Allocating ram to application

Hi Guys
Bit of a technical one this like
I have a G5 dual 2.5 with 5.5gb of ram running with Leopard server 10.5.8
I'm trying to use Handbrake to convert a disk image of a DVD to m4v
I have looked in Activity Monitor & the most memory handbrake uses is between 300 to 600 mb never goes any higher & it shows i have between 4 - 4.5gb of memory left inactive
I know applications like Logic & Final Cut the most they will ever use is 2gb of ram no matter how much you have in there
The question is is there any way to allocate more of the inactive ram to a specific app
Thanx

Under Mac OS X, In a word, No.
If that App asks for more it gets more, and you would dip into Virtual Memory, if necessary, to give it what it asks for. If that is all that App asks for, that is all it gets.
What you may not be seeing is RAM allocated to System and Buffering to support that App. It may instantaneously use more for brief periods. But unless there is some internal preference to ask for and use more, that's it.

Similar Messages

Manually allocating RAM to applications, how?

Hi there friends,
I am looking to know how to manually change de default RAM allocated (automatically, right?) to a program.
Basically, I'm using a memory demanding application, and it could always do the job within about 512mb of RAM. The thing is, I have other program, whichs doesn't require alot, but use up a big part of my RAM. (BTW, I have 1gb of RAM, only)
I could easily afford having my other program cached on disk, while the memory demanding one has all the speed from the RAM.
I've readed a lot from other pages (a little "allocating RAM mac" googling), and it has all shown me how to change the default RAM allocated to applications, but only for Classic..
Even if OS X has it's own automated memory management, I'd like to give it a try, if it possible, of course.
Great thanks to anyone who could give me a hand!

You can not do this. And if you could, there is no way you could manually improve on the system's memory management. In fact there isn't really a "default" allocation. Memory is allocated dynamically, as needed. An active process always gets priority on RAM. If your "other" application is cached on disk, then it is not active. It must be swapped back into RAM before it can become active. And vice versa. If it is using RAM while inactive, an active process that needs the RAM will get it. The system does what needs to be done automatically.

Increase the RAM for applications in Classic

I am running Photoshop 5.0 in Classic environment. While it works fine for most tasks I am finding a few things won't work. An error occurs and the application requests more RAM, e.g when I try to perform some intensive filtering.
In the system preferences I see that Classic has assigned 12MB to the Photoshop application. I would like to increase this to the recommended 32MB.
Can someone advise how to do this ? - so far I have not found where/how to do this.
Thanks.

Hi, Macdady. You do it the same way you would if you were booting into OS 9: Clecik once on the icon of the closed Photoshop application (not an alias) to select it, then choose Get Info from the File menu, clcik the Memory arrow in the Get Info window to expand that portion of the window (if it isn't expanded already) and increase the Preferred memory allocation. There's no need to change the other two figures.
Classic versions of Photoshop are happiest if you assign them at least three times as much RAM as the file size of the largest images you ordinarily work with. If you regularly handle images that are 10GB when they're open in Photoshop (they may be much smaller as compressed .jpg files when they aren't open), then a Preferred RAM allocation of 32MB is suitable. If you regularly handle images whose size (as displayed at the bottom of the Photoshop window) is much larger than 10GB, you'll want to allocate more than 32MB of RAM to the application.
I believe OS X is able to manage the memory needs of Classic applications a little better than OS 9 did, but perhaps not very much better. OS X versions's memory requirements are, of course, managed far better by OS X.

Allocating RAM for Xp on VMware fusion 2.0

I have a Macpro with 4 gb ram, and I will most likely use the macpro for Autocad and Rhino on windows. Thus, I'd like to allocate ram memory to XP as much as possible. Can I give all 4gb to XP?
I know the best option is to use Boot camp, but the xp cd I have is not with sp2. Also, I don't have Leopard DVD with me right now. (I am planning to buy Snow Leopard and Xp sp2 together)
So, how do I give more than 512mb to xp? When I install XP through vmware fusion 2.0, I don't see any option to increase ram memory from 512mb.

