TOPIC
After I selected and set a Desktop Picture, my computer, which has 16MB RAM, seemed to run slower. Is there a reason for this?
DISCUSSION Setting a Desktop picture can have severe RAM ramifications. Because of the always-present nature of a Desktop Picture, it is permanently fixed in memory so that it may to be accessed quickly for any screen redraw. Pictures that are very large in size could consume a megabyte of RAM (or more), thus eliminating that RAM for use by other system tasks or user applications. In a multiple monitor situation, RAM will be dedicated to the picture for each monitor, worsening the situation. In a small RAM configuration, say under 24Mb, where virtual memory is already providing much of the memory needed for basic operation, the constraints placed on the environment by Desktop Pictures consuming available memory can cause a noticeable slowdown in operations. This may also be accompanied by the sound of much disk activity, which is probably the effects of virtual memory being paged to and from the hard disk. There are two things that can be done to alleviate the slowdown. 1.) Remove the Desktop Picture and select a Desktop Pattern of your liking. Desktop Patterns consume a much smaller amount of RAM, by several orders of magnitude, since the pattern is replicated across the screen. In low memory configurations, this helps dramatically. 2.) If you just have to have that 32-bit color picture of 1024x768 pixels, then upgrade the RAM memory of your computer to 32MB or more. |
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| Document Information | |
| Product Area: | Mac OS System Software |
| Category: | Mac OS 8.5 |
| Sub Category: | General OS Topics |
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