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What is using all of my computer's memory?

N

Nosrettap

macrumors member
Original poster
Dec 22, 2010
63
0
I have 8 GB of memory installed and just now it showed that I had almost 5 GB of it active. The problem is, when I went and looked at the list of running programs, the total memory used was not even close to 5GB...I calculated all the programs and it was not even 3GB. What is using the other 2GB. Attached is a screen shot for you to see

To clarify: My question is, when you look at active memory (in the lower left hand corner) it says that it is using 4.77GB. However, when you look above at the actual programs I have running (sorted in order of memory usage) you can see that it is impossible for me to be using 4.77GB. Hope that makes sense

Thanks for your help

ScreenShot2012-01-31at111502PM.png
 
Nosrettap said:
To clarify: My question is, when you look at active memory (in the lower left hand corner) it says that it is using 4.77GB. However, when you look above at the actual programs I have running (sorted in order of memory usage) you can see that it is impossible for me to be using 4.77GB.
Click to expand...
That's not the entire list of processes running. Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
 
GGJstudios said:
That's not the entire list of processes running. Launch Activity Monitor and change "My Processes" at the top to "All Processes", then look to see what may be consuming system resources.
Click to expand...

It is on all processes...it just got cutoff when I took the screen shoot. Is it possible that it's because I just upgraded the RAM on my late 2008 Aluminum Macbook (Lion) to 8GB, which, although not officially supported by Apple, is said by members on this forum to work with 8GB?
 
Nosrettap said:
It is on all processes...it just got cutoff when I took the screen shoot.
Click to expand...
You can scroll down and take another screen shot to capture the rest.
Nosrettap said:
Is it possible that it's because I just upgraded the RAM on my late 2008 Aluminum Macbook (Lion) to 8GB, which, although not officially supported by Apple, is said by members on this forum to work with 8GB?
Click to expand...
No, that's not a problem. Your model does support 8GB. If the RAM was the issue, it wouldn't recognize 8GB. The fact that it does means the RAM is OK.
 
The other important thing to note is that you're not even close to running out of memory, so why are you worrying about it? OS X will assign memory as needed to applications, so when you're running with plenty of extra RAM it will continue to hold onto the contents of RAM for programs you've quit until that RAM is needed, and will assign more RAM to applications that are running than it would if you were running low on RAM. Essentially, there's not reason to even be concerned about your RAM usage. You'll always see more RAM in use when you have 8GB installed than when you have 2GB installed, because it's there for the system to use.

jW
 
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