I think you are being a little aggressive with the RAM your giving to the guest. Don't forget Leopard needs room to run too. I would start with about 2.5 Gig to the Guest (VMware Fusion setting), then start the applications you will normally run in the windows guest. Use Task Manager to see how much "physical" memory you are using / have available in the guest and adjust accordingly. Don't forget Leopard is fairly memory hungry too, and if you starve it for for memory the whole machine will slow down while Leopard is swapping things in and out.
For whatever reason I have found that my Fusion Virtual Machines seem to need a little less RAM than a physical equivalent. In reality I bet you could get by with 2 Gig to the Guest for your needs. Also, if I remember correctly, XP has a limit of 3 Gig that it can address, so anything over that is wasted.

2.5 GB Ram, no application - Disk usage bottleneck - extrem slow response

Hi everybody,
I'm experiencing some trouble. Last weekend, i updated my itunes library with bpm count for DJing via BPMer. The Librarys size is about 100 GB. Usually i have 50 - 75 GB free space depending on the size of some Logic Pro projects.
While updating, Time Machine went crazy with tons of gigs of updates but after some time my internal (not time machine) drive was getting full.
So i started to delete some old files but the left space didnt grow up.
After some time i recognized i had over 100 GB free space, why?
From this time on my disk is going crazy by doing whatever (thats my big question), my Ram is used with up to 2.5 gig without displaying any application using this much space and the free disk space is changing in minutes between 135 and 100 GB.
I tried some maintainace skipts, PRAM reset, Permissions repair, disk repair, virus/ trojan scan without finding the reason.
The real problem is i can see in the istat pro monitoring, that the disk is going crazy, but du in terminal doesnt give me hint on what application it is. The same thing is true for the ram which is used, but no application is listed with more than 200MB.
Thanks for your help!

Defragmenting using iDefrag solved the problem…
The mac only maintains files smaller than 1 GB, iDefrag did the rest…

Allocating RAM in Leopard on new Mac Pro

I have a new Mac Pro (early 2008) with Mac OS 10.5.1 and Photoshop CS3 10.0.1.
I just installed 8-GB of RAM (which shows up in About This Mac).
In Photoshop > Preferences > Performance, the dialog box says under Memory Usage...
Available RAM: 3072 MB
Ideal Range: 1689-2211 MB
Let Photoshop Use: 2764 MB (90%) - [which I have manually set so far]
My questions...
(1) Why is Available RAM not closer to the 8-GB I have installed? Available RAM based on what? If I had 32-GB installed would this still show Available RAM 3072? I thought Photoshop could be assigned 4-GB?
(2) Ideal Range based on what?
Thanks.

>What Allen said. Above 3GB installed PS CS3 will use memory for scratch which speeds things up. I have mine set at 94% after some testing.
I have it up to 100% and that makes it fly with Forced VM Buffering plug in installed 9 GB of RAM and a internal stripe RAID made up of two of the four internal hard disk It is also equally important to have fast hard drives. The newer hard drives with 32MB cache are much faster than the older models. Use those to make a raid and see what happens.

Internet sooo sloooow on my new Mini... :-(

Hi.
After a long sojourn in Windows land I finally came back to Mac. I got a new Mini (1.66) and maxed out the RAM at 2 GB.
Generally it seems great. But the internet is soooo slooooow. I can run my ancient Win2k machine right beside it -- same network, same DSL line -- and the Mini (using Safari out of the box) takes on average 3-5 times as long to load anything.
I did a hardware diagnostic and it came up fine. I even completely erased the hard drive, reinstalled the OS, etc, no help.
It's really frustrating. My friends are mocking me openly for having dropped $$$ for a slower computer.
Any suggestions? Some funky setting Safari needs to run quick?
Any help would be very appreciated.
--JT

