[herbert68]

My Pismo 400 is already short on breath, more RAM is on the way. Virtual Memory makes my PowerBook very sluggish. And today (as I could not open even Outlook Express) I realized that OS 9.04 takes 51 Megs of RAM! Is this normal?

[wlonh]

more or less, yes... and OS X will not let up on you in the RAM department either

such is life

[SillyPooh]

Same thing here, exactly 55.7Mb of ram... but I've got Virtual Mem off. What else can I say... too bad!

[Goggles]

What are you folks running that takes that much RAM? I don't have a Pismo but I do have a 3400c with only 48MB of RAM and OS 9.0.4 takes up only 20MB with Virtual Memory on. I don't find it getting sluggish until I load my PB up with 4 or 5 apps. Judicious use of Extensions and Control Panels can go a long way towards reducing overall system resources.

[herbert68]

I run NOTHING but the OS when my PB needs 51 Megs of RAM with VM off! With VM on RAM usage drops to 34 Megs. I still believe this is WAY too much!!! What gives?

[disectamac]

customization in general is usually the main source of RAM hogging. That is of course aside from too many extensions etc which I have feeling isn't your problem in particular.
everything from the customized icons, window appearance, custom sounds, desktop patterns, etc....etc.....etc........ RAM hoggers.
I don't know about the Pismo be it I don't own one, but this is an OS thing more than it is a PB thing.

[suhail]

My Pismo runs fine with VM on! Hmmm....Do a software update to get the multimedia updater which solves skipping on sound and video when VM is on.

VM should only add 1MB to the total hardware RAM you have (which is the default), if you increase that amount you may notice performance degredation, especially if you have 64MB of RAM.

If you only have 64MB RAM then I highly advice a 128MB RAM upgrade, but you should still have VM on(1MB of VM only).

VM will free RAM space when you send an application to the background, it works very similar to RamDoubler.

[disectamac]

Personally I've never experienced any speed decrease with VM on, as Suhail mentions so long as you ..."only add 1MB to the total hardware RAM you have (which is the default)..."
With some exceptions, those of course being some software which recommends VM off for optimal performance, but I only have 1 or 2 of those exceptions which I seldom use and work with VM on anyway.

The OS takes awesome advantage of VM when it is on. It also saves your butt when you're working with files as spacious as the Atlantic.
Try running your PB with VM for a couple of days, you won't be dissapointed.

[jaguarandi]

Don't know about the Pismo (mine isn't here yet), but as far as the iBook or my old 2300 were concerned, VM had one serious drawback: battery life. I consistently experienced less battery life (sometimes by as much as an hour on my iBook) with VM on; the extra HD work spinning up and down was the likely culprit.

You can never have too much RAM. I have every intention of upgrading my Pismo from 64 MB to 320 MB as soon as it arrives =)

/jaguarandi

[PCTek]

Most people turn VM on and set it to one meg above their physical memory. This allows the OS to use the features of VM without actually "using" VM. Takes my usage down a lot.

It helps. trust me.

[wlonh]

my standard remark: "VM blows chunks, buy more RAM"

[Wagnerite]

16mb on my 1400 (333/1mb sonnet)

[tooki]

Originally posted by wlonh:
my standard remark: "VM blows chunks, buy more RAM"

I concur. All my DVD audio sync problems went away when I turned off VM, and it's noticably snappier. (On a 400MHz Pismo)

tooki

[iBorg]

Gotta concur with wlonh on this! With memory as cheap as it is, why spend the bucks on a quality laptop, and then not buy extra ram? It's a fact of life that apps are requiring increasingly more ram, so get used to it, and buy it!

I added 256MB ram to the stock 128 in my Pismo 500 (total 384MB!) for only $189 (http://www.memorytogo.com) and its the best $$ you can spend on a quality laptop! Hell, the sales tax I saved by buying by mail was more than that! I was a little leary of buying generic memory, but I got a lifetime warranty, and it's been working flawlessly!

[Don Pickett]

I have 256 meg in my Pismo AND run with VM on, set to one more meg than I have (257 megs total). Don't really have a logical answer for this, other than I like seeing the OS take 39 megs instead of 50ish.

I echo the comment: there is no substitute for cubic inches, er, RAM. I would say that 128 megs is a minimum these days, and 256 is much better.

Don

[disectamac]

Poker Game Vote:

VM off:
Call......what do you have.....well 1 administrator,1 moderator, and a couple of members.
VM on:
disectamac: "um...uh....I'm folding, you win, VM off it is.

