How much RAM is enough?

[Noto]

Two years ago, the fastest mac wasnt half the speed of the current Macs.  Two years ago, standard HD's were smaller too.

Things change.

I remember my first PC.  50MHz processor, 200MB HD, and 8MB Ram.  I couldn't run anything past Windows 95 due to the lack of a math co-processor.  Also, it would take about 10 minutes to boot up since most of the HD was taken up by the OS itself.  It only contained 3 other programs.  

.::|N| Noto

[|MP|Buccaneer]

My first Mac was a whole 8Mhz machine that maxed out at 4MB of RAM and had a HUGE 20MB hard drive that we thought we'd never fill (no shit, we really didn't think we could fill it).

[|MP|Nomad]

I agree with Bucc.  RAM for computers is like water for athletes, you can never get enough.  I have 2 GB RAM in my new 15" powerbook and it runs soooo smooth while I have so many apps running in the background.  And as Martin said, OS X works differently with RAM than as OS 9 did.  It auto allocates the RAM to all the apps running, with the most amount of RAM allocated to the foremost active app your working with, to run smoother.  Whereas in OS 9, you can set it manually.  Its really a matter of opinion, OS X does the work for you, but you can't control it and OS 9 you can control but you have to put in the work.

[[OZ] Martin]

Hi All

OK I reckon we should all:

Ignore pagein, pageouts when running OS X. It seems that even with heaps of ram you can't stop them as the OS is designed to use all the ram anyway.

Buy as much ram as you can afford. This has been good advice for years.

BTW that is not an excuse to put 16GBs in your Duallie G5's guys.

:-)

Martin

[BFG]

Tis true, i even remember Apple saying how differently osx used ram... that the system was designed to all the ram as much as possible! The More RAM the merrier, if you can afford it...

Speaking of Ram. I found out last night that my G4 Quicksilver which should have PC133 in it infact came preloaded with PC100...... Cheers apple i really appreciate it i don't think

[BTs_GhostSniper]

I wasted quite a bit of money???  I paid $129 for each Gigabite of RAM....that included shipping.  So, I spent a total of $258 for 2.5GB of RAM (it came with 512k RAM).  Plus, I do a LOT of image editing in Photoshop for work (as we don't have a Macintosh at work, and I REFUSE to work on Photoshop on a PC), so I really do use the RAM....this G5 screams with 2.5GB.

You would see a major difference in photoshop if you were working on a psd thats 200megs with dozens of layers, paths and some crazy masks...  If your just cleaning up digital pictures you won't see any noticeable difference.  So yes i'd say that you did waste money on 2 "extra" gigs of ram, but don't worry gs thats still better than wasting money on an imac.

I do plenty of freelance webdesign work in my spare time on my g5, and extra ram is essential.
Try using photoshop, dreamweaver, freehand, transmit, cpp, firebird & IE while leaving background programs running, such as peak 4, or even mencoder for kicks. Thats when you notice more than 768megs of ram.
I also use an edit station at work which is a dual 1.25ghz g4 with only 768megs of ram. And work with final cut on projects  that are 10gigs+ of uncompressed dv, and can still maintain great speeds and response.

I'd say for general computer use 1gig is a good ceiling, however if your going to put your computer to the limit on a daily basis buying more won't hurt.

Snipe, an imac is the ford mustang of macs, its for secretaries.

As a matter of fact, I do work with some really huge files in Photoshop.  The work I'm doing for the dealership includes creating advertisments such as posters and brochures and I'm normally playing around with pictures that are 1200 to 2400 dpi.  I do this stuff at home because I just don't have enough time (or a Mac) to do it at work with all the Fleet Sales that I do.

And nice jab at the Mustang there.....but just remember, it's the only game left in town now that General Motors stopped production on the Firebird and Camaro.  Find me another car that gives you rear-wheel drive, a V-8, is made in America, and can be sold for UNDER $20k.  And the All-New 2005 Mustang is gonna knock your socks off.

[BFG]

talking of using RAM FCP loves the stuff. i just finnished authoring a DVD. During editing the raw DV folders we were cutting from came in at just over 120GB... There is quite a difference cutting on a duel G5 with 3Gigs of RAM and cutting on a duel G4 with 512Mb RAM... Final cut just loves memory.. i think it eats it for breakfast, lunch and tea..