At last! Someone else has the very same problem. Mine is even more basic as where we live we don't have anything other than dial-up.
My new super-loaded (and so super sexy) Mac Mini arrived and was set up. Connection through that little USB modem was instant but the connection speed was a disaster. As a comparison I connected to the same line, same isp, same browser with my G4 tower . . . . and that connected in the same way as always . . . good speed and totally acceptable for dial-up. For fun I then connected (same line etc) with my friends old G3 PowerBook . . . . again it ran like a rabbit.
Back to the Mac Mini and that connected once again like a geriatric turtle!
The ISP said it was the phone line and totally ignored me when I pointed out that within the same fifteen minutes of my "test" that the results were so dramatically different. Pushing for a better answer I was then told that I shuld increase the RAM allocation to the USB ports / modem. Now how in heavens name could I do this? In the old OS9 days we all likely allocated RAM to applications but since OSX I don't think I have ever seen this pop up. Also with a gig of RAM in the Mini I would have thought that the dear little machine would have enough juice to do what it needs to do without my help!
By the way, we also have an old Compaq and that one was faster too. Now that hurts!!
I have tried various scrips . . . . no joy. The Apple tech I spoke with seemed to be "miles away" and showed very little interest and NO ONE seems to see the significance of the same line, same time, same browser and getting three good results and one lousy one . . . . on the Mini.
I am totally lost and can't think of anything else to do. Has anyone any suggestions??
G4MDD; G4 Sawtooth, and now . . . . Mac OS X (10.4.7)

How much RAM for ONE App & does OS X limit allocation?

Hello all,
This question concerns how much RAM I realistically need to run ONE application to it's fullest. I mainly use ProToolsLE 7.3, but sometimes use LogicPro 8 and Final Cut Express 4, again, only one running at a time. I've read on the ProTools forum that Windows (yuck) limits the amount of RAM that can be allocated for 1 application. Does Mac OS 10.4 or 10.5 do this?
Right now I have the stock 1GB (2 x 512MB). I plan on pulling it and installing a matched quad of either 1GB sticks (4GB total) -OR- 2GB sticks (8GB total). I understand that matched quads in slots 1/2 of both risers is optimum for the early Mac Pros.
The ProTools forum isn't helping much. A ProTools support person said that starting with 4GB will be good to start and that they test their systems with 4GB installed. What did they mean by "good to start"? Will it increase jumping to 8GB or is 4GB all ProTools can really use?
Another guy on there said "keep in mind that to use 4GB of ram - you'd need a 64bit Operating system (not supported by pro-tools) or on a MAC PAE support enabled, which depending on your hardware may not be a great move." I dont know what that means! Mac OS 10.5 IS a 64bit OS, right? And ProTools 7.4 NEEDS OS 10.5 to run....even if it is only a 32bit app. (though right now I am running PT 7.3 on OS 10.4....not sure if 10.4 is 64bit)
A quad set of 1GB is under $170 and a quad set of 2GB is under $270. Funds are tight right now, but I think I can swing the extra $100 to double the RAM -IF- it will make a difference.
Any thoughts as to wether the extra $100 will be worth it, or am I wasting my money? Thanks!

Hatter,
Thank you so much for your advice! If I may bother you to receive one final suggestion....
Based on the best prices I have found from all of the well known Mac Pro memory dealers, I have narrowed it down to 3 configurations that are balanced. Even though I'm still not 100% confident that 8GB of RAM will give me any noticable imporvement over 6GB, the price is only $42 more to get 8GB. Am I correct in saying that the early Mac Pro would do better to have one matched quad set of RAM over the new Mac Pro's increased performance of having all eight slots filled? Here are the 3 configurations and prices.
4 x 1GB + 4 x 512MB = 6GB Quad+Quad $220 (using my stock 2x512MB sticks)
4 x 2GB = 8GB Quad $262 (pulling my stock 2x512MB sticks)
8 x 1GB = 8GB Octal $278 (pulling my stock 2x512MB sticks)
Which do you think would be the best route?
I already purchased a WD Caviar for my dedicated audio drive. I installed a Seagate 7200.9 in my PowerMac G4 for it's audio drive, but after reading various reveiws, concluded the WD Caviar is a better performer. I LOVE my WD My Book Studio external. I hadn't considered replacing the boot drive, but after reading articles suggesting that it improves overall system performance, and now that you've recommended it as well, I will probably buy a second Caviar for the boot/system drive.
This computer is a DEDICATED audio computer, for ProTools & Logic only....other than a bit of fiddling in Final Cut Express. It's not even connected to the internet and all unnecessary apps are not installed or uninstalled. I also never migrate apps, but always do a fresh install of everything from the ground up.
Thanks again for your advice! It's been a big help!