[wlonh]

i've read practically every bit of info on VM and the main argument seems to be that VM affords a user 'better memory management'

yeah, ok... whatever, i haven't seen it. relatedly, the best way i've found to reduce memory fragmentation is to set the Remote Access control panel to NOT allow TCP/IP applications to 'connect automatically' and to UNCHECK the 'Load only when needed' box in the TCP/IP control panel and always launch all your TCP/IP app's before non-TCP/IP using app's AND quit them in a 'last launched, first quit' process (i.e., quit them in reverse order of their launching) and if the system heap does not come 'clean' you can launch Disk First Aid and tell it to 'Repair' and you can then abort the scan or let it finish... it will quit all processes including the Finder and when you quit DFA, your system heap should be reset WITHOUT a restart.

i love MacOS so do not get me wrong but please! better memory management? not until MacOS X...

and you can bet you will need more RAM for it too, you think 50+ is a lot... think 64M just to boot MacOS X, i may be slightly overstating this but i have been told this more or less from people who should know

oh, and if you have not noticed some sort of irregularity in performance however small or minor when using VM, then i suggest you are not paying close attention to the way your Mac behaves... i'd be willing to bet that your SoundSet does not work right using VM, just for a small example... if you use VM and a MacOS SoundSet you won't hear all of its sounds when you scroll down the Apple Menu for example, you will hear every other sound that is supposed to be there as you scroll, at best, every other sound will be heard... i'm willing to bet on it as every Mac i've ever used behaves that way with VM on: iMac/iBook/PB/G3/G4, you name it... and if VM messes with something so seemingly simple as the MacOS soundset, what else does it fail to do with any integrity and speed? i have zero confidence in the smoke and mirrors of VIRTUAL memory

[This message has been edited by wlonh (edited 06-04-2000).]

[rambo47]

On a 292MHz WallStreet OS 9.0.4 uses 42.8 MB RAM. If I turn on virtual memory (which sucks) the OS usage drops to 20.4 MB. I've got extensions up the ying-yang but no USB. I'm looking to upgrade my RAM from the present 192 MB to at least 348 MB, maybe 512 MB. Any estimates on the effect of 348 MB RAM on my battery life?

------------------
iDisk: rambo47
"There is no spoon."

[Simon Kornblith]

Well, I think I can say that my OS takes up much more RAM with VM than many people's OSes without VM. I have VM on on my G4 450. The system takes a a whooping 46.2 MEGS!!!!

------------------
Simon Kornblith
Computer Consultant
Programmer

[wlonh]

good lord, Simon! that does seem unusual, any particular circumstances we should know about your Mac that makes it chew so much candy?

[Simon Kornblith]

I know 8MB of it is disk cache, and I have 256MB so its not a big deal, but I don't know about anything really special about my system.

------------------
Simon Kornblith
Computer Consultant
Programmer

[bipto]

OK, guys, RAM is cheap and OS 9 rocks. My system on a Bronze 400 takes 60.4 MB with VM off. Over on ramseeker.com, it says 64MB of RAM costs about $50-60. Way I figure, that's a small price to pay for such an excellent computing experience.

------------------
b r i a n b r o w n
eWeasel.net

[anly]

Yup, with 256MB RAM running VPC and other apps still isn't quite enough!! Man OS 9 uses almost 60MB. I think I have to invest in another 256MB RAM soon!!

FirewirePB 400MHZ 256MB

[fire2000]

My 500mhz PB Firewire is using 58.4Megs right now, because VM blows and I dont like to do anything to slow down my computer. My advice though don't risk wasting your money, buy good memory, I've seen lots of bad chips, and then about all you can do is through it in the trash. Those crapy chips that have the lifetime warrany, what good does that do you if the company is gone in six months? Buy the good stuff, Lifetime is a really good one, kinda pricy though.
Trevor

Something that's been overlooked by the VM supporters in this forum: If you have 192 MB of RAM and turn on VM to 1 MB larger your VM swap file is 193 MB of disk space NOT 1Mb of disk space. Performance will degrade unless you religiously defragment your hard disk . Just think if you had even larger amounts of RAM.

Best just pony up for more RAM and turn of VM.

My Pismo 500 mhz has the OS talking up 46 MB of ram. That's with VM memory turned on! Granted I have 256 MB of ram and I was going to get 512 MB but they were out of the chips the day I picked up laptop before I went on vacation. I do a lot of graphics and some digital video work on the road so I need performace dammit. The OS should NOT take up that much as far as I'm concerned. OS X take me away....

[Robb]

I've got a Wallstreet PB with 192MB of RAM, VM is on, RAM cache is about 6 megs. In addition it's connected to a TCP/IP network (AppleTalk is on also) and I've got several goofy apps that run in the background.

OS 9.0.4 checks in at 32 MB.

RAM is cheap, but I've yet to see a HUGE speed increase when turning VM off. Until I run into an app that really gets chewed up by VM, I'm leaving it on.

