# how much swapping before you should add ram?



## phospher (Sep 10, 2009)

i've questioned this for some time... how much swapping is acceptable before you should add more ram? i currently have a FreeBSD 7.2 machine with 256mb of ram and swapinfo is showing 20%. are there any thumb rules that you use as to when more ram is needed? 

thanks gents.


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## graudeejs (Sep 11, 2009)

add ram, when you think that swapping is bottleneck (when you swap too much)


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## Alt (Sep 11, 2009)

When you look `top` - if you see "20K in", "10K out" or something constantly.. I think no matter how much pages swapped out - its important how intensively swap is used.


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## DutchDaemon (Sep 11, 2009)

That's right. Swapping in itself is not bad (dropping idle process memory in swap saves RAM), constant active swapping is bad.


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## phospher (Sep 11, 2009)

that helps. thanks guys.


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