Apple OS uses less memory then vista?

[clarkey01]

I was having a coversation with a friend who has got a job making flash stuff and admin of a forum etc

He's been using a MAC and he's been raving, he said that memory in apples go a lot further, i.e quote " 2gb in windows is like 8gb in O.S 10" or something to that affect.

Is he right? ( I think it's wishful thinking)

Don't wish to flame, just curious.

 

[Sled]

2gb in windows is like 8gb in O.S 10

2GB is 2GB. It's physical RAM, can't go more and can't go less.
OSX can do better memory management than Vista. That's all.

 

[spyordie007]

OSX can do better memory management than Vista. That's all.

That's a big statement, and it's all FUD.

I'll concede that there are certain tasks that OS X may have an advantage on, but there also tasks that Vista has an advantage. Neither gets the blank "better memory management" check.

Now if your question is to whether Vista can consume a larger memory footprint than the answer is probably (though not certainly because it depends on the system configuration) yes. This is a good thing though; if you have 8GB of RAM and 7GB goes unused than it's wasted. The theory is that we want to consume as much RAM as possible (yes you read that correctly) to reduce our I/O requirements whenever possible.

Mac zealots are some of the worst there are...

 

[nerp]

Originally posted by: spyordie007
Mac zealots are some of the worst there are...

Well, anyone who just makes stuff up is pretty bad. I'm tired of hearing about "some guy" who said something to someone about how product X is superior to product Y.

 

[clarkey01]

Originally posted by: nerp

Originally posted by: spyordie007
Mac zealots are some of the worst there are...

Well, anyone who just makes stuff up is pretty bad. I'm tired of hearing about "some guy" who said something to someone about how product X is superior to product Y.

Because none of us know anyone with an opinion ......

 

[soonerproud]

Originally posted by: clarkey01
I was having a coversation with a friend who has got a job making flash stuff and admin of a forum etc

He's been using a MAC and he's been raving, he said that memory in apples go a lot further, i.e quote " 2gb in windows is like 8gb in O.S 10" or something to that affect.

Is he right? ( I think it's wishful thinking)

Don't wish to flame, just curious.

Ever tried to use OSX Tiger on 512 of memory? It is just as painful as Vista is on 512. I don't know a single MAC user that will even buy a MAC with less than a gig for that reason. Apple won't even ship a MAC with less than a gig anymore because of all the complaints they got off of the MAC Mini when it was configured with only 512.

This is why I just can not stand the fanboys of any operating system. They live in a delusional world not based on facts, but on wishful thinking.

 

[teclis1023]

I'm not a Mac Zealot by any means (I use Win, Mac and Linux).

With that being said, my personal experience is that the Mac Operating System (I'm talking Tiger) is able to run beautifully on 1GB of RAM. What I mean by this is: It boots up extremely quickly. I can run quite a few more programs at a time than I can on XP and Vista and still maintain quick responsiveness, and I find the Mac to be overall much zippier than Windows XP and Windows Vista.

I don't have any statistics or diagnostics, just throwing my personal experience into the ring!

 

[Nothinman]

He's been using a MAC and he's been raving, he said that memory in apples go a lot further, i.e quote " 2gb in windows is like 8gb in O.S 10" or something to that affect.

He's an idiot. I would guess that OS X has slightly better memory management than XP since it's rooted in a form of unix, in this case NeXT, but the difference won't be anywhere near 4-fold. XP also has a nasty habit of favoring the filesystem cache so much that it'll evict a ton of other things in order to cache something that you'll probably never use again, large file copies are a sure fire way to frustrate yourself all to hell but that's just a VM tuning issue and I'm not sure why MS never fixed it.

Well, anyone who just makes stuff up is pretty bad.

Which is most Mac users since they have no idea how all of the stuff under Aqua works. =)

 

[TheStu]

Having a MacBook gives a certain insight into this that others may not have. I can say, with certainty, that at OS Loaded, Vista has allocated roughly 3 times as much RAM as Tiger 10.4.10 does. At OSL (OS Loaded) + 30s, OS X is completely usable and applications can start opening, Vista is still doing stuff that prevents anything from opening. At OSL+60s I have finished opening iTunes, Safari, Adium, Transmission, Coda, iWeb, Pages, Numbers, and Sketchup and have right at 1GB of 1.25GB RAM allocated in OS X. Under Vista, at OSL + 60s, I have Firefox, Freecell, and Sketchup loaded and am using 1GB of 1.25GB of RAM.

