Activity Monitor Question

[TheMagicPirate]

Looking at my system memory in AM and I'm using 950/1024 MB

iTunes is eating quite a bit.

Anyway my question is regarding the 4 coloured 'types' of memory.

'Free' = Empty Space I assume
'Active' = RAM actually in use
Now these two I have a pretty good idea of what they mean. Its the other 2 I'm curious about.

'Wired' = Being used by the OS maybe?
'Inactive' = ? not a clue. Empty space being held by other programs just in case?

 

[J1234]

This:

Wired - Information can't be cached to disk, so stays in the RAM. The amount depends on what applications you are using.

Active - Information that is currently in RAM and being used.

Inactive memory - Information that is no longer being used and has been cached to disk, but it will remain in RAM until another application needs the space.

Free memory - Memory that isn't being used.

Basically what it is.

 

[electric ant]

Also check out your page in/page outs
if your page outs get to more than 1/2 your page ins, its probably an indication you need more ram for what youre doing or close down some apps. (page outs happen when your ram is full and the app writes tot he hard disk, which is faaar slower than ram.)

 

[Hamish]

Also, OS X doesn't use memory like windows, it trys to keep it as full as possible just in case it needs the data which makes it run faster, high ram usage doesn't usally mean you have a memory leak or programs are running inefficiently

 

[electric ant]

Hehe thats true, my virtual memory size is currently 17.9 GB !

 

[Deleted member 651465]

Also, OS X doesn't use memory like windows, it trys to keep it as full as possible just in case it needs the data which makes it run faster, high ram usage doesn't usally mean you have a memory leak or programs are running inefficiently

There was a nifty registry entry you could run via the red.edit on XP that "reclaimed" the memory used by Windows that had been open, and then closed.

It is nice having the OS do it all for you though.. runs like butter*