Memory Definitions in System Information

[bartlett]

Greetings all,

I have recently gotten reports from my wife that my hack is crashing every so often from being "out of memory." I have 8GB of RAM installed in A0 and A1 on my board. When I pull up the RAM in my system information, I get the manufacturer info, part number etc for 1 of the sticks, but the other stick only shows a 4GB DDR3 1333 memory module as the description. I don't know how long it has been like this or if it is even an issue. I ran memtest86 for 2 iterations with zero errors. Should I be concerned?

It is possible that I had left FCP X running on the two occassions there was a crash; from what I read yesterday, this could cause low memory issues - especially in Lion. Also, CPU-Z in Windows seems to recognize both sticks, but I am seeing a speed of 667mhz, which I think is the bus speed, not the memory.

Thanks
-Dave

 

[iUserosx]

I can't say about the out of memory error but if you want to get the full ram detail in profiler try installing the sticks in either two inner or two outer ram slots(assuming you have 4 such slots)

 

[bartlett]

Thanks for the quick reply!

I do have 4 slots, but I am relatively sure that I installed them based on my motherboard instructions. I will have to check it when I am home (One of the poor souls working Saturdays.) The suggestion raises another question for you though.. Is the current setup limiting my performance, or does it just not show up in profiler because of the way OSX expects to find the RAM?

 

[SG-]

i don't quite understand the error since OSX doesn't crash for running out of memory. Also make sure you check your boot hard drive and see how much free space you have since OSX _DOES_ warn you that you are running out of space on it when it gets low and a lot of weird things can happen if the drive totally fills up.

I'm guessing it is your hard drive and not the RAM since it's happening in FCP and you're likely editing video and writing to disk.

also the stuff in About This Mac / System Profiler is purely cosmetic and won't really match up to what you actually have.

 

[iUserosx]

also the stuff in About This Mac / System Profiler is purely cosmetic and won't really match up to what you actually have.

That's true.....Ur not getting any performance limitation with ur current configuration........only if u arrange the rams the I've told u'll see the proper info in
profiler(it will still work in dual channel mode which is recomended)

 

[bartlett]

Thanks for all the help guys. My hard drive has been running low and I am still using my system disk for FCP. I hadn't gotten the opportunity to see the error myself, but my wife reported it stated the system was out of memory and crashed. I generally keep the hard drive around 30% free but it has crept down in the past because FCP seems to do some high quality rendering when it has space to eat. I am in the process of moving the old projects onto an external drive, which is giving me issues for another thread.

Thanks again!