I get that Vista has more background processes (file indexing, precaching, other you know OSy things) but I wish it was a little more responsive. IMO, and from personal observation, Tiger is definitely better than XP in terms of memory management, especially in giving up allocated RAM. You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows. I have noticed that Vista has done a much better job of it, but after having used Tiger for so long (and now Leopard Beta as well) I really have trouble handling Vista and its shortcomings in terms of responsiveness.

I do not care if Solitaire has a 8D interface now that requires DX8594 and a graphics card with 17TB of RAM... how does that let me do my work faster or better?

 

[Nothinman]

You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows.

Even though I have no proof since the Windows source is closed, this can't be true. Freeing up a process's private resources is one of the simplest parts of memory management and there's no way NT has gotten where it is today by not doing this properly. Shared resources are a little more work but not much since it should just be a simple ref counter to determine whether to free something or not.

Having said that, Windows does seem to hit the disk a lot more than Linux, and I'm going to assume OS X from your anecdote, and I can't really explain why.

I do not care if Solitaire has a 8D interface now that requires DX8594 and a graphics card with 17TB of RAM... how does that let me do my work faster or better?

Why would you even mention solitaire and work? Hyperbole much?

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows.

Even though I have no proof since the Windows source is closed, this can't be true. Freeing up a process's private resources is one of the simplest parts of memory management and there's no way NT has gotten where it is today by not doing this properly. Shared resources are a little more work but not much since it should just be a simple ref counter to determine whether to free something or not.

Having said that, Windows does seem to hit the disk a lot more than Linux, and I'm going to assume OS X from your anecdote, and I can't really explain why.

I do not care if Solitaire has a 8D interface now that requires DX8594 and a graphics card with 17TB of RAM... how does that let me do my work faster or better?

Why would you even mention solitaire and work? Hyperbole much?

I mentioned Solitaire because of all the things they could have improved, and they did improve things, they decided that Solitaire and Minesweeper weren't shiny enough, and devoted time and resources there. The fact that solitaire requires 3D support is a whole other discussion.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows.

Even though I have no proof since the Windows source is closed, this can't be true. Freeing up a process's private resources is one of the simplest parts of memory management and there's no way NT has gotten where it is today by not doing this properly. Shared resources are a little more work but not much since it should just be a simple ref counter to determine whether to free something or not.

Having said that, Windows does seem to hit the disk a lot more than Linux, and I'm going to assume OS X from your anecdote, and I can't really explain why.

I do not care if Solitaire has a 8D interface now that requires DX8594 and a graphics card with 17TB of RAM... how does that let me do my work faster or better?

Why would you even mention solitaire and work? Hyperbole much?

Don't some of the libraries stay mapped in after the process terminates, in case you run the process again? In terms of the actual process address space, that is released on termination (I don't know how someone could assert it isn't; the process object is gone). But the libraries stay in memory I think for some period. So if you were watching the total committed memory size it might not shrink when you kill a process by as much as it grew when you started it.

 

[Genx87]

I always love douchebags who dont know wtf they are talking about spout off. 2GBs on a Mac is equal to 8GBs on a PC? That is so laughable he deserves the pain that is a Mac.

I had an iMac in here 2 months ago with 2GB of ram. I was quite a big disappointed they lack the option for a 10K RPM drive on that series. Anyways the thing was ok, nothing special. I had to use a 3rd party app to get it to work properly with our AD without having to modify the AD. What ultimately killed it was a print driver from Savin that was incompatible with OSX. Yeah go figure, a big multi function color printer doesnt work with a Mac. Anyways sent it back and got a Dell that was more powerful and less money and had it running and on the employee's desk in 4 hours once I opened the box.

 

[stash]

What ultimately killed it was a print driver from Savin that was incompatible with OSX. Yeah go figure, a big multi function color printer doesnt work with a Mac

But, but...the Apple ads show Macs being able to speak ANY language. They can even talk to hot asian chicks. You're sooo lying.

