View Full Version : Understanding ram usage
lowfat
09-21-2007, 09:22 AM
That is one thing I don't understand in Activity Monitor and iStat..
What does Wired, Active, Inactive, and Free all mean?
Pressure
09-21-2007, 03:23 PM
They are generally not important as such. Mac OS X is much better at handling memory than, say, Windows XP and Windows Vista.
What you should be looking at is how many Page Ins/Out you get.
If you get a large number of Page Outs it means you are swapping data to the hard drive, because you have run out of memory and that is something you want to avoid as it reduces overall performance.
the_new_guy
09-21-2007, 04:48 PM
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=50806