[CS-FSLUG] Macs and Memory

[Alan Trick]

I don't know much about macs and their memory usage so take this with a
grain of salt. What surprises me the most is the amount that is eaten up
by the OS. Having an independent video card would definitely help. The
main difference is that independent cards have their own memory, as it
is, video accelerated stuff (which is used all over the place on OSX,
even to render windows and such) might be taxing on your memory
(although I wouldn't think that it would be that bad).

Alan Trick

On Mon, 2006-12-18 at 00:08 -0700, Nathan T. wrote:
> Hi CS List
> 
> I've been using the Activity Monitor application in OS X to try and  
> figure out why my Mac Mini was running slow, and as it turns out  
> Safari, FireFox, iTunes and iPhoto each use massive amounts of the  
> memory. I've been watching the Activity Monitor application, and  
> while the processor does top out  frequently enough, the one thing  
> that is consistently low is the memory. When nothing is running but  
> the OS there is only about 220MB of Ram free, that's about 10% of the  
> actual ram that's in this thing, and when I start running any of the  
> above programs it may take a few minutes, but eventually they reduce  
> the available memory to less than 100MB.
> 
> I'd like some comments on what to do about this, if I upgrade the ram  
> to 2GB would it be worth the large investment (1GB cost me ~$250CAD).  
> Or should I simply wait and get a more powerful core Duo Mini with  
> 2GB of ram some time next year? If I get a new one should I really  
> save up and get something with 4GB of ram?
> 
> Oh, and could anyone tell me how big of a difference there is on a  
> Mac when it has a independent video card as compared to an integrated  
> one?
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Nathan T.
> 
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