 

[Nothinman]

Don't some of the libraries stay mapped in after the process terminates, in case you run the process again?

The file may stay cached in memory just like any other file but it won't be mapped into that process's VM since that process doesn't exist any more.

What ultimately killed it was a print driver from Savin that was incompatible with OSX. Yeah go figure, a big multi function color printer doesnt work with a Mac. Anyways sent it back and got a Dell that was more powerful and less money and had it running and on the employee's desk in 4 hours once I opened the box.

If your big expensive printer doesn't speak Postscript you got ripped off.

 

[TheStu]

You know, I like Nothinman, he seems able to keep himself objective and pretty much can bash on anything

And I always love douchebags who don't know what they are talking about. 10K RPM in a desktop All In One system, can't even try to get a big multi function printer to work? That is so laughable you deserve the pain that is the PC.

I will agree with you though, finding specific printer drivers can be a pain, that is why I am glad that Apple includes about 2GB worth on the OS X install disk.

 

[Nothinman]

You know, I like Nothinman, he seems able to keep himself objective and pretty much can bash on anything

I try. Personally I really dislike using anything but Linux but I hate it even more when people talk crap on things about which they obviously have no understanding. Sadly I've been having to work with Windows boxes at work lately, but at least it gives me more ammo for when I complain about Windows. =)

 

[Markbnj]

The file may stay cached in memory just like any other file but it won't be mapped into that process's VM since that process doesn't exist any more.

Right, as I said, but the working set might not drop immediately. Since the process object is gone, he can't be looking at the process' memory in order to determine that it isn't being freed, so he must be looking at a global number.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: TheStu


I get that Vista has more background processes (file indexing, precaching, other you know OSy things) but I wish it was a little more responsive. IMO, and from personal observation, Tiger is definitely better than XP in terms of memory management, especially in giving up allocated RAM. You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows. I have noticed that Vista has done a much better job of it, but after having used Tiger for so long (and now Leopard Beta as well) I really have trouble handling Vista and its shortcomings in terms of responsiveness.

How Vista doeus better job in releasing memory, when:

XP after app is closed automatically declares all used heap as free again.

On other hand, Vista uses superfetch to keep memory utilization at 100%.

There's no way you could have seen otherwise.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: TheStu


I get that Vista has more background processes (file indexing, precaching, other you know OSy things) but I wish it was a little more responsive. IMO, and from personal observation, Tiger is definitely better than XP in terms of memory management, especially in giving up allocated RAM. You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows. I have noticed that Vista has done a much better job of it, but after having used Tiger for so long (and now Leopard Beta as well) I really have trouble handling Vista and its shortcomings in terms of responsiveness.

How Vista doeus better job in releasing memory, when:

XP after app is closed automatically declares all used heap as free again.

On other hand, Vista uses superfetch to keep memory utilization at 100%.

There's no way you could have seen otherwise.

Releasing memory isnt anything special. What you do with that released memory is. Vista does a much better job than pretty much any other OS in this case - you WANT memory utilization to be 100%. Free memory = wasted memory.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: TheStu


I get that Vista has more background processes (file indexing, precaching, other you know OSy things) but I wish it was a little more responsive. IMO, and from personal observation, Tiger is definitely better than XP in terms of memory management, especially in giving up allocated RAM. You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows. I have noticed that Vista has done a much better job of it, but after having used Tiger for so long (and now Leopard Beta as well) I really have trouble handling Vista and its shortcomings in terms of responsiveness.

How Vista doeus better job in releasing memory, when:

XP after app is closed automatically declares all used heap as free again.

On other hand, Vista uses superfetch to keep memory utilization at 100%.

There's no way you could have seen otherwise.

Releasing memory isnt anything special. What you do with that released memory is. Vista does a much better job than pretty much any other OS in this case - you WANT memory utilization to be 100%. Free memory = wasted memory.

See, I just don't understand that concept. Vista is primarily using the memory for indexing and SuperFetch right? Well, once indexing is complete, then I guess all spare RAM gets diverted to SuperFetch, but doesn't that make things that are not preloaded into SuperFetch open all the slower?

