Memory on Linux - what is enough?

kingrob · May 29, 2011

milomak said:
i have an i7 with 6GB RAM.

Even when running Handbrake and browsing and listening to music at the same time, I don't think I've ever seen the swap memory being used. Granted I don't sit watching ti all the time. But I do watch temps, cpu usage and ram usage given i have overclocked this system close to its limits when i run such operations.

Now how exactly must I feel if you already see the need to overclock a Core i7....I only have a Core i3 CPU.

*I built myself a Core i3 system and popped in 8GB 1333Mhz DDR3 RAM. My reasoning? It was dirt-cheap and can always become useful in the future. The mobo is an Asus P7H55-M/USB3, which is mini ATX form factor & I put it inside a Cooler Master Elite 342 mini pc case.

Extremely happy with it.

SilverNodashi · May 29, 2011

8GB RAM isn't that much either

I often use my full 8GB RAM and feel I should add another 8GB. The nice thing about Core i5/i7 and the higher-end desktop / workstation mobo's available for it is that many mobo's can take upto 16/24/32GB RAM

Cost wise, you'll also get a better performing system if you have more RAM, than an SSD drive used for caching purposes.

kingrob · May 30, 2011

Guess the most RAM you'll end up using, is running a few VMs off your pc. That's what I originally did, cos the mobo does support Intel Virtualization.

But now it's just a big multimedia pc, for pics, movies & music....love it!

kingmilo · May 30, 2011

As a previous poster mentioned Linux manages your memory in a completely different fashion to other OS. I would suggest getting 16GB of memory if possible. This will work on 64bit systems as well as 32bit systems since the 2.6 Linux kernel. Memory is cheap enough these days that you should get enough to last you at least three years.

SSD drives are nice but they will not improve the speed
of your machine if you do not have enough memory. Upgrade your memory first then look at the rest. Also note that depending on how much you use your machine the SSD may not last as long as a normal Sata drive because it has a limit on how many times it can be written to.

K3NS31 · May 30, 2011

Well, I have an i3 and 4gig of RAM and I'm able to run FIVE Windows VM's (3x Server 2008, 1x XP, 1x Win7) at the same time! Swap usage goes up to about 1 to 2 gigs, depending on how hard the VM's are working, so I probably need about 6gig of RAM, I guess.

MyWorld · Jun 3, 2011

I finished the upgrade just now, busy sorting the last bit of niggles software wise.

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8174456    2934156    5240300          0      67624    1439856
-/+ buffers/cache:    1426676    6747780
Swap:      3903788          0    3903788

Code:

Linux xxxxxxx 2.6.38-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 23 22:02:08 CEST 2011 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Thanks for all the replies and help!

ponder · Jun 3, 2011

MyWorld said:

I finished the upgrade just now, busy sorting the last bit of niggles software wise.

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8174456    2934156    5240300          0      67624    1439856
-/+ buffers/cache:    1426676    6747780
Swap:      3903788          0    3903788

Code:

Linux xxxxxxx 2.6.38-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Mon May 23 22:02:08 CEST 2011 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-2500 CPU @ 3.30GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

Thanks for all the replies and help!

Nothing much changed

MyWorld · Jun 3, 2011

ponder said:
Nothing much changed

Well, I'll let you know, my ego has grown by this <============================> much!

Synaesthesia · Jun 4, 2011

kingmilo said:
SSD drives are nice but they will not improve the speed
of your machine if you do not have enough memory. Upgrade your memory first then look at the rest.

Sure they do. They provide a ridiculous speed improvement no matter how much ram you have. In fact if you have less ram they provide even more benefit, as your swap disk is now way faster.