.. although im sure it liked the g5 processors as well

[Jeb]

As a matter of fact, I do work with some really huge files in Photoshop.  The work I'm doing for the dealership includes creating advertisments such as posters and brochures and I'm normally playing around with pictures that are 1200 to 2400 dpi.  I do this stuff at home because I just don't have enough time (or a Mac) to do it at work with all the Fleet Sales that I do.

And nice jab at the Mustang there.....but just remember, it's the only game left in town now that General Motors stopped production on the Firebird and Camaro.  Find me another car that gives you rear-wheel drive, a V-8, is made in America, and can be sold for UNDER $20k.  And the All-New 2005 Mustang is gonna knock your socks off.

If your doing anything for print using 1200 or 2400dpi your crazy, and you shouldn't be using photoshop for any type of layout. Use a vector based program for that.
As for the difference between photoshop on mac or pc, there is hardly any (in contrast to something like flash mx).

and GS, you should know that it not a jab, its the truth. It was an economy sports car to begin with. A 60s mustang looks like the purple minivan that spaz drives in comparison to something like a GTO.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

It was an economy sports car to begin with. A 60s mustang looks like the purple minivan that spaz drives in comparison to something like a GTO.

Now you've just crossed the line Jeb.  A '65 Mustang convertable is a beautiful machine.  The '68 and '69 Mustangs made a GTO look like a Buick.









You've been smoking too much of Fassst's stash Jeb.  The Mustang didn't become an "economy" sports car until the "Mustang II", which most Mustang owners refuse to recognize as ever existing.

How you can call cars that ran with 302 BOSS, 351 Clevelands, and up to 429's economy is beyond me.  They may not has cost as much as a 'vette, but they weren't competing with 'vette's either.  The T-Bird and later the AC Cobra (which crushes a 'vette) were made to compete with it.

[11.Dr.5150]

Are there any good programs to test the speed of your computer? Like benchmarking?

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Haxial has a benchmark program for free, and there was one on the web as well (Jeb or Ace may remember the URL for it, I don't right now).

Only problem with most benchmarking apps for Mac is they don't take advantage of dual processors.  So a dual 1GHz will test at the same speed as a single 1GHz, all other things being equal.

The web site was cool, because you could track your mac against others of the same type, or against other people you know (which is how I know my iBook scored better than Ace's powerbook, though just, and it is 300MHz faster) =D.

[Ace]

Haxial has a benchmark program for free, and there was one on the web as well (Jeb or Ace may remember the URL for it, I don't right now).

Only problem with most benchmarking apps for Mac is they don't take advantage of dual processors.  So a dual 1GHz will test at the same speed as a single 1GHz, all other things being equal.

The web site was cool, because you could track your mac against others of the same type, or against other people you know (which is how I know my iBook scored better than Ace's powerbook, though just, and it is 300MHz faster) =D.

XBench

By far the best Mac benchmarking program I have seen.

[11.Dr.5150]

What does everyone score on Xbench?

[.vooDoo.]

I use xbench to get this data, can anyone decipher this for me:


Results   99.97   
   System Info      
      Xbench Version      1.1.3
      System Version      10.3.1 (7C107)
      Physical RAM      512 MB
      Model      PowerBook3,5
      Processor      PowerPC G4 @ 1.00 GHz
         Version      7455 (Apollo) v3.3
         L1 Cache      32K (instruction), 32K (data)
         L2 Cache      256K @ 1.00 GHz
         L3 Cache      1024K @ 201 MHz
         Bus Frequency      134 MHz
      Video Card      ATY,RV250M9
      Drive Type      FUJITSU MHS2060AT
   CPU Test   120.63   
      GCD Loop   116.38   4.54 Mops/sec
      Floating Point Basic   122.53   443.12 Mflop/sec
      AltiVec Basic   122.42   3.56 Gflop/sec
      vecLib FFT   123.87   1.92 Gflop/sec
      Floating Point Library   118.26   4.73 Mops/sec
   Thread Test   87.35   
      Computation   63.65   859.31 Kops/sec, 4 threads
      Lock Contention   139.18   1.75 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
   Memory Test   99.21   
      System   101.77   
         Allocate   647.49   422.36 Kalloc/sec
         Fill   76.52   609.11 MB/sec
         Copy   67.27   336.35 MB/sec
      Stream   96.77   
         Copy   93.36   682.45 MB/sec [altivec]
         Scale   94.14   694.76 MB/sec [altivec]
         Add   98.59   630.95 MB/sec [altivec]
         Triad   101.46   619.93 MB/sec [altivec]
   Quartz Graphics Test   143.93   
      Line   116.32   2.96 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
      Rectangle   139.30   9.80 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
      Circle   140.58   3.24 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
      Bezier   129.29   1.40 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
      Text   242.94   3.96 Kchars/sec
   OpenGL Graphics Test   89.53   
      Spinning Squares   89.53   62.65 frames/sec
   User Interface Test   196.92   
      Elements   196.92   63.34 refresh/sec
   Disk Test   58.80   
      Sequential   61.94   
         Uncached Write   62.78   26.17 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   48.94   20.04 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   96.65   15.30 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   55.95   22.61 MB/sec [256K blocks]
      Random   55.97   
         Uncached Write   54.90   0.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   51.86   11.70 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   58.43   0.39 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   59.33   12.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Its all german to me. btw: This is a powerbook g4 with 512ram.

