Using all 32 GB of RAM?

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Level 1

45 points

Using all 32 GB of RAM?

Hello!
A friend of mine has bought a dual 2.8 GHz Quad-Core Mac Pro and expanded it to 32 GB of RAM.
Whatever the reason: After a few days of work he has to reboot the machine because all memory being used and frequent activity on the HDD. My point was that it´s good that Mac OS 10.5.8 uses all available RAM, but he says he has to restart the machine because of some 2 MB large disk writes/reads every now and then. Any thought about what´s happening? Is this normal after a few days of work?

Regards

MacBook Pro 17" 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo 4 GB RAM GeForce 8600M GT 512 MB HDD 200 GB, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 1st gen iPod shuffle 512 MB 2nd gen blue iPod nano 4 GB 30" Cinema Display

Posted on Apr 22, 2010 9:01 AM

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Answer 1

pink_snow Author

Level 1

45 points

Apr 22, 2010 10:03 AM in response to pink_snow

To clarify: This swap situation happens without any open applications at all.

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Answer 2

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Apr 22, 2010 10:18 AM in response to pink_snow

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1342

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107918

I can't tell you or them what or why, or if it really is using all memory, other than to say 10.6 seems to be much worse.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/404/kb404440.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/OptimizingPhotoshop-Intro.html
http://www.macgurus.com/guides/photoshopguide.php

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Answer 3

pink_snow Author

Level 1

45 points

Apr 22, 2010 10:42 AM in response to The hatter

Interesting. I don´t know which applications he´s using except for Parallels.
I´ve had an iMac with 2 GB of RAM and now this MacBook Pro and never found it as a problem. I usually reboot my machine everyday so all the RAM is almost never used. Perhaps the HDD sound of a Mac Pro appears to be more annoying or the pageouts become very frequent or large with 32 GB of RAM. The pageouts will be even more frequent with 10.6?

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Answer 4

May 14, 2010 1:37 AM in response to pink_snow

I remember reading something on the Developer site after I got my 2008 Mac Pro that the Buffered ram actually slows down the mac based on the configuration of the ram, ram type, make, mix and matching different sized pairs, ect. If I remember right, VRam doesn't used the physical ram, it uses the Hard Drive in a hidden folder named Temp. Did he do a PRam reset recently?
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.6/en/26871.html

PRam stores many settings and after a wile it needs to be reset so that the old settings can be replaced.

Its been my experience that after a lot of hours of video work, and other terrible things I do to this mac, the PRam needs to be reset and I force the periodic daily weekly monthly scripts to run in terminal. I also periodically unplug it to reset the power management. I ran Parallels for a little bit but I didn't like how it allocated memory and CPU usage. I switched to VMware and my Macs been happier.

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