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: BD2003

Originally posted by: postmortemIA

Originally posted by: TheStu


I get that Vista has more background processes (file indexing, precaching, other you know OSy things) but I wish it was a little more responsive. IMO, and from personal observation, Tiger is definitely better than XP in terms of memory management, especially in giving up allocated RAM. You close an app in Tiger, that RAM is freed up instantly, not always the case in Windows. I have noticed that Vista has done a much better job of it, but after having used Tiger for so long (and now Leopard Beta as well) I really have trouble handling Vista and its shortcomings in terms of responsiveness.

How Vista doeus better job in releasing memory, when:

XP after app is closed automatically declares all used heap as free again.

On other hand, Vista uses superfetch to keep memory utilization at 100%.

There's no way you could have seen otherwise.

Releasing memory isnt anything special. What you do with that released memory is. Vista does a much better job than pretty much any other OS in this case - you WANT memory utilization to be 100%. Free memory = wasted memory.

See, I just don't understand that concept. Vista is primarily using the memory for indexing and SuperFetch right? Well, once indexing is complete, then I guess all spare RAM gets diverted to SuperFetch, but doesn't that make things that are not preloaded into SuperFetch open all the slower?

First off, indexing is a service/process like any other. It only indexes new things on idle, but its really nothing more to do with memory usage than any other program.

And the file cache, which is pre-filled by superfetch, is essentially treated as "free" memory. Anything that is preloaded into superfetch will load much faster. Anything that isnt, will load "normally", as if superfetch wasnt there at all, and it was being loaded off the HD into free memory.

The end result is that rather than pointlessly leaving memory with nothing in it, its at least filled up with what it thinks you might load. If its wrong, no harm done. If its right, all the better. Because theres no major penalty to fill it up, and no advantage to keeping it empty, free memory = wasted memory.

On any other OS, such as XP, OSX or Linux - the file cache is filled after the fact. If you have 8gb of memory, you'll have to run through 8gb of data before its filled. And youre probably done with it anyway (otherwise, you probably wouldnt have loaded it). All that memory that could be put to good use is just sitting there doing nothing. On Vista, that 8gb of memory will be filled with 8gb of stuff that you often use, and if your usage is anything near typical, that could be pretty much everything.

 

[TheStu]

Ah, fair enough. I am assuming then that Vista has some magical algorithms that can determine over time what is going to be called upon, and if that is the case, then that is good.

I would also assume that Superfetch will rapidly relinquish its RAM should another program call for it, so if Firefox needs more RAM or something, then Superfetch will give up what it was allocating so that an actively running application can get it. If that is the case, then I can see your argument and say that it is a good thing.

However, I still stand by my original claim that OS X loads apps faster, if I were to use Vista as my primary OS, would I see those load times go down as it comes to realize what programs I use more often? That is not me saying that I would use Vista as my primary OS, simply a question.

 

[postmortemIA]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Ah, fair enough. I am assuming then that Vista has some magical algorithms that can determine over time what is going to be called upon, and if that is the case, then that is good.

I would also assume that Superfetch will rapidly relinquish its RAM should another program call for it, so if Firefox needs more RAM or something, then Superfetch will give up what it was allocating so that an actively running application can get it. If that is the case, then I can see your argument and say that it is a good thing.

However, I still stand by my original claim that OS X loads apps faster, if I were to use Vista as my primary OS, would I see those load times go down as it comes to realize what programs I use more often? That is not me saying that I would use Vista as my primary OS, simply a question.

Vista loads them as fast if not faster if they are pre-cached in memory by superfetch.

 

[Noema]

Originally posted by: TheStu


I would also assume that Superfetch will rapidly relinquish its RAM should another program call for it, so if Firefox needs more RAM or something, then Superfetch will give up what it was allocating so that an actively running application can get it. If that is the case, then I can see your argument and say that it is a good thing.
.

Vista does do this...a good example being games, since they are usually single, monolithic processes that can use up several GB of RAM when running.

I have 4GB of RAM and upon boot, Vista goobles up around 1800MB, most likely due to Superfetch. However, if I load up a game with a very large memory footprint, like Company of Heroes, I can actually see RAM usage drop by around 900MB just before the process loads up and then go up again as the game loads up the maps.

And well, while I don't doubt OSX loads apps really quick, Vista loads up pretty much anything I have installed right now (except games of course) instantly, and well, it doesn't get any faster than that, does it?