[Ace]

and GS, you should know that it not a jab, its the truth. It was an economy sports car to begin with. A 60s mustang looks like the purple minivan that spaz drives in comparison to something like a GTO.

If Mustangs actually looked like minivans, I'm sure you would be all over them Jewb. Short of a nice dualie, how else are you going to haul around the rolling jelly donuts you call lady friends? Even if you managed to squeeze on of your woman's fat rolls in the Mustang, I don't see how you could drive with the shift knob permanently pushed over in the neutral spot between first and second.

[11.Dr.5150]

I scored 194.17 with a Dual 2 G5 runnig 512 RAM. I would like to see what others with about the same computer as me are running.

Results   194.17   
   System Info      
      Xbench Version      1.1.3
      System Version      10.3.2 (7D24)
      Physical RAM      512 MB
      Model      PowerMac7,2
      Processor      PowerPC 970x2 @ 2.00 GHz
         L1 Cache      64K (instruction), 32K (data)
         L2 Cache      512K @ 2.00 GHz
         Bus Frequency      1 GHz
      Video Card      ATY,RV350
      Drive Type      Maxtor 6Y160M0
   CPU Test   137.31   
      GCD Loop   99.05   3.87 Mops/sec
      Floating Point Basic   204.99   741.33 Mflop/sec
      AltiVec Basic   88.14   2.56 Gflop/sec
      vecLib FFT   141.97   2.20 Gflop/sec
      Floating Point Library   327.69   13.12 Mops/sec
   Thread Test   188.84   
      Computation   133.56   1.80 Mops/sec, 4 threads
      Lock Contention   322.15   4.04 Mlocks/sec, 4 threads
   Memory Test   322.74   
      System   347.82   
         Allocate   754.06   491.87 Kalloc/sec
         Fill   306.62   2440.71 MB/sec
         Copy   247.67   1238.37 MB/sec
      Stream   301.03   
         Copy   253.86   1855.73 MB/sec [G5]
         Scale   263.83   1947.08 MB/sec [G5]
         Add   351.72   2250.99 MB/sec [G5]
         Triad   368.30   2250.34 MB/sec [G5]
   Quartz Graphics Test   246.27   
      Line   256.57   6.53 Klines/sec [50% alpha]
      Rectangle   221.48   15.58 Krects/sec [50% alpha]
      Circle   218.38   5.03 Kcircles/sec [50% alpha]
      Bezier   228.08   2.48 Kbeziers/sec [50% alpha]
      Text   341.70   5.57 Kchars/sec
   OpenGL Graphics Test   168.83   
      Spinning Squares   168.83   118.15 frames/sec
   User Interface Test   322.42   
      Elements   322.42   103.71 refresh/sec
   Disk Test   137.19   
      Sequential   141.41   
         Uncached Write   163.72   68.24 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   133.58   54.70 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   135.14   21.39 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   137.13   55.41 MB/sec [256K blocks]
      Random   133.21   
         Uncached Write   160.93   2.41 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Write   182.70   41.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]
         Uncached Read   99.67   0.66 MB/sec [4K blocks]
         Uncached Read   120.38   24.77 MB/sec [256K blocks]

[KoS.Rebel]

Some1 tell me what it means if i have 0 page outs? Im gettin lots of pageins but 0 pageouts. Does this mean im not sending/uploading anything?

[BTs_GhostSniper]

I scored 153.86 with a Single 1.8GHz G5 with 2.5GB RAM.

[|MP|Buccaneer]

Few notes here.

Did some checking on |MP|Server 2, which has been running RvS as a server.

It's been up for 10 days now, running RvS often, and has only had a little over 4000 page outs.  This is a very good thing.

