Hey Bruce, On Monday, Jan 27, 2003, at 10:02 Canada/Eastern, Bruce Johnson wrote:
> > On Sunday, January 26, 2003, at 05:02 PM, The Mage wrote: > >> Memory (the wet kind) runs so short around technology. Running OS 7.5 >> on 32MB of RAM is not exactly memory starvation. > > Yes it is. I've *run* 7.5 on 32 mb of ram. It IS memory starvation. > That runs a LOT better with 64 or 128 mb ram than it does in 32. I've > been there, done that. I don't know your usage, so I'm not going to say your statement is wrong in general. If you were to try running Photoshop or many other of the more professional apps of that day, then you are certainly correct. If you look at the apps I listed as ones that I commonly ran, however (ClarisWorks, text editors, and a video player, each with mem requirements of less than a few MB, plus a web browser (requiring only 4MB in those days, more like 12-16 for comfort and my System was skinnied down until it took less than 8MB), I think that you might agree that with my particular usage, having only 32MB would have very little impact on performance if Virtual Memory is off). And indeed, I rarely turned VM on and still often had memory to spare. It's actually rather meaningless to call any level of memory 'starvation' when it fits the entire system software in it (with more than two thirds to spare), without considering what apps are being used and how much they're asking for, isn't it? Which was part of my original point. But you ignored the list of apps I run and just assumed my experience must be the same as yours. Why? Remember, that this discussion is not about whether 32MB is good enough for every OS 7.5 user, but whether it was enough on *my* system to get the full benefit of interleaving, which wasn't noticeable. In order to speak to that question, you *must* take into account the apps that I was running, not the apps that YOU were running when 32MB sucked for you. Get my drift, guy? The fact is there is no reason whatsoever to believe that my system and apps didn't get the full benefit of memory interleaving simply because there wasn't a whole lot of spare memory available that wasn't being used. Unused memory cannot have any impact on performance. QED. > Mixing 2K and 4K refresh chips does not affect speed except in the > general sense of "Well my stuff is really slow because I have to > reboot after crashes all the time". Thanks. That's really good to know. It makes more sense of advice that says not to mix these chips supposedly because of some speed issue, which doesn't exist. I am now going to check over all my chips to make damn sure they're all the same. I have quite a mix, so it's quite likely that they aren't, but I hadn't bothered really worrying about it because there is no speed difference. > I *have* personally seen noticeable system speedups by going to > matched, interleaved memory. > These were confirmed by rough benchmarking tests (how long it took to > render a scene in a 3D app) and amounted to about 5% improvement. You can notice a 5% improvement, eh? Okay, you've obviously got a way better sense of time than I do... I had no idea I was talking to such a finely tuned specimen! :) > If you have a system that will run within the interleaved memory all > the time, you will notice the difference. I did. And I had interleaved memory to spare. And I didn't notice it. I was especially looking for it in web-browsing, and I turned off the browser's disk cache to isolate the difference. There was none. The other apps were just generally the same. Like I said, maybe you've got a better sensor, after all we are human not machines made to order, and 'noticeable' is obviously a very subjective question. Paul. -- Unsupported OS X is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Unsupported OS X list info <http://lowendmac.com/lists/unsupported.html> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive <http://www.mail-archive.com/unsupportedosx%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