Robb

VM on allows Power Mac native applications to use less system RAM. Have you ever done a "Get Info" on something like Netscape? It says that it will use 6778K less RAM with VM on. Now, multipy that by a few more applications, and you're talking serious usage!
I have 256 RAM in my G4, and currently with VM off, System takes up 65M. With it on, it usually doesn't climb above 40.
Any "performance degredation" is minimal at best, with it on. Since I have to use a good number of programs like Netscape, Photoshop, Illustrator and often Virtual PC all at the same time, VM on allows me to run them all! If I turned it off, no way jose!

As with everything, YMMV, but 9 was designed to run with it on, and RAM usage shows this.

It is interesting to note that nobody has taken the time to determine what VM is on the MacOS. Essentially, VM on is only file mapping. That is, contents of memory are mapped to files in a fashion to reduce real memory requirements. Thus a system booted with VM off with the system area taking 51 megabytes, and booted with VM on and the system area taking 34 megabytes, the difference is areas that would normally occupy real memory are now file mapped (in place to existing files) or to the swap file. When those areas are needed they are brought into real memory, but since much of that is in libraries or portions of running load modules, those parts simply stay out of real memory unless needed.

Further, that is why the overhead of VM on screws up movie playing, sound playing, video streaming, audio streaming, games, communciations, and mouse tracking. The MacOS determines if it needs a part of virtual memory (not in real) by a page fault. The page fault is likely handled in a serial fashion, locking out most if not all other operations, until resolved.

In MacOS X (and other UNIX operating systems), virtual memory is handled significantly better and you can essentially run the same (on or off...say, can VM be turned off in MacOS X?)

Ken Kashmarek

One other thing that is often overlooked is that the more memory you have, the more memory the system will take. For example, more memory means more page tables and the file system cache size is a function of memory available.

Hey, wait a darn minute...

Yes VM does suck, but only if your doing High-Quality Sound/Graphics/Video etc. Lets not forget that this is a vital function for dedicated macs that don't need to do all of that (not to mention to the people who can't afford to buy GIGs of RAM for all of their macs).
My Archive Mac (Pmac6100AV w/AppleIIColorMonitor --heehee-- running 7.6.1 w/RamDoubler8!) had NO real ram except the 8Megs soldered to the mother board, yet It burns CDs, catalogs, views picts,plays mp3s (SoundApp) and Movies FULL SCREEN (OK, I added 2 x 4meg chips for this, and its plays at 512ppi wide in NTSC color, but still).

My point is VM has saved my trusty old 6100 from the closet!!!

[wlonh]

and my point is that VM makes my 6200 run like molasses in December at Point Barrow, Alaska... and it is maxxed on RAM...

RAM is cheap, buy more and your Mac will love you and it will perform better (unless you have a bunch already), guaranteed

[tycheung]

I have VM on with my PowerCenter Pro 210, 128 megs of RAM, and the thing still runs pretty fast - I can play Unreal Tournament pretty smoothly on it, albeit at 640x480 screen res (which is OK for me in my book), with an ATI XClaim VR128 card. MP3's play smoothly, etc. The only trouble that I have is running Sorensen encoded QuickTime Movies that greater than 480x312 in size - up to that, it is all OK. Sys. 9.0.4 takes from 20-30 mb of RAM (starts out at about 20, goes up to 30 by the end of the day). The thing doesn't have a DVD drive so I can't vouch for DVDs.

The swap file should in theory be about 129 megs in size, but since I have a 9 gb (and most new mac models have 6 or 12 gb drives), you don't really have to worry THAT much about fragmentation (I hope).


Also, with the newer Mac models, i.e. Pismo, iBook, iMac, Yosemite and Sawtooth, the ROM file loads in to RAM, so that will add about 4-5 megs of RAM usage.

[tycheung]

I have VM on with my PowerCenter Pro 210, 128 megs of RAM, and the thing still runs pretty fast - I can play Unreal Tournament pretty smoothly on it, albeit at 640x480 screen res (which is OK for me in my book), with an ATI XClaim VR128 card. MP3's play smoothly, etc. The only trouble that I have is running Sorensen encoded QuickTime Movies that greater than 480x312 in size - up to that, it is all OK. Sys. 9.0.4 takes from 20-30 mb of RAM (starts out at about 20, goes up to 30 by the end of the day). The thing doesn't have a DVD drive so I can't vouch for DVDs.

The swap file should in theory be about 129 megs in size, but since I have a 9 gb (and most new mac models have 6 or 12 gb drives), you don't really have to worry THAT much about fragmentation (I hope).


Also, with the newer Mac models, i.e. Pismo, iBook, iMac, Yosemite and Sawtooth, the ROM file loads in to RAM, so that will add about 4-5 megs of RAM usage.

Nowadays, though, 128 megs of RAM should be the min. if you are running Mac OS 8.6 or higher, just because of the increased RAM footprint of the system and the newer apps. If you are running Sys 7.6.1, then 32 megs should be ok (ahh, for the good ol' days. What are they writing the code with nowadays that takes up so much RAM?)