My Macbook is a Resource Hog

skiba

skiba

skiba

Soldato
Joined
27 Aug 2004
Posts
2,955
Location
Singapore ExPat
Gents, is there an equivalent to msconfig on the Mac? I have 1gb in my macbook but it's nearly always used all the memory available (see top output below). Is there anything I can turn off as standard to prevent this? Thanks

Code: 
PhysMem:   812M wired,  131M active, 68.8M inactive, 1013M used, 10.5M free
 
Isn't it supposed to use the RAM it's given? The kernel task process tends to hog a lot of memory but it is easily relinquished. Are there any specific processes you see that're using more memory than you think they should be using?
 
That's the thing, i'm not sure what should be running as i've only been using OSX for a few days. I know in XP there was things you would turn off straight away, just wondering if there's anything similar I can do here. You may well be right though that using all the resource is expected behaviour...
 
It's supposed to be using all the RAM. What's the point in loading up with a GIG of Ram and NOT using it? It'll most likely be cached memory, i.e stuff it's used recently it'll keep about just incase you need it again.
 
whitecrook said:
It's supposed to be using all the RAM. What's the point in loading up with a GIG of Ram and NOT using it? It'll most likely be cached memory, i.e stuff it's used recently it'll keep about just incase you need it again.
Click to expand...


^^^

Nothing wrong there :)
 
That's how Mac OS X is designed. It uses any available memory it can to speed things up. What's the point of it sitting there like it does in Windows XP.

Microsoft has done the same thing now with Vista - out of my 2Gb and just using IE7, I have 3Mb free!
 
Think of memory management through the following horrible analogy.

There is an artist working on a statue. To complete his sculpture he is going to need a lot of different tools; hammers, chisels, brushes, sanding blocks, etc. He can hold some of them himself while he's using them but he can't hold them all at once since there are so many. To help him he hires an assistant. When he needs a tool he asks the assistant to give it to him. When the artist is done with a tool he gives it back to the assistant. The assistant can hold a lot more tools than the sculptor but he can only hold so many tools at once as well. Though he can hold more than the sculptor he can't hold them all. The ones that he can't hold are placed on a shelf nearby. It's fastest for the artist to use the tool already in hand. After than it's next fastest to get one from the assistant's hand. It's slowest when the assistant has to get one off the shelf then hand it to the artist. If the assistant goes to give a tool to the sculptor he gets an old one in return usually. If this doesn't get used before he needs to get another tool he'll put it back on the shelf to make space for more recently used tools.

In this horrific analogy we see that the processor/processor cache is the artist and his hand. The assistant is system memory. The shelf is hard disk. The assistant will try to hold as many tools as possible because it makes it faster for the artist. In the same way your system memory manager should try to hold as much data as possible because it makes it faster for the CPU to access that than if it had to come from the hard disk.
 
Thanks :) I understand how processor caching/paging/swapping all work but i've never seen that behaviour before whereby it consumes all available memory (we have 2,800 *nix boxes at work). Still, it makes sense and it still runs perfectly so I'm happy :)
 
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