BigAl-sa · Jun 4, 2011

Synaesthesia said:
Sure they do. They provide a ridiculous speed improvement no matter how much ram you have. In fact if you have less ram they provide even more benefit, as your swap disk is now way faster.

erm... as has been mentioned... Linux doesn't really use swap space...

hawker · Jun 4, 2011

I tend to include some swap space anyway on my *nix installations. Just for incase

milomak · Jun 4, 2011

hawker said:
I tend to include some swap space anyway on my *nix installations. Just for incase

since having 4GB, I have never noticed any usage of my swap space.

milomak · Jun 4, 2011

Interestingly on my Debian Sid install, here are programs using 10MB in total of memory

Code:

  7.0 MiB +   3.2 MiB =  10.2 MiB       kded4
 10.8 MiB +   1.7 MiB =  12.5 MiB       konsole
 14.7 MiB +   1.9 MiB =  16.6 MiB       kmix
 16.8 MiB +   1.4 MiB =  18.2 MiB       knotify4
 13.8 MiB +   5.6 MiB =  19.4 MiB       awn-applet (2)
 17.5 MiB +   3.0 MiB =  20.6 MiB       krunner
 24.1 MiB + 674.5 KiB =  24.7 MiB       tvtime
 27.2 MiB + 293.0 KiB =  27.5 MiB       sabnzbdplus
 31.3 MiB +  79.0 KiB =  31.4 MiB       mysqld
 39.3 MiB + 783.0 KiB =  40.1 MiB       dropbox
 32.1 MiB +   8.4 MiB =  40.5 MiB       python2.6 (3)
 50.6 MiB +   4.2 MiB =  54.8 MiB       Xorg
 52.2 MiB +   3.6 MiB =  55.8 MiB       plasma-desktop
 71.1 MiB +   5.0 MiB =  76.1 MiB       kwin
 74.6 MiB +   6.0 MiB =  80.6 MiB       plugin-container
 64.6 MiB +  21.2 MiB =  85.8 MiB       mythfrontend (2)
318.9 MiB +  38.8 MiB = 357.6 MiB       chrome (17)
399.2 MiB +   5.3 MiB = 404.6 MiB       firefox-bin
---------------------------------
                          1.5 GiB
=================================

 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

using this program to provide the output - http://pastebin.com/GrLkQ57k

MyWorld · Jun 4, 2011

Code:

Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program 
 
 36.0 KiB +  14.0 KiB =  50.0 KiB       gpm
  4.0 KiB +  54.5 KiB =  58.5 KiB       sshd
 48.0 KiB +  12.5 KiB =  60.5 KiB       init
 80.0 KiB +   8.0 KiB =  88.0 KiB       start_kdeinit
 88.0 KiB +  10.5 KiB =  98.5 KiB       kwrapper4
 24.0 KiB +  75.0 KiB =  99.0 KiB       agetty (6)
 60.0 KiB +  61.0 KiB = 121.0 KiB       sensord
112.0 KiB +  18.5 KiB = 130.5 KiB       crond (deleted)
156.0 KiB +  21.5 KiB = 177.5 KiB       operaplugincleaner
280.0 KiB +  15.5 KiB = 295.5 KiB       ssh-agent
196.0 KiB + 182.5 KiB = 378.5 KiB       ntpd (2)
396.0 KiB +  22.0 KiB = 418.0 KiB       gpg-agent
280.0 KiB + 158.0 KiB = 438.0 KiB       avahi-daemon (2)
136.0 KiB + 318.0 KiB = 454.0 KiB       smbd (2)
300.0 KiB + 168.5 KiB = 468.5 KiB       udevd (3)
336.0 KiB + 193.0 KiB = 529.0 KiB       syslog-ng (2)
356.0 KiB + 176.5 KiB = 532.5 KiB       kdm (2)
436.0 KiB + 102.0 KiB = 538.0 KiB       startkde
472.0 KiB +  71.0 KiB = 543.0 KiB       su (2)
560.0 KiB +  51.0 KiB = 611.0 KiB       dbus-launch (2)
552.0 KiB + 217.0 KiB = 769.0 KiB       upowerd
684.0 KiB +  92.0 KiB = 776.0 KiB       nmbd
572.0 KiB + 269.5 KiB = 841.5 KiB       console-kit-daemon
784.0 KiB +  60.0 KiB = 844.0 KiB       wget
620.0 KiB + 283.0 KiB = 903.0 KiB       gconfd-2
884.0 KiB + 130.0 KiB =   1.0 MiB       makepkg
  1.2 MiB + 166.0 KiB =   1.4 MiB       yaourt
824.0 KiB + 801.0 KiB =   1.6 MiB       kio_http_cache_
  1.7 MiB + 120.5 KiB =   1.8 MiB       akonadi_control
  1.7 MiB + 223.5 KiB =   1.9 MiB       kwrited
  2.2 MiB + 155.5 KiB =   2.4 MiB       nepomukserver
  1.9 MiB + 910.0 KiB =   2.8 MiB       kaccess
  2.6 MiB + 316.0 KiB =   2.9 MiB       dbus-daemon (3)
  2.1 MiB + 979.0 KiB =   3.1 MiB       ksmserver
  2.9 MiB + 311.0 KiB =   3.2 MiB       udisks-daemon (deleted) (2)
  3.1 MiB + 316.5 KiB =   3.4 MiB       kuiserver
  2.0 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   3.5 MiB       klauncher (2)
  3.2 MiB + 345.5 KiB =   3.5 MiB       kactivitymanagerd
  2.7 MiB + 992.5 KiB =   3.7 MiB       klipper
  3.0 MiB + 730.0 KiB =   3.7 MiB       bash (5)
  4.0 MiB + 189.0 KiB =   4.2 MiB       polkitd
  4.0 MiB + 426.0 KiB =   4.4 MiB       akonadi_nepomuk_contact_feeder
  4.2 MiB + 421.5 KiB =   4.6 MiB       akonadi_maildispatcher_agent
  3.7 MiB + 928.5 KiB =   4.6 MiB       kglobalaccel
  4.4 MiB + 410.5 KiB =   4.8 MiB       knotify4
  4.2 MiB + 740.0 KiB =   5.0 MiB       kmozillahelper
  5.3 MiB + 453.0 KiB =   5.7 MiB       korgac
948.0 KiB +   7.2 MiB =   8.2 MiB       kdeinit4 (2)
  8.5 MiB + 209.5 KiB =   8.7 MiB       akonadiserver
  8.3 MiB +   1.0 MiB =   9.3 MiB       polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
  7.6 MiB +   2.1 MiB =   9.7 MiB       dolphin
  8.3 MiB +   1.7 MiB =  10.0 MiB       kmix
 10.6 MiB + 958.0 KiB =  11.5 MiB       yakuake
 10.8 MiB +   2.5 MiB =  13.3 MiB       kded4 (2)
 12.1 MiB +   1.3 MiB =  13.4 MiB       akonadi_maildir_resource (3)
 12.9 MiB +   2.0 MiB =  15.0 MiB       krunner
 18.0 MiB +   2.0 MiB =  20.0 MiB       akonadi_vcard_resource (5)
 17.7 MiB +   2.6 MiB =  20.3 MiB       operapluginwrapper-native
 15.4 MiB +   4.8 MiB =  20.3 MiB       kio_http (5)
 20.4 MiB +   1.6 MiB =  22.0 MiB       python2.7
 29.3 MiB + 114.5 KiB =  29.4 MiB       mysqld
 29.8 MiB +   3.2 MiB =  33.0 MiB       akonadi_contacts_resource (8)
 41.5 MiB +   3.4 MiB =  44.9 MiB       Xorg
 57.8 MiB +   3.5 MiB =  61.3 MiB       plasma-desktop
 61.0 MiB +   6.6 MiB =  67.5 MiB       akonadi_ical_resource (16)
 64.1 MiB +   6.2 MiB =  70.2 MiB       plugin-container
 84.4 MiB +   6.8 MiB =  91.2 MiB       kwin
210.5 MiB + 620.0 KiB = 211.1 MiB       opera
287.2 MiB +   6.0 MiB = 293.2 MiB       firefox
454.1 MiB +  32.2 MiB = 486.3 MiB       chromium (11)
---------------------------------
                          1.6 GiB
=================================

 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

Just 100MB of ram more than yours, probably the installation running in the background.

milomak · Jun 4, 2011

I didn't have opera running and i suspect things like how long the system has been running will have an impact.

I'll try to remember to run when i am also running handbrake.

But i honestly am not expecting much worse than what i see now.

Memory on Linux - what is enough?

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