Priemere only uses 2gb RAM of my 8gb stash. Brand new computer, no other applications running

How do I use all 8 gigs?

Edit -> Preferences -> Memory
Then you'll see a certain amount of memory allocated to Adobe applications and "RAM reserved for other applications" which you can tailor to your own computer. If you ONLY want to do video editing then you can crank down the amount allocated to other programs.Take care though, if you run anything else you might end up swapping memory to disk and slowing things down.
Of course, you can monitor this independently in Task Manager on Windows (not sure on Apple) and keep an eye out.

Applications quitting unexpectedly. Not enough RAM?

Hey,
I have a Macbook 13" Aluminum. It's not a pro because I bought it during that small window of time where Apple hadn't given all the Aluminum Macbook's Pro status yet. Anyway, lately my applications have been quitting unexpectedly. These applications are those such as firefox and safari. I know web browsers take up the most RAM compared to other applications, except for Adobe products and other high CPU using software. These applications have started quitting when I started creating a disc image with Toast Titanium 10. I'm trying to back up a TV series I recently bought because I would like to keep a back up. The encoding is taking a lot of time. iFreeMem show most of my RAM is being taken up. Are the applications quitting because Toast is taking up too much RAM, so that the other applications don't have enough to run.
Any insight on this issue is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!

Snow Leopard uses nearly 1 GB of RAM. Running two browsers, Toast, and some Adobe software is just too much for the RAM you have available. This causes the virtual memory system to start using the hard drive swap file for additional RAM. This causes system slowdown and disk thrashing. The latter may easily lead to crashes or kernel panics.
You might consider using fewer applications concurrently. Also see:
About OS X Memory Management and Usage
Reading system memory usage in Activity Monitor
Memory Management in Mac OS X
Performance Guidelines- Memory Management in Mac OS X
A detailed look at memory usage in OS X
Understanding top output in the Terminal
The amount of available RAM for applications is the sum of Free RAM and Inactive RAM. This will change as applications are opened and closed or change from active to inactive status. The Swap figure represents an estimate of the total amount of swap space required for VM if used, but does not necessarily indicate the actual size of the existing swap file. If you are really in need of more RAM that would be indicated by how frequently the system uses VM. If you open the Terminal and run the top command at the prompt you will find information reported on Pageins () and Pageouts (). Pageouts () is the important figure. If the value in the parentheses is 0 (zero) then OS X is not making instantaneous use of VM which means you have adequate physical RAM for the system with the applications you have loaded. If the figure in parentheses is running positive and your hard drive is constantly being used (thrashing) then you need more physical RAM.

Windows 7 x64 Pro, desktop GUI fails to display correctly, or crashes, when High RAM load, and even after. HW changed, same issue. Please Help.

