When your computer is running a bit slowly, how can you tell if getting more memory will help?
- Connect the external backup drive to the Mac. Restart the computer and boot into macOS Recovery mode. Hold down Command + R on your keyboard immediately after your Mac begins to restart. Continue holding both keys until you see the Apple logo or a spinning globe. Startup is complete when you see the Utilities window.
- In case you are recurrently seeing “Your computer is low on memory” popup despite having much more RAM than all your apps need, blame it on malicious code that cropped up on your Mac. This scenario won’t discontinue until you identify and remove the culprit.
If you run out of free memory then your computer will be forced to use some of your hard disk as memory, which is VERY SLOW because hard drives are much slower to access than your computer’s RAM. It’s not just a matter of saying ‘8 GB’ is enough because the amount of RAM you need will vary according to your Mac model and the programs you use. Adobe cs5 upgrade download. Here’s how to check if you have enough RAM.
How to check your Memory on a Mac
Gonzalo Martinez, an Apple repair specialist, responded: “On the upper left of your screen is an Apple logo. Click on that and go down to “About This Mac.” You’ll see six tabs, and you want to click on “Storage.” You’ll see the name of your drive, how much space is available, and the total size.”. Mende1's response will tell you how much physical RAM is installed To see the usae and allocation, use Activity Monitor (in Applications Utilities). Select the 'System Memory' tab at the bottom to see RAM usage.
With El Capitan Apple have introduced a very simple graph based on colours to let you know if you have enough RAM or not. Do this during the middle of using your computer for what you normally use it for. Don’t do this as soon as you start your computer as this won’t give a good indication of your normal usage. Better still, check it at various times over a few days.
- Go to your Applications/Utilities folder. (Click on your desktop so that the finder is active then hold down Apple-Shift-U, this will open your ‘utilities folder.)
- Open ‘Activity Monitor’ – it will probably be the top-most application in the Utilities Folder.
- Press Apple-1 to make sure that the main window of Utility Monitor is open.
- Click on the ‘System Memory’ tab at the bottom of the window. This will display a little graph with the memory pressure. It will look something like this:
If there is any red in the memory pressure you need more RAM. Red means your performance is taking a hit because your computer needs to use the disk drive for memory.
If the memory pressure is green you have enough memory (like the screenshot above).
If the memory pressure is yellow it may be worth monitoring over a few days to see if it goes into the red.
Checking your memory on older versions of Mac OS
On older versions of Mac OS the display looks more like this:
There are two important items to take note of ‘Free:’ and ‘Page outs:’
Free tells you how much free memory you currently have available to use – the higher the better. If you have no free memory you should get more RAM.
A Page out means your computer has run out of memory and had to use some of the Hard Disk instead of RAM. (This is the equivalent of your brain being too full so you have to write your thoughts down on paper to free up some head space) This DRAMATICALLY slows down your computer.
Tip: Page outs occur when your Mac has to write information from RAM to the hard drive (because RAM is full). Adding more RAM may reduce page outs.
Some Examples:
What Is My Imac Worth
Here’s a mac with plenty of RAM (12G) – lots of Free RAM (green) and zero Page outs.
Here’s a mac with just enough RAM (8G) – a relatively little Page out Count (339MB) and some free memory (green).
Here’s a Mac that needs more RAM (it only has 640M!) – note the High Page Out Count (1010524) even though it currently has some ‘free’ RAM.
This Mac definitely needs some more RAM! Practically no free memory AND High Page-out Count. (1GB!) Performance will be suffering badly. I would add at least another 4G Ram, maybe 8G more to bring it up to 12G.
In OSX Leopard rather than giving a ‘count’ of page in and page outs, it gives a size in GB of the amount of RAM that has been paged in or out. The numbers are smaller but the same principles apply.
In OSX Lion there is a new entry called ‘Swap Used’. (See the last picture above). This is a count of how much Disk Space your computer is using as RAM and it’s a good rough estimate of the minimum amount of extra RAM you need. Eg If your Swap used is 4G then get AT LEAST 4G more RAM.
Where to buy more RAM.
You can’t buy any RAM. It needs to be Apple compatible. It’s worth getting good quality RAM to avoid problems. Currently my 2 favourite places to buy RAM are Crucial.com or OWC Computing. My Mac mini has 16GB of Crucial RAM in it at the moment. I’m in Australia and it usually arrives in about a week. OWC might be the better option if you live in the USA.
Crucial
They have a memory lookup tool for all computers where you choose your model and it shows you exactly what memory you need. The memory chooser tool looks like this:
First choose ‘Apple’ where it says ‘Choose Manufacturer’
Secondly select your mac when it says ‘select product line’ (e.g. iMac or Macbook etc)
Finally select the exact model (e.g. Early 2011 i7 27″ iMac”)
It will then show you the options you can buy.
OWC – Macsales
Another reliable source of good Mac RAM is Other World Computing, also called macsales.com.
Why RAM affects your computer’s speed.
RAM in your computer is like the paper sitting on your desk. The information is easy and fast to access. Your Hard Disk is more like a filing cabinet, it takes a bit longer to retrieve information.
When your desk gets too cluttered you need to spend some time moving things in and out of the filing cabinet, which slows things down.
You don’t need to be able to store everything in your computers memory, it’s good to have a hard disk, but if you don’t have enough memory then your computer will need to access your hard disk too much and this can slow things down.
To quote from Apple:
Moving data from physical memory to disk is called paging out (or swapping out); moving data from disk to physical memory is called paging in (or swapping in)… Extended periods of paging activity reduce performance significantly; such activity is sometimes called disk thrashing.
How Much Memory Is Left On My Imac 2019
Matt Cone June 2, 2012 TutorialsMac
Do you know how much RAM is installed in your Mac? You should. RAM, or random access memory, stores the code and instructions for OS X and any applications open on your Mac. The more RAM you have, the more applications you can have open at once. Knowing how much RAM you have installed in your Mac is an important piece of information that could change how you use your computer.
How Much Will The Imac Pro Cost
Here’s how to check how much RAM you have installed:
- From the Apple menu, select About This Mac. The window shown below appears.
- The amount of memory installed in your computer is displayed.
All Macs being sold today have at least 2 gigabytes (GB) of memory installed. If you need more RAM in your Mac, you can upgrade it - unless you own a MacBook Air. (The RAM modules in the MacBook Air are not replaceable.) See the links at the end of this article for more information.
Checking Memory Slots on Mac OS 10.7 or Later
If you have Mac OS 10.7 or later, you can see how the memory slots in your computer are currently being utilized. Many Macs have two memory slots, and although Apple recommends that you always have two memory modules of the same size installed, there can be discrepancies.
Here’s how to check your Mac’s memory slots on Mac OS 10.7 or later:
- From the Apple menu, select About This Mac.
- Click More Info. The About This Mac window appears.
- Click Memory. The window shown below appears.
Use the information in this window to determine how many memory modules - and what size memory modules - are currently installed on your computer. You can click the Memory Upgrade Instructions link to access Apple’s guides for replacing the memory modules in your computer.
Help! My Mac is Always Out of Memory
If your Mac always seems to be running out of memory, you probably need to upgrade the RAM. You can never have enough! If you own a newer iMac, Mac Mini, or MacBook Pro that you purchased in 2011 or later, we recommend that you purchase these RAM modules for a total of 8 GB of RAM - enough memory for all but the most professional users. Users with other models of Macs can find inexpensive memory modules here.
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