the size of the images you will be working with, at least 100MB RAM.

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[dtriska]

Originally posted by mac freak:
Since when did Apple ever sell a DP 550???

They never did. He overclocked his G4.

Originally posted by mac freak:
apparently the amount of RAM used by the system increases when the amount RAM installed increases.

This is probably just the cache size acting up. You can turn it down in the Memory control panel.

[Brad Nelson]

If you're willing to do a little trial-and-error work, you can significantly reduce the amount of RAM the systems uses (and possibly enhance stability). Open Extensions Manager and duplicate the set you're now using (just so you can always go back). Not using encryption? Printer sharing? Multiple users, etc. Then disable them. You can view as Packages in Extensions Manager to make sorting out what is what a little easier. Not sure what something is? Just leave it alone then. Feeling more adventurous? Then disable it out and see if it works. Remember, you can always start-up with the shift key held down to disable all extensions in case you've disabled something that makes your Mac crash at startup. I believe you can cut about 8 megs or so off what the system uses.

[zac4mac]

"Originally posted by mac freak:
apparently the amount of RAM used by the system increases when the amount RAM installed increases."
response from dtriska: "This is probably just the cache size acting up. You can turn it down in the Memory control panel."

Pretty close. The OS assigns a default disk cache level proportional to your real RAM, so if you add RAM, when you restart, you will see a larger chunk assigned to the OS. As you say, you can change it in the memory control panel.

[muttfree]

<<<<I believe you can cut about 8 megs or so off what the system uses.\>>>>>

You can cut ALOT more than that if you also reduce the number of control panels and control strip modules that are active. With VM off, 384MB ram, and my first full install of 9.0, the system used anywhere from 40 to 65MB of ram. After paring things down to what I used on OS 8.6, I was able to get it down to between 21 and 28MB. Of course when I bumped the ram up to 896MB, and upgraded to 9.1, the system usage went back up to around 40MB or so. But then I did the same paring down process and got it back to about 35MB again.

And yes the disk cache setting went up automatically, but in OS 9.1, you can adjust it up OR down alot farther than you could in 9.0

HTH