Hi Guys,
I have have this horror issue with my PC. I have even changed the hardware configuration and the problem still persists. My PC fails to display the desktop correctly after using highly RAM intensive applications, especially Chrome, but even after getting
the chance to close it, or waiting for it to crash by itself, the PC is still not able to display correctly the GUI, even on other browser/applications as shown in the screenshots.
1st Hardware Config:
Intel Core2Quad Q9450
4x2GB DDR2
MSI P43 motherboard
Ati Radeon x550 video card
Software used, that seemed important for me to mention:
NOD32 v4.2
Comodo Firewall 5.12
Chrome
Screenshot Captor
SpeedFan
Other mentions:
Aero is disabled, because I've considered that it's one of the causes.
So, I've considered that it's a RAM issue or a videocard issue, and I've upgraded to:
Intel Core i7 3770k
4x8GB DDR3
Asus P8Z77V-LX motherboard
Intel GPU integrated in the 3770k CPU
The problem just happened 2 times on this rig also, and the RAM was not even coming close to it's maximum capacity of 31.7GB. It was at ~20GB's.
Also, this is another videocard(Intel's integrated GPU), so we can exclude the videocard from the suspects.
My suspects:
1) some desktop manager bugs, or other similar issue
2) video memory allocation - I'm still suspecting that it can be caused by the amount of RAM dedicated to the videocard, currently, I think that it is at 256MB.
3) some poorly designed components of Chrome/Screenshot Captor - still very questionable since there are enough resources on this system, so there should be no fight over resources. And when the system is barely used there are no issues.
4) Adobe Shockwave Flash - maybe this one????
I have attached a set of 20 screenshots here, these were taken on the 1st configuration of my PC, using Q9450:
http://imgur.com/a/Mc8hI#4
Notice how it distorts the image by duplicating it and showing it in a smaller space, or how does it displays those black rectangles. In those moments, the PC is fully functional(the apps are running the background), without being slowish or something, but
you can hardly control it like that. For example, I've tried to remove the mouse from the USB, and then I've insterted it back, the image was not displayed correctly, but the mouse was recognised instantly and the pointer was controlable.
Same thing still happens on the new configuration. Please advise me.
LE: OS is Windows 7 x64 SP1 Professional and it's Geniune. There is no cracked software on this PC. No games. I've tried to maintain it as clean as possible.

Hi,
First, please be ensured that you have installed the latest drivers and all the updates.
Then check whether this issue will not in
Safe Mode. If it didn’t occurred, I suggest you narrow down the cause in
Clean Boot mode.
In addition, try to create a new profile to see how it works.
Hope this helps.
Vincent Wang
TechNet Community Support

Spinning beachballs, slow machines, and vanishing free RAM

I have a tale to tell and a question at the end.
I have an iBook G4, running OS10.3.9. I have been using it without major problems for over a year. I have over 9 G of free disk space.
About a month ago, with no apparent cause, I became afflicted with the spinning beach ball of death. This would happen usually after I had been using the machine for a few hours and had three or four major applications running: iTunes, Word, Entourage, and Safari, say. The machine would become unresponsive. The beach ball would appear for virtually every mouse click. At its worst, it could take three minutes or more for the machine to respond to a command. Once in this state, even quitting applications did not significantly increase speed. Usually a restart did, but not always.
The affliction was unpredictable. I could go several days without a problem, and then, bingo, I’m in the molasses again.
What did I do? I updated my anti-virus software and gave a scan — no problems found. I checked for updates for my various applications and for the operating system. Suspecting Entourage, which has been prone to slowness, I rebuilt its database. I think I rebuilt my desktop, too. I ran Disk Utility and fixed permissions — no improvement. I ran Tech Tool — no problems found. I ran MacJanitor — no improvement. I ran Activity Monitor to see if the CPU was tied up. No, it wasn’t. Was the RAM overloaded? I only had 256 M, and it was basically fully allocated most of the time. I had significant numbers of page-outs. The green wedge of free RAM on the Activity Monitor pie chart was just a sliver.
So, I installed another 512 M of RAM. This seems to have helped. But to my surprise it hasn’t completely cured the problem.
I keep Activity Monitor running and set its icon in the dock to show RAM use. At the beginning of the day, maybe 70 percent of the RAM is green (free). After I start my usual round of applications, the green slice drops to say 40 percent.
Now here is the odd thing: the amount of green will shrink during the day. There seems to be a ratchet effect going on. When I start an application, the amount of free RAM shrinks. When I quit the application, some of the free RAM comes back, but not all of it. Also, the amount of free RAM may shrink even if I do nothing at all — if I just go for a break and come back to my machine a while later.
Right now, it is late in the day. I am back to a sliver of green on the RAM chart. I have tried restarting my computer. Instead of the 70 percent green wedge I expected, it came right back to a nearly fully allocated RAM. If I try to switch between apps or start a new app, or even copy something to the clipboard, I may get a beach ball for five to twenty seconds — or I may not. It's unpredictable.
Another odd thing: The amount of memory listed as in use by various processes in Activity Monitor does not add up to the amount of memory shown as in use on the pie chart. The sum of the memory listed in use is lower than the amount shown in use on the pie chart.
So what is going on? Is this just bad memory management by OSX? Has my machine’s RAM been taken over by aliens? Or is it something else? And is there a cure?
Thanks for any help.
- Ken
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