RvS with 15 players on was also using between 70% and 87% of the CPU.  Never peaking out like Ghost Recon had.  It was also using 217MB or RAM and just under 400MB of VM.

MP Server 2 has been the second best host on GR that I know of (Ace's Dual G5 on his 10MBs connection kicking it's ass of course).

Other things.  

Voo, I'll try to explain what the results mean as I go through these, and you can apply them to yours.

First, the numbers themselves mean little.  They tell you how fast your computer is, but you need to put it in context.  You need to compare your numbers to those of other machines.

I just ran xBench on two machines here.  They are close to the same spec, though one is a 933 with 2MB L3, and the other is a dual 867 with 1MB L3.  

Over all scores were:
867 - 121
933 - 114
Voo - 100
*Makes sense that the scores are close, and that while having a faster processor, Voo's is in 3rd.

CPU Test:
867 - 107
933 - 115
Voo - 120.63
* This relates right to MHz, though cashe make a little difference too.  Notice it doesn't really take the dual CPU into account here.
*The numbers it gives here are how many millions (or billions) of operations per second your processor runs.  Along with break downs of different operations.

Thread Test
867 - 120.31
933 - 83.41
Voo - 87.35
*Now one of the two tests takes into account multiple processors, which is why the 867 moves up.

Memory Test
867 - 136
933 - 132
Voo - 99
*Since the BUS speeds and RAM speeds are very close on mine, this result is also very close.  Voo's laptop using slower RAM gets worse marks on this.

Quartz Graphics Test
867 - 135
933 - 125
Voo - 144
*This test measures how well your video card does at drawing vector graphics using Quartz.  ATI's laptop video card beat the GeForce4MX's.
*The second generation GeForce4MX with only 32MB beat out the older one with 64MB.  More on this later.

Open GL Graphics Test
867 - 95
933 - 101
Voo - 89.53
*This test measured how well each video card handled OpenGL instructions.  Here, the GeForce4's beat the ATI, and the extra MB's (933 has the older 64MB card, not the newer 32MB DDR card) let the 933 beat out the 867

User Interface Test
867 - 193
933 - 217
Voo - 196
*this is the most true video test.  Running a bunch of UI functions and seeing what the refresh rate is.  Again, the older GeForce4 MX 64MB beats out the other two video cards.  
*I will try this again later with a much lower screen resolution and see if it makes a difference.

Disk Test
867 - 99
933 - 92
Voo - 59
*here we see the difference between good HD's, and the ones they put in laptops.
*Compare the read and write rates here with the read and write rates of RAM, Then you'll understand why VM sucks and slows down your machine so much.  

So, out of the three machines we have here, the one with the least amount of MHz got the best score.  Three reasons for that.  1) it's RAM and HD are slightly faster than the 933, and much much faster than the laptop.  2) one test did take into account both processors, which made for a jump there.  3) Three?  I meant two =D.  The 933 catches up because of it's better video card and it's close numbers everywhere else.  The 1GHz laptop fails due to is much slower RAM (even though it is the same bus speed) and it's horrible HD.

Now, look at Voo's numbers for RAM and HD.  He's getting in the 600MB/sec for reading and writing to RAM.  On his HD this falls to under 1MB/sec for some (and those are some of the important ones in regards to how VM uses it).  So, in Voo's case, His HD is between 35 and 1700 times slower than his RAM (and you can bet it's closer to the latter).

On my machine I get like numbers (just higher).  My RAM fills at over 1.4 GB/sec and runs in the 800MB/sec for the other tests.  While my HD runs from 40MB/sec down to 1MB/sec.

So, as you can see, even with faster HD's, they are a poor substitute for RAM.  

Hope that explained it enough for you Voo.  If not, let me know.  Like I said, the important thing is to compare it.  You want to know why some machines run things like shit, while others run it fine, see what some of the differences here are, and maybe that will point you in the right direction.  Bitch as much as we do about video cards, our game performance is based on these other factors as well.

[Jeb]

Oh, i forgot two of my "clanmates" are devout ford sluts.
My original analogy comparing imacs to mustangs was just fine, cheap & not the best.

Besides, how could i not post a slam at the expense of fords when ghost sniper is around, his  mission on the forums is to tell people that he sells fords, or which wars his relatives were in.

and to provide a purpose to this post so it won't be deleted as a flame,
My xbench result was 158 points i believe, 1.6ghz g5. My G4 466mhz scored a 60, and that hosts rvs just fine (dedicated).