Mac OS RAM Management

[yolosnail]

I recently got a Mac (don't judge!) and one thing that I have noticed is how many Chrome tabs I can have open even with the 2GB of RAM that I currently have installed.

Why is it with Mac OS I can have literally 10 tabs open, Fusion 360, Word and a few other apps open at the same time and switch between them seamlessly, but with Windows if I had 2GB of RAM I my computer would be sluggish with only the 1 tab open. I mean, on my laptop without even trying I can be using 10GB of RAM!

[themctipers]

which mac

if it's a newer SSD one, that's probably because swapping to SSD is much faster than swapping to HDD

windows performs reasonably well under low ram IMO, even though task manager always says 90% or higher, but it still works well, so.. 

 

windows likes to go crazy on the ram cache when it can, and then it scales back down when you need it, that's what I see on my laptop w/ 12GB of ram. It'll use 5GB on boot, around 10GB after chrome loads in, but when I want to play minecraft with 8GB of ram usage, it'll put things out of ram and compress, but you can only go so far

[Tabs]

8 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I recently got a Mac (don't judge!) and one thing that I have noticed is how many Chrome tabs I can have open even with the 2GB of RAM that I currently have installed.

Why is it with Mac OS I can have literally 10 tabs open, Fusion 360, Word and a few other apps open at the same time and switch between them seamlessly, but with Windows if I had 2GB of RAM I my computer would be sluggish with only the 1 tab open. I mean, on my laptop without even trying I can be using 10GB of RAM!

 

Basically every modern operating system will page to disk if memory usage gets too high, and some operating systems are more aggressive in this than others. 

 

Without knowing the exact specs of your machines, there would be too many variables to explicitly point to the memory management of OSX as being the reason for your perceived improvement in performance.

 

I didn't notice any appreciable difference in memory management between Windows 10 and MacOS High Sierra/Mojave on my 2016 or 2017 MacBook pros, but then my usage doesn't involve counting Chrome tabs.

[yolosnail]

2 minutes ago, Tabs said:

Without knowing the exact specs of your machines, there would be too many variables to explicitly point to the memory management of OSX as being the reason for your perceived improvement in performance.

 

5 minutes ago, themctipers said:

which mac

It's a 2009 8 Core Mac Pro, which is what surprised me me most about it being so good. I'm running High Sierra as I've upgraded the firmware to 5,1.

[wasab]

19 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I recently got a Mac (don't judge!) 

?

[yolosnail]

1 minute ago, wasab said:

?

It was £35, which was too cheap not to buy! It was faulty so I wanted it for the case but it was too easy to fix so I just kept it as a Mac

[Mira Yurizaki]

12 minutes ago, yolosnail said:

I recently got a Mac (don't judge!) and one thing that I have noticed is how many Chrome tabs I can have open even with the 2GB of RAM that I currently have installed.

Why is it with Mac OS I can have literally 10 tabs open, Fusion 360, Word and a few other apps open at the same time and switch between them seamlessly, but with Windows if I had 2GB of RAM I my computer would be sluggish with only the 1 tab open. I mean, on my laptop without even trying I can be using 10GB of RAM!

If you get a Windows machine from a system builder, chances are they've loaded it with a bunch of applications that you don't need but like to run all the time. I've managed to use Windows 10 on a dinky tablet with 2GB of RAM using Firefox well enough. It even idled at 350MB after settling down from a boot.

[yolosnail]

2 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I've managed to use Windows 10 on a dinky tablet with 2GB of RAM using Firefox well enough. It even idled at 350MB after settling down from a boot.

I have a Windows tablet with 2gb of RAM and without even opening anything it idles at around 1.1GB! How did you get it that low?

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 minute ago, yolosnail said:

I have a Windows tablet with 2gb of RAM and without even opening anything it idles at around 1.1GB! How did you get it that low?

I trimmed it of all crapware and went through and found things that I could disable.

[Tabs]

5 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I trimmed it of all crapware and went through and found things that I could disable.

Very much this - Apple controls both the software and the hardware of their platform, whereas Microsoft only controls the software. They can do all they want to make Windows run well, but as soon as an OEM gets their hands on it they can add "value" by preloading junk.

 

A fresh Windows install with no crapware (no GeForce experience nonsense, no razer always-on mouse settings, no RGB rubbish) is a night and day difference from any OEM machine. 

 

Also worth remembering that MacOS still doesn't ship with any kind of antivirus, which makes them dangerous "Typhoid Mary" machines in a corporate environment. Windows ships with basic default protection nowadays which will have minimal - but non-zero - affect on baseline performance.