An update -- and hopefully a root cause and solution.
The maintenance task that seemed to free up the RAM was rebuilding the locate database, one of the weekly tasks that MacJanitor or OnyX will do on request. Why it worked, I don't know. It seemed to reduce the amount of assigned but inactive RAM.
It was only a temporary fix though. The amount of free RAM would begin to slowly drop after the task was done, and within a few hours it would be almost gone again.
Yesterday afternoon, the spinning beachball returned with a vengance. This time, however, it appeared while over half the RAM was free. Tasks shown in Activity Monitor, particularly window servers, began to hang.
I repaired permissions. No improvement. I ran Disk Utility from the start-up disk. It found problems on the hard drive that it could not repair. I ran Tech Tool from its CD. The hard drive failed Tech Tool's write and read buffer tests and had flaws in its directory. Tech Tool repaired the directory. I rebooted OS X, and the machine still had the slows. I backed up key data. I ran Tech Tool again from the CD. This time the disk passed the read and write buffer tests, but the directory was rotten again.
I repaired the directory and did an Archive and Install of the operating system. When the machine restarted, I ran Software Update. It downloaded 8 files. When it tried to then read them on the disk and install them, every one of them was corrupted.
Cut to punchline: I took the machine to an Apple Store today and they diagnosed a bad hard drive. I suspect that an infrequent intermittent disk error, worse in the afternoons when the machine was warm, was the source of the problems from the beginning. Yesterday, the disk failure became more frequent. By today, the disk was basically useless.
Thank you, Andrew at the Apple Genius Bar. Thank you, makers of external hard drives that make frequent back-ups easy. Back up your data, friends. Hard drives can fail.
iBook G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Poor RAM management in Photoshop CS4 - need help!

I have done numerous hours of research over the years only to give up and come back to this subject later on. I will try again!
I must ask: is there ANY way to get Photoshop CS4 to automatically flush used RAM after closing image files? I'm tired and annoyed of CS4 eating more and more RAM without freeing anything after an image has been closed. An image shouldn't still eat up memory when it isn't even open anymore. It seems to be terrible RAM management of the program itself and how Adobe has forgotten to write that little snippit of code to clear the RAM after an image has been closed.
I know this is not because of:
Cache levels
Setting too large of a saved history state; purging history cache or any kind of cache still never frees RAM
A lack of updates; I have been up to date with CS4 very punctually as they were released
The computer I am on; this poor RAM management has been around since CS2 and it's the same on the last 4 computers I have used
Does CS5 still do this too?

