Ideally, the page outs should be zero, but it also depends on how long your use your computer for between restarts. It means that 4GB of data from RAM had to be put on the hard drive because you ran out of memory. I would say 4GB of page outs is definitely a huge number. is that a sufficiently "huge number" or is "huge" more like 150 GB?
#Should i upgrade memory in imac how to
With a better sense of when it's clear more memory will make a difference, maybe we can help other Ach readers better decide how to spend limited upgrade dollars.Įxactly.
Memory is usually a cheap and easy upgrade, but as dotMacX's suggestion indicates, sometimes other upgrades may make more sense based on an individual's goals. And not to hijack the OP's thread, but I'd love to hear from those more knowledgeable how to better interpret the pageouts number as a guide to when you need more memory. If it's not a huge number, then you're not using up the RAM you already haveĪctually, this is a great question. Open up Activity Monitor, go to the Memory tab, and look at PageOuts. I suggest that you use utilities like iStat Menus to monitor ram usage to evaluate how tight ram usage is. Also creating new tabs in Safari may not be responsive and delay several seconds because of paging. Also launching apps is not as responsive because the HDD is paging. How exactly does paging affect OSX responsiveness? Just to give a few examples, usually open/save dialogs, print dialogs, font dialogs are not responsive and take a few seconds to load when the Ram is tight. But ever since I went to an iMac, I've found that 4GB is inappropriate for me, and I'm constantly baby sitting apps to quit them to avoid paging and/or restarting the Mac. I used to have 8GB on a hacintosh and it ran beautifully, extremely responsive. Basic apps like Safari alone can take up a lot of ram and cause paging easily. Not to mention background helpers and utilities. Not to mention if you dare to run VMware for Windows. You could typically have Mail, iTunes, iChat/Adium, Safari, Firefox, Word, Preview etc maybe Adobe apps running.
#Should i upgrade memory in imac mac
You might ask why? In Mac land it's common to keep applications running. There is a significant overall responsiveness boost in most cases. I'm a bit late but I would absolutely advice you to go to 8GB if you can.