How do RAM pageins affect a computer's performance?

[danieldy]

I noticed that when my computer starts to slow down, its either writing page ins or page outs.

I think I know what pageouts are. They occur when the computer uses up all the RAM in the system, then starts writing to the virtual disk. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the reason the computer slows down is because writing to the disk is much slower than writing to the RAM.

So if those are what page outs are, what are page ins? Becuase when they occur, my computer feels really slow.

BTW, I'm running a MBP 2.0, 2GB RAM. I wish I could shove more RAM into this thing... Haha!

[soloworx]

Pagein is the opposite of pageout - which means your MBP is getting back the memory from the virtual disk. Thus, your machine should run faster. I'm curious why your MBP "slows down" when doing pageins? Is it possible your MBP is set up with a big virtual memory? Slow hard disk?

One palliative is to defrag/optimize/verify/repair your hard disk. Or reduce its contents.

[Maccess]

Pagein is the opposite of pageout - which means your MBP is getting back the memory from the virtual disk. Thus, your machine should run faster. I'm curious why your MBP "slows down" when doing pageins?

Only after the page ins are completed and only if the reason it paged in is because you've quit some apps and the page file has shrank thus the virtual space isn't needed anymore.

Page ins are a disk operation, and as mentioned earlier, even the fastest hard drive is no match for the slowest RAM.

[suavecito]

And i think there are no option to set the size of virtual memory in OSX. And yeah, as much as possible clean/optimise your cache every now and then and also that's why i always try to reboot whenever my system feels sluggish.

[soloworx]

And i think there are no option to set the size of virtual memory in OSX. And yeah, as much as possible clean/optimise your cache every now and then and also that's why i always try to reboot whenever my system feels sluggish.

Oo nga eh, unlike in Classic OS where you can adjust the size of virtual memory.