Your historically conditioned to believe software apps should swap data a standard way. The way your using the system is probably not the most effective processing for your workflow.
- I have hundreds of TIFFS that take 60-120MB each in processing, and 8gb of RAM. The more total RAM actually usable that I can use the better. How the heck can using less of what is actually available RAM enhance my workflow? Standard are standards for a reason. The ink industry for printing is non-standardized and people waste $3-5 billion+ a year only increasing on unused ink that is still remaining in their cartridges, because there is no standard way of manufacturing ink, filling cartridges, or monitoring how much ink is actually left in a cartridge. I'd love for more standards in more markets. Unless natively stable, all other programs on my computer work flawlessly with said demonized traditional methods and standards, even in high bandwidth applications a hell of a lot more intensive than Photoshop CS4 will EVER be. Currently people keep disregarding the fact that in my situation CS DOESNT FREE THE RAM. CS4 is balloon. Balloon inflate. Never deflate even when emptied. Overflow into other rooms of critical OS space where balloon shouldn't be when it fill the room full. How many analogies must I give? Must I use sign language? Binary?
You don’t have enough experience with these topics. This is actually a
true statement. Most companies with systems large and small have to
think about what it costs to process specific jobs. If one in a thousand
jobs swap, a decision must be made to know how much it would cost to
retrofit a very expensive environment to keep that one job swap from
occurring. Most times it is better to let the swap happen for this
non-mission critical item than pay $50,000 to upgrade all systems.
I said NON EMERGENCY SITUATIONS. Emergencies are once in a while. You're repeating what I said like a parrot, but in different longer sentences with more words telling me I don't get what I'm talkinga bout. You're missing the full picture of what I am actually saying. That 1 in 1000 overflow would be exactly true in my situation with 7GB used, but it's not. Why not? Because the CS4 balloon will not deflate itself or reuse the empty space inside the balloon when it's needed, and the OS isn't given back any of the empty space to work with to know it doesn't need to page anything. In turn CS4 is going to try and scratch too when the OS is telling it that is has no more RAM left when indeed it does, but its hiding it in its own reserve balloon from itself. If a company needed just 700MB more room and either they spend $50k to upgrade to that, or get CS4 to release some space once in awhile, they'd sure as hell bother Adobe or write their own mod to force CS4 to release unused allocated RAM to get it.
Self inflicted only because I want to push the limit of what is actually usable on my machine, not some 'safe zone' with high tolerance. My system is tuned for a fine line of performance and I know what it can hande. I know what it uses and it does not spike usage for random OS operations. It can handle 7GB to 7.2GB of RAM of freely used RAM to one active program if it needs that big of a workspace to work. If CS4 isn't going to reuse the hollow areas in that balloon, then that's not my fault. My OS can handle the fine tuning, and CS4 is what cannot, obviously, since it can see that much RAM but not use the last %10 correctly.

Available Ram

I am trying to do a large render on my Imac. I have 4gb installed memory. I want to up my program to use 90% of my ram in order to render the animation. What is a safe amount of ram I can allocate for the program to run?

You don't directly control how much memory is allocated to an application. The operating system does that. You might be using an application that lets you choose how much memory is requested, but that's programming mistake, not a useful feature.

RAM leaks in OS X

Tonight, after running the latest official release of Parallels, I noticed that more than 1 GB of RAM was still showing up as in use. I then quit all the other apps I had open at the time, but that freed up <100 MB. I thought that logging out will free up the rest, but to my surprise after logging back in, the amount of RAM in use was the same as before I logged out (btw, no other users were logged in). Only after restarting the Mac did the RAM get released. Why did logging out not give me a clean slate?

I think you expect OS X to be like Mac OS where quitting an application freed up the memory it used. OS X is not like that (nor are any Unix systems.) The memory manager allocates memory on the fly as applications require it. The amount of memory available at any time is the sum of "Inactive RAM" and "Free RAM." You can use Activity Monitor to monitor memory usage or any number of third-party monitor utilities (my favorite is MenuMeters.)
In normal operation the memory manager allocates RAM as applications demand it. When an application is idle some or all of the RAM it used may be allocated to another active application. Application RAM that is not being used currently is placed in the "Inactive" pool. However, the RAM is still "allocated" by the system so it is not considered "Free" RAM.
You have no need to restart your computer. You will not run out of RAM. Even if the physical RAM were to be 100 percent "in use" the OS will start using Virtual Memory, i.e., your hard drive where the VM file is stored. When that happens you will notice a substantial increase in hard drive activity accompanied by a noticeable slowdown in system performance. If this occurs frequently then you don't have enough RAM and should add more.
Why reward points?(Quoted from Discussions Terms of Use.)
The reward system helps to increase community participation. When a community member gives you (or another member) a reward for providing helpful advice or a solution to their question, your accumulated points will increase your status level within the community.
Members may reward you with 5 points if they deem that your reply is helpful and 10 points if you post a solution to their issue. Likewise, when you mark a reply as Helpful or Solved in your own created topic, you will be awarding the respondent with the same point values.

